As I watch Moon, Sid and Frances, one by one (in that order), leave the hall and make their way to their respective rooms to pack, glad to be going, I feel creeping sureness that I might want my mother to stay, even if just for one night.

Don’t let her in, says a small voice inside of me. Remember. Always remember that Christmas.

THE OUTRAGE

Christmas, 1999. The thick tinsel was coiled around the bannister. The angel chimes were motionless on the sideboard, their candles unlit. She was by the front door, her Louis Vuitton case packed, her make-up pageant-perfect. Around her head sat a halo of framed qualifications to impress clients as they came into the house: her certificates from the Institution for Mediumship, Orange County. Healer of the Year 1997 from the Spiritualist Church of Great Britain. Photos of her with soap stars … The overall effect was of a try-hard pizzeria wall.

I called her a gold-digging slut and she called me cold, hard – the usual things she said when I had her over a moral barrel of some kind or other.

‘I know you’re practically a grown-up now,’ she said. ‘And you have your friends.’

I didn’t really have friends. I had lots of people I stood with in school, lots of messages on my yearbook page, but no one I could really talk to.

‘Why the Bahamas?’

‘Roger is taking me! Well, he’s already there, so I’m meeting him!’

Everything was exclaimed; she was so excited, I wanted her dead. I looked at the opposite wall, where there was a dreadful photo of the two of us; dreadful of me, anyway. The two of us at Disneyworld, three years earlier. I hadn’t put enough sun cream on and my face burned so badly I got blisters that joined up across my nose, like the scales of a snake. You can’t really see at the distance of the shot, the photo’s only saving grace; what you can see is my forehead and my shapeless Aztec-patterned shorts-and-T-shirt set. I was yet to discover the power of belts. My mother is next to me, wasp-waisted in shorts and a vest, sporting a pair of inexplicably cool aviators. Not even the men of Tinder would choose the younger woman out of that line-up.

‘Two weeks is a long time.’

‘The freezer’s full.’

‘What if the millennium bug happens?’

‘There’s long-life milk in the cupboard under the stairs. Come on, darling. Do I not deserve a bit of happiness? Can you allow me that? Please?’

I watched the taxi turn the corner and then I cried my heart out. I couldn’t say it. Stay. What was the point? Her bag was packed. She wasn’t one for unpacking once she’d packed.