Maggie said nothing. She didn’t seem to have been born with that duck’s-back gene. But nobody liked a sulker, so she said, ‘I know’ and tried to think of a way to change the subject. Her mum beat her to it, though.

‘Although if it’s passion you’re after, you should head out to Zennor while you’re in Cornwall,’ she went on. ‘You know it’s where your dad proposed to me, don’t you?’

‘No.’ Maggie slotted cutlery into the plastic holder, grimacing as a stray piece of beansprout landed on her hand. It wasn’t passion she was after, and her mum knew that full well. ‘Tell me the story,’ she added. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh! Well, we were down there as a group – there must have been fifteen or sixteen of us. We had our bikes and tents, we were there for a fortnight.’ There was a faraway smile on her mum’s face and Maggie felt a pang inside. Her dad had died ten years ago and they both still missed him hugely. ‘Your father and I, we had been dating for a few months by then and we were very much in love.’ She clapped a hand to her heart and sighed. ‘I can see him now, all young and handsome, freewheeling down the hills on his bike as if he were king of the land.’

Maggie tried to smile, but she felt a twist of pain at the same time. Her dad had loved being out on a bike, but had been a reckless, over-confident cyclist who thought cycling helmets and reflective clothing were for sissies. Who knew if such things would have saved him when he was clipped by the van driver at fifty miles per hour, but his head injuries had been so catastrophic that he had died before the ambulance even reached the hospital. ‘At least he went doing something he loved,’ people had said, imagining these words to be comforting, as if it was all right for a fit and healthy man to die suddenly because he was too macho to slow down and act responsibly, too vain to put a protective helmet on his head.

‘Go on,’ she said to her mum after a moment, stacking tumblers upside down on the top shelf of the dishwasher.

‘We went to Zennor for the day, just the two of us, and heard the legend about the mermaid – such a romantic story – you know, how a local man was entranced by the unearthly singing of a mysterious young woman who appeared every week in the church, and how they fell in love and disappeared, presumably to live in the sea together . . .’

‘Hmm,’ said Maggie, whose idea of happy-ever-after did not involve a watery grave.