‘The reason we’re keeping it in our name, apart from the issue of capital gains tax, is because we feel it’s financially safer. For you, you understand,’ he adds.

‘How so?’

He and my mother exchange a look.

‘Have you thought,’ my mother says, ‘that Mick might simply be out for what he can get?’

This is a brand-new put-down out of a whole array of criticisms. I mean, Mick couldn’t possibly like me for my company, my looks and the fact the sex is good, could he? No. He’s after my flat. Correction: their flat. I take another mouthful of my drink. My eyes water. It hits the back of my nose like mustard powder. It’s more like a punishment than a cocktail.

‘He’s got his own house,’ I point out. ‘In Harpenden.’

That shakes them.

‘Actually his own?’ my father asks dubiously.

‘Yes. Actually his own.’ I’ve got a decent imagination, but even I couldn’t invent a house in Harpenden.

My mother gives me the look she uses when she suspects me of lying. I think of getting up to show her photographs of it on my phone, but I change my mind and sink back down again because honestly, it’s not worth the effort.

I crunch on my celery stick and look at her face with those new, strange eyes and wonder what my father thinks about it. The work she’s had done ages her. Only people afraid of losing their looks have that kind of extreme appearance, the kind that makes them look stretched and plumped and filled and tightened. When you see a face like that you immediately put them in the category of the middle-aged. When I was a personal stylist I saw the same shiny foreheads and immobile mouths on a daily basis. It rarely made women look young. It made them look as if the humanity had been taken out of them.

My parents are leaning towards each other on the red sofa, still recovering from the Harpenden house revelation, forcing them to come up with some new reason for protecting me from Mick or protecting the flat from me. Time to change the subject.

‘I saw an interesting woman today. You’d have liked her,’ I say to my mother. ‘She was wearing Chanel.’

‘You sold her Chanel?’ My mother brightens, visibly impressed. ‘Is she anyone we’d know?’

She’s got the wrong end of the stick, but I don’t want to ruin it, so I smile brightly. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say. Client confidentiality. Can I refresh your glass?’

Vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, celery salt, fresh celery. Glasses refreshed, I sit down again on the red footstool and the hit of my drink is so strong that for a moment I have the horrible feeling I’m going to topple off it.