I was pathetic, trying to be all Cool Adult. In my happiest imaginings Liberty and I would have a Movie of the Week relationship where I whispered ways to conceal the crop of angry-looking spots along her jawline or told her not to worry that her torso had had a growth spurt so that her legs looked disproportionately short because it would all come good in the end.

But it hadn’t exactly worked out that way. Although I steered well clear of any disciplinary matters, every couple of weeks there was a meltdown where she flung things, yelling that she hated Quin, she hated me, she hated Shiv, she hated Garrett and that she’d never asked to be born.

I didn’t take it personally. My earlier life had been Tantrum Central: Liberty was a rank amateur compared to Claire and Helen. Being honest, I’d gone the full poltergeist once or twice myself.

‘So what did he expect you to do about Kate and the nephew?’ Quin asked.

‘I don’t really know. Nothing, maybe.’

The doorbell rang and Quin looked harried. ‘That’ll be Shiv. Can we talk about this later?’

‘There’s really nothing to talk about, but sure.’

Shiv and her partner Garrett had arrived with two bottles of alcohol-free wine. Of all the things I loved about Quin, Shiv and her boyfriend, Garrett, were bottom of the list. Brash and flashy, they got excited by rich people and they thought cocaine was glamorous.

Garrett, curly-haired, big and loud, was ‘in property’. He wasn’t my favourite person, and I wasn’t his, but we all kissed hello, because we were middle-class.

Quin took a break from his steamy clattering to assess the alcohol-free wine. ‘And we’re doing this…why?’

‘To cut down on mid-week drinking,’ Shiv said. ‘We still get the experience of wine, without the actual alcohol.’

‘Cool.’ Because this was fashionable, Quin wanted to try it.

‘Rachel would know about that,’ Garrett said. ‘No alcohol mid-week.’

‘Or ever,’ Shiv added.

‘That’s me!’ I smiled gamely. ‘No fun!’

(Once, when he was very drunk, Garrett had confided how worried he and Shiv had got when they realized I was sticking around. ‘We love going to France. For the wine? We used to go with Quin and Elin.’ (Elin had been the girlfriend before me.) ‘Not going to happen now, is it? Q-Dog’s mad about you.’)

‘I’m wondering’, Shiv admitted, ‘if this, the alcohol-free wine, might become a thing…’

That was Shiv very much on-brand—what people earned and how they could be persuaded to spend it seemed to occupy about nine-tenths of her brain.