I brace myself, because it’s touch-and-go how she’ll respond to this verbal sparring, but in the end she gives him another playful pat and he light-heartedly retaliates by giving her one back, a little less playfully, at least in my imagination.

My mother’s very well aware of the effect she has on men. She gets to her feet and starts looking through the dresses, managing to put an extra sway in her step on the assumption we’re watching her. Which we are.

Actually, I’m wrong. David’s not looking at her; he’s looking at me, eyebrows raised, suppressing a smile as if we’re conspirators, which makes me feel better.

She’s now looking at the light boxes. ‘What are these?’

‘What star sign are you?’

‘Scorpio,’ she says.

‘The sign with the sting.’ David selects a sheet of Perspex and slots it into a light box. ‘These are the claws and this large star in the abdomen, Alpha Scorpii, it’s red, see? That’s how you can identify it in the southern hemisphere, by its colour. Down here is the tail. The scorpion was sent by the Earth goddess Gaia to kill Orion when he boasted that there was nothing on earth that he wouldn’t hunt.’

‘The heavens have got such romantic stories,’ she says softly, holding her face at the best angle to catch the light.

‘Not all of them,’ David says. ‘There’s the Chisel. And the Air Pump.’

‘I’ve never heard of them,’ she says suspiciously.

He’s unaware that my mother hates being disagreed with.

‘Haven’t you?’ He sounds surprised, as if this shows an unexpected level of ignorance.

I realise that not knowing there’s a constellation called the Chisel isn’t something that would bother most people, but my mother thinks he’s mocking her and takes it as a personal attack. She walks away, scowling.

I’m meant to go after her, but I feel I owe David an explanation for her behaviour.

‘She doesn’t have staff,’ I tell him, mortified. ‘They’ve got an occasional gardener and a weekly cleaning lady, and every month someone comes to clean windows.’

He laughs and pats me on the head. Honestly, my mother’s whole patting thing has gone viral.

My mother turns to see if I’m following her. She beckons me crossly.

‘She’s going to yell at you, isn’t she?’ David says.

‘Yeah.’ Because of you.

‘Don’t go. Ignore her.’

‘I can’t, she’s my mother.’

‘She’s not your mother,’ he grins, looking at me from under his eyebrows. ‘She’s Annabel.’

‘Fern!’

Her voice barks across the yard and I feel a rush of anxiety. ‘I’d better go.’