I brush her off. I am enjoying my wine and dog chat with Suzy B.

‘How’s work, Jenny?’ Art says.

‘Great.’

Suzy says, ‘Art showed me a few of your articles. I particularly loved the one about being big spoon for a change.’

‘Thanks, yeah, they’re usually a lot more political than that.’

‘I love your nineties smoky make-up, by the way. I’ve been meaning to try that, but I never really wear make-up.’

‘Don’t you?’ says my mother. She looks at Suzy closely.

‘No. All au naturel! I suppose I might have to change my tune when I hit thirty-three or thirty-four. But I’m only twenty-eight, so, you know, I have time.’

I want to say to Suzy, Let’s not do this, you and I. Let’s not be part of the deforming sexual competition.

‘I did Jenny’s make-up,’ my mother says. I want to throttle her. ‘We’re all in the creative industries. It’s a lot of maintenance.’

Suzy says: ‘We are all about natural beauty here at the show.’

‘Nature is not beautiful,’ says my mother. ‘Nature is the ugliest thing of all. Mother Nature is a misogynistic bitch. You just have to look at childbirth to know that.’

‘I’m very interested in this,’ Art says. ‘Tell me more, Carmen.’

Suzy laughs again, more of a titter. I do what I think is a silent impression of her but it actually comes out as a squeak. I cover my mouth and pretend it was the beginning of a strange cough. My mother tries to catch my eye but I expertly avoid her. I down the rest of my wine and take another from a passing tray.

‘Art tells me you’re a psychic-medium,’ says Suzy, to my mother.

‘I used to be an actress,’ my mother says. ‘I have trodden the boards.’

Suzy smiles politely.

‘Now she just goes for the board of producers,’ I say.

Suzy roars. Like the lion of Great Britain. Like one of those big ones, by the Thames. ‘You’re so funny!’ says Suzy. ‘Just like Art said! So delightfully capricious and contradictory.’

I make a laugh-shape with my mouth, but I am stricken. Is this what I have become: an anecdote he recounts in bed – something that they can both titter about? I am not that small or tragic. Am I? This is the version of me that Art wants me to be – and she does too, on some level. They both want me to fade into a safe, defined dot, receding into nothing on the road behind them. So they can look back and go – Is that …? Ah. No. It’s just a speck of dust on the lens.

I look at Suzy – at her bird-like face and scrupulous restraint. The water in Suzy’s inner bowl is a millpond.

I have almost finished my second glass of wine. At the bottom of the glass is freedom.