‘Now if these highly successful things about me are going to continue, I want to have some say in my character development …’

MY MOTHER SAYS

‘I think if I was going to live anywhere in London, it would be Crystal Palace, just for the name. Just so I could say it, every day, several times.’

‘Can you turn down the New Age for just an hour? The air is purple and sparkly.’

We get out of the cab. Kelly answers the door in a pinny that says LICENCE TO GRILL on it. I instantly want to photograph it, but I resist.

We go in. Kelly’s flat is laid out in almost a square of corridors, with French windows opening to a large sunny (was it always sunny here? It felt like it) garden at the back.

I go to use the loo. I love Kelly’s bathroom. It has a teen feel: bath salts, Body Shop products, cotton-wool-ball dispensers. The sink is too small, one of those sideways ones you usually get in nail salons, but it’s just big enough for washing your hands and it makes you really concentrate when you’re brushing your teeth. On the back of the toilet door, for ten years, there has been a child’s drawing of a Dalek with a speech bubble saying: Are you my daddy? I used to look at it and think: Same.

When I get back to the kitchen, Kelly is tending to something in the oven. My mother has found a gin balloon from somewhere and filled it with gin and tonic. They are laughing, like old pals. I wonder whether Kelly is doing that thing where you’re nice to someone’s family as a way of bashfully showing you care, like when Mr Darcy helps Lydia but really it’s just so Elizabeth knows he’s a powerful man hot for her pants. I’ll take it.

‘Breastfeeding, though!’

‘Oh, it’s INHUMANE.’

‘Until they get those artificial wombs developed there’s no hope of equality for the human race. I’m coming back as a male seahorse.’

‘Good choice.’

‘It’s a bit sexual, too, right?’ says Kelly. ‘Breastfeeding.’

‘WHAT?’ I say. ‘Desist, before I become unwell.’

‘Well, it is. Of course it’s massively fucking taboo to talk about any of this. Any combo of sex and children is like such a no-no. But it’s complex. It’s human. Oh god, you’re both looking at me funny. I can’t talk about this.’

‘No, I know what you mean,’ my mother says. ‘Jenny used to be sexual. Before she became this clinical little insect.’

‘SHUT UP.’

They both laugh.

‘Please, stop. I didn’t bring you here to mortify me. Get your cards out. Anything.’

‘Jenny would only feed from my left breast.’

‘I’m going outside,’ I said, ‘to play football with Sonny.’

‘Good luck with that. He’s not played football for about three years,’ says Kelly.