‘Was it something I said?’ Lucy asks, surprised.

My father looks at his watch. ‘My word! It is getting awfully late. It’s almost midnight.’ He puts his glass down and stands up.

I stand up, too, and he gives me a hug, a proper hug, and for a moment I feel his soft, shaved cheek against mine.

He says goodnight to Lucy and follows my mother to bed.

‘Insane!’ Lucy whispers thrillingly, widening her eyes at me after he’s gone. ‘Are they always like this?’

I think about it. ‘Actually, yeah.’

‘What has she got against market stalls?’

I shrug and try to laugh it off. ‘She was hoping I’d be a model, like her. And then, as I’m only five foot five, she was happy to settle for me being a fashion designer.’

‘Oh, I get it. You’re not living up to her motherly expectations. “What are your goals, Fern?”’ Lucy says, in an accurate imitation, and adds in her ordinary voice, ‘And that whole Malcolm McDowell thing – what was that all about?’

‘She met him when he was in Caligula,’ I say gloomily. ‘But nothing came of it. That’s my mother. Always hoping for the best and always disappointed.’

We stare at each other for a moment and then for no reason at all, we suddenly start to laugh, muffling it with our fists on our mouths.

‘And the dead butcher bit. Did she think Macbeth actually was a butcher?’

The tears are rolling down my face. ‘Don’t!’

‘“She had so much promise and she’s thrown it all away …”’

‘Stop it!’

‘You know what?’ Lucy says, giggling weakly. ‘You should do stand-up. You’ve got enough material.’

‘I could do stand-up.’

‘That’ll teach her. This could be your Thane of Cawdor moment.’ She wipes her eyes and raises her glass. ‘Happy to help.’ She looks at the time and finishes her drink. ‘I’d better go too, I suppose. Time to take my Night Nurse medicine. I’m incubating a cold.’ To prove it, she sneezes into the elbow of her black dress. Her zips jingle.

‘Bless you,’ I say, dodging out of the way as she checks for damage – I don’t move far enough to be rude but I do try to get far enough away to avoid the germs that might have escaped around her slim arm, because what could be worse than catching a cold at this crucial time in my business career?

(Plenty, as it turns out.)

I see Lucy out into the cool night and she totters up the wooden steps, waving all the way, then curses softly for a few moments outside her front door while she finds her keys.

I lock the door and stand in the now spinning centre of the flat that I live in, with my parents tucked up in the bedroom, my friend safely upstairs.