Not having sufficient access to one of her own, Zoe spent her mid-childhood in deep study of other people’s. Her friend Kath’s dad, who worked as a ‘traditional island builder’, and took off his tool-belt only as he approached the table for tea, lectured Kath and Zoe on the importance of trying hard at science, and seemed a figure of impossible kindness and compassion. (Her own father never suggested that she try hard at anything at all.) Staying over at Kath’s, she watched their family rituals as if she was David Attenborough and they a pride of lions. She observed their feeding times, their argumentative-playful conversation, their attitude to schoolwork, weekends, and school-night television. Kath’s dad, for example, took no part in the preparation of food but always praised it, and was always on washing-up duty after. Pauline Parker’s, by contrast, was tall, with spiky blonde hair and an earring, and cooked one of his four special dishes every Tuesday, Friday, Saturday: macaroni cheese, cauliflower cheese with cherry tomatoes, feta and spinach filo pastry pie, spaghetti bolognese made from island beef. Zoe had tried them all. The bolognese was most complicated and required most swearing.

What Zoe’s father failed to provide in terms of presence/attention (forget meal-cooking), he made up for (in other people’s eyes) by his appearance on national media. I heard your dad on Radio 4 this morning, Pauline’s mum would say approvingly, as she stepped through the back door with Pauline, in time for macaroni cheese. Or: Your father does come across so well on telly, doesn’t he? Or: Hey guys! Zoe, Zoe, quick! Your dad’s being interviewed again! (Kath’s younger sister). And so Zoe would enter the front room sheepishly, squeezing on to the settee between Kath and her mum and sister, and watch with a mixture of pride, shyness and fear: as her father argued with a member of the opposition about fisheries policy. That was the nearest she got to having a real father mostly.

Zoe would’ve died for the story Pauline told: of locking herself in the bathroom when she first got her period, of her father standing in the passage, banging on the door, and shouting, Get on with it, child! Do you want me to come in and wipe your bottom? Of her coming out, and telling him what had happened; of him immediately hugging her to him, and saying, Run and tell your mother. Of them having his special spaghetti for dinner that evening. What would it be like to have a dad like that? A dad you could talk to, one to one, in person? Her periods hadn’t started yet. But when they did, she would ring Sebastian up and tell him. And he would be so—

Friends: often mean, sometimes hateful.