‘Oh.’ The instant disappointment in her tone was not encouraging.

‘Just rang to see how you are.’

‘Fine. Fine.’ Sounded reluctant to be talking to me. Rather be doing something else.

‘Still busy in the fashion world?’ As I said it, that sounded archaic to me. I wish I could share more up-to-date jargon with my daughter.

‘Yeah, all going fine there too,’ she said.

‘Fleur told me you’re becoming an influencer.’ I tried to bleach the unfamiliar word of any intonation.

‘That’s the plan. I’ve done a few Instagram videos and stuff, but it takes a long time to build up the number of followers you need to make money from it.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ I said, already feeling a bit lost, even more detached from my daughter’s world.

There was a silence, very brief but uncomfortably telling, before I said, ‘And still going to lots of fashion shows and product launches?’

‘Oh yes. Actually, I’ve got to be off for one shortly.’

My fault. I had given her a cue to duck out of the conversation. ‘Oh, before you go, Jools.’ Even now, my instinct was to say ‘Juliet’. ‘Have you heard anything from Ben?’

‘No.’ The tone of her reply made the question sound incongruous. How likely was it that she and her brother would be in touch? I still felt guilty about that. You keep reading and hearing of these families where siblings bond instinctively and never do anything without telling each other about it. Juliet and Ben got on fine when they were tiny but, come the teenage years … They were always totally different. Juliet very practical, a problem-solver, more like me, I suppose. She’s got my colouring too. But Ben was always the dreamer. More like his father.

And when that father commits suicide … well, perhaps it’s not the ideal scenario for family bonding.

‘It’s just,’ I said, ‘Ben was down for the weekend.’

‘Oh yes. Was he throwing another wobbly?’

That was how Jools saw it, his mental illness. How she’d always seen it. Or claimed she’d always seen it. I think somewhere, deep down inside my daughter, there’s an empathetic person fighting to get out, but she’d built such a hard shell around herself that it’s a tough struggle.

‘No, Ben was fine,’ I lied. ‘Did you know that he’d got a girlfriend?’ I put it in the present tense, though I was rather afraid it might not be.

‘Yes, I heard that.’

‘From Ben?’

‘From Fleur.’

That was predictable. ‘Incidentally,’ I said, ‘Fleur’s very chuffed that you’ve invited her to stay in the flat when she’s in London.’

‘Well, it’s not a problem for me. There’s plenty of space.’ Realizing she’d inadvertently given herself a cue, Jools said, ‘And, of course, if you were ever up in London and needed a bed …’

Rarely had an invitation sounded more reluctant. I contented myself with saying that the demands of SpaceWoman meant I was not often in London.

‘All well with the flat?’ I asked.