She shakes her head and laughs. ‘For God’s sake, Ben. You’re only twenty years old. All that matters right now is: do you make each other happy?’

‘Right now we do, yeah.’

‘Well, there you go, then.’ She nudges the dice back across to me. ‘You can think about the long run later. But the truth is: if you want a relationship to work, you have to work at it. And to me, you and Daphne seem to have a relationship that’s worth working at. I don’t know why, but I’ve got a feeling about you two …’

I roll the dice, and out of nowhere, I hear myself say: ‘But you must have had a feeling about you and Dad too, at some point.’

She’s halfway through counting out a wad of banknotes, but that stops her in her tracks. I’ve never said anything like that to her. Ever. I don’t really know anything about her relationship with my dad, except for the way it ended: with him running off with another woman. We never talked about it beyond that. I don’t know why. Maybe I was waiting for her to start the conversation, and she never did. But I suddenly, desperately, want to find out more about it. For some reason, I’ve been given this insane chance to see her again, and I’m burning with the desire to actually talk to her. To ask her the things I always wanted to, but never got the chance.

I can tell she’s taken aback. There’s a beat of awkward silence, which, helpfully, our car tape steps in to shatter, as Joni Mitchell’s mournful guitar is rudely smothered by the clatter of NWA’s ‘Fuck tha Police’. We lock eyes and start laughing.

‘A perfect edit from us there,’ she murmurs.

I reach over to turn Ice Cube down slightly, and Mum rolls the dice and starts moving her counter. For a second, I think she’s going to pretend she didn’t hear what I said. But then she rubs the bridge of her nose slowly with her thumb and forefinger, and says: ‘The truth is, Ben, I don’t know if I ever did have that feeling about your father and me. Even after we got married. Even after we had you.’