‘No way is he. For starters, having kids is the ultimate vanity project. And Art is very vain. He will have kids, for sure.’

‘Well, he says he won’t have them with me. He has decided not to sire my young.’

‘Then you’ve got to leave him,’ Kelly said, deadly serious. ‘He’ll string you along until you’re fifty and then he’ll leave you for a thirty-year-old and have twins. You have to trust me on this.’

She poured two glasses of wine and I topped them up to the brim.

‘Woah,’ she said. ‘Someone’s on a mission.’

I think probably part of me wanted to beat my body up – because that’s how it has to be, sometimes, for us to truly own ourselves, doesn’t it? I didn’t have time to go through the maybe-if-you-loved-yourself-more-you-could-forgive-your-body rationale. I was on the fucking minutes. By 9 p.m. we’d got to the second bottle of wine, the second pack of fags, and the eighth circle of Truthtalk.

‘Do you think I’m maternal?’ I said to Kelly.

Her brow buckled. ‘Huh?’

‘Don’t feel pressured to answer.’

‘Not really,’ she added, ‘when I think about it.’

‘Why not?’

‘You like to do your own thing.’

Now I frowned. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it. The either/or.’

‘I thought you judged me when you found out I became a mum so young.’

‘What? How?’

‘If you knew me without Sonny – not that that would be possible, but try and imagine it. If we’d just met in a bar, say, would you think I was maternal?’

‘Yes. I think so. You’re very authoritative.’

She laughed. ‘What?’

‘And organised.’

‘Oh, stop. I feel too sexy.’

‘And you are very caring. You care about me. I feel that.’

We were silent for a moment. I thought about the first time she’d left me alone with Sonny and I worried about child abuse, the way I always do when I’m left alone with strange children. Not because I have any desire to do it, but because people might think I do, or I might do something inadvertently.

Kelly said: ‘I thought you thought I was a dumbo.’

‘I didn’t think that, Kelly. At all.’

We sank another glass.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I thought so.’

‘What made you think that?’

‘You referred to me as your “mum-friend” in a column one time, maybe even a few times.’

I opened my mouth to speak. From the corner of the room, Siri said:

‘Sorry, I couldn’t find any matching restaurants.’

I cracked up. So did Kelly. We both looked at her phone. ‘I think what this tells us,’ she said, ‘is that there’s just no way to win.’

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