I spot the one from August 2000 – the trip to Whitley Bay where that photo in the hall was taken. The lump in my throat doubles in size, but I manage to swallow it. ‘Can I put this on?’ I ask.

Mum’s sitting on the carpet, dealing out Monopoly money like a Vegas card shark. ‘Well, we’re not technically on a long-distance car trip,’ she says. ‘But it is Christmas. So go on.’

I slide the tape into the stereo and the opening strains of her first selection – ‘California’ by Joni Mitchell – begin to rise softly out of it.

‘Right, come on then, let’s have you,’ Mum says, patting the carpet. I sit down across from her, and she rolls the dice onto the board.

She taps her ship onto Pentonville Road and starts peeling off banknotes. ‘So …’ she says. ‘Daphne seems utterly fantastic.’

I pick up the dice and roll. ‘Yeah. She is.’

‘I was a bit worried, you know,’ Mum says. ‘I mean, you do realise she’s the first girl you’ve brought home since The Ghastly Tish?’

That really makes me laugh. Leticia Middleton – aka The Ghastly Tish – was the closest thing I’d had to a proper girlfriend before Daphne. She went to the incredibly posh girls’ school near my sixth-form college, although she did everything she could to disguise her immense poshness by swearing like a trooper and dressing like Gwen Stefani from No Doubt. We went out for about three months when I was seventeen, and towards the end of it, I got so sick of Mum nagging me to invite her over that I finally caved.

‘I don’t think The Ghastly Tish even made eye contact with me once,’ Mum chuckles.

‘Mum, she was probably shy!’

‘Shy! The girl dropped the F-bomb about ten times during dinner!’ She rolls the dice, and then starts laughing again. ‘Oh God, d’you remember when she got that bit of pasta stuck in her lip ring? Poor girl, mustn’t laugh …’

But neither of us can help it. The memory is just way too absurd: Mum bombarding Tish with jolly politeness while Tish swore at the clump of spaghetti trapped in her piercing.

Suffice it to say, she didn’t come back again.

When we’ve both stopped laughing, Mum says, ‘So. I’d say today was a little more successful than that.’ She taps her counter round the board again. ‘You and Daphne are wonderful together.’

‘Yeah …’ This comment touches so sharply – so precisely – on everything I’ve been worrying about over the past twenty-four hours that I can’t help picking at it. ‘Do you really think so?’ I ask her.

‘Of course.’ She looks up at me. ‘Don’t you?’

I shrug. ‘I feel like we’re good together now. But I mean … how do I really know that we’re right for each other? In the long run?’