So loud that she turns back to me with another suspicious frown. I can see the look on her face – a look that says, What are you going to tell me now? – but then she catches herself.

‘Of course,’ she says sweetly, coming to sit on the edge of the coffee table.

I’ve been practising what I’m going to say all evening. On the bus home from Poppy’s. While Rosh, Dad and me were huddled in the living room, eating spag bol and watching the Strictly final. While I was washing up and idly gazing out at my estate, wishing I had a view like Poppy’s parents. But now my mother is looking at me, the words that were so carefully lined up on my tongue abandon me.

So I blurt out, ‘Mama, I’ve met someone.’

She’s quiet for a beat too long, then nods. ‘I thought so.’

I blink at her. ‘How?’

‘The flowers.’

I nod and she leans forward, resting her wrists on her knees and starts playing with her wedding ring. I can see from the way she’s blinking and nodding gently to herself that she’s thinking about what she’s going to say – how she’s going to handle this – which isn’t like my mother at all.

‘What’s her name?’ she finally says.

‘Poppy,’ I say proudly, my back a little straighter. ‘Poppy Morgan.’

‘Does she go to your school?’

‘No. She goes to Roedean.’

My mother raises her eyebrows. ‘Roedean?’

‘Yes, Mama. She’s kind and brave and smart,’ I gush, smiling and gesticulating wildly, as though I’m trying to sell her a used car. ‘Her father teaches at Cambridge and her mother is Professor Margot Morgan.’ I point at the television. ‘She did that documentary on the BBC about dark matter that Rosh made me watch, like, three times. She’s brilliant. She won the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.’

She nods, obviously impressed, but then says, ‘Smart parents don’t always equal a smart child.’

That’s a dig at me, I’m sure, but I carry on anyway.

‘I know, but she is, Mama. I swear. So smart. And funny.’

‘Funny?’

OK. Funny wasn’t the right way to go. Guyanese mothers don’t care about funny. They only want to hear three things: doctor, lawyer or engineer. Actually, that’s not fair – she’s married to a gardener, after all – but I know that it’s the only thing my grandparents will want to hear.

‘And she’s vegan,’ I add, then immediately regret it as she sits up.

‘Vegan?’ she says, like I’ve just told her that Poppy is Vulcan or something.

Why did I say that?

Now she’s worried that Poppy’s going to make me vegan as well.

I try to say something to reassure her that she won’t, but the only thing I come up with is, ‘I love meat.’