‘To be honest, it’s a bit weird,’ she confessed instead. ‘When I walk around the house, I keep remembering things from when we were little, but none of it’s there. Nothing. I mean, I always knew Mum loved a makeover but this is forensic.’ Her eye fell on the spot by the kitchen door where their pencil-marked heights had level-pegged until their teens. Toby had cheated, levering his heels up the skirting board to edge ahead. Tara had let him. All now obliterated by Elephant’s Breath.

It had been there, hadn’t it?

Along with the scuffs where Toby dropped his bike in the hall. The back door that used to swell in wet weather, so you had to kick, then pull. The sticky clatter of the letterbox offering the daily hope of a letter. The house was the same, but every memory had been wiped away by Mum’s determined improvements.

Tara closed her eyes. ‘It’d be nice to … I don’t know, just remind myself that we did actually live here?’

She could hear the forced laughter in her own voice, and grimaced. Time to end the call before she said something embarrassing.

‘OK. Right, I’m off to work now but ring any time. If I’m in a session, just leave me a message, let me know when’s good to have a chat.’ She paused, fighting the urge to say, I deserve more than your Instagram followers. ‘Bye!’

She hung up.

On cue, Sybil slunk in from the tiled hallway, a black streak of disdain against Ruth’s neutral woodwork.

‘Morning!’ said Tara brightly, but got no response other than a dismissive flick of the tail as the cat sniffed the breakfast offering with suspicion. They both knew she would eat around the worming tablet.

Tara sighed, no longer up for that fight, and went back to her cold toast. There was, of course, one other person who could corroborate her childhood memories, but he was even more disconnected from Tara’s life than Toby. She wasn’t even sure how she’d get hold of him to ask.

Tara slid the photo out of her diary and stared at it, trying to superimpose the chaotic scene on the immaculate house around her.