Anyway, I was stuck there until the Deck 3 gangway was opened so I decided that I could do worse than have the Prossers for an invisibility cloak.

‘Fair dinkum, that’d be ripper,’ I said, stepping out of the lift before the doors could clang shut behind me.

I Purelled my hands at the hand-wash station and followed Jayde’s shining back towards a newly cleared window table with a high chair at one end. ‘Glo said you were meeting up with your husband today, is that right?’

I heard the question but I was too fixed on the baby watching me over her shoulder to answer. Eventually, it filtered through. ‘Yeah. He’s been working out here. I’m meeting him in Madeira and we’re travelling round for a bit before we go to the UK. His parents live there. We’ll stay with them a few months before going back home to Brizzie.’

It was less an answer, more an alibi.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Bruce,’ I said, as she deposited Sansa into the high chair. I’m amazed I didn’t say Mick Dundee. Thank God she didn’t ask what he did on Madeira cos I couldn’t think of anything other than ‘wine.’ He was a ‘wine thing’.

‘I’ve really missed him,’ I said with a meek Princess Di head dip. ‘He works so hard, so I don’t have to. He likes a more traditional home life.’ I shrugged, happy-go-luckily.

Ugh, I hated ‘Hilary’ already. I wasn’t a Hilary. Hilarys are small and cute and do Pilates and volunteer at Cats Protection. They wear ‘pinnies’ and have Cath Kidston purses and won’t suck a cock in case it smudges their lipstick. I hated this Hilary with her ‘gym kangaroo’ ebullience, over-toothy grin and homogenised homelife.

And it was only going to get worse. Bobby was going to have me under the knife so I would look even more like someone I wasn’t.

The price for freedom is everything you once were, Rhiannon.

Gloria returned with the cutlery and glasses of orange juice, taking her seat opposite me and she couldn’t help a cursory look down my front – ketchup stain. Bit of string cheese. Dried-on chunk of onion, all from room service bar snacks from the past few days. This was not chiming well with the gym bunny health freak Hilary lie. I had to do better.

‘They’ve got a nice salon on here,’ she informed me. ‘You could… freshen yourself up for yer fella.’

I gazed at Sansa who was dipping her doll’s leg in her yoghurt. She was so beautiful. She had her mum’s eyes. I wondered if Ivy had mine.

‘Yeah, good idea. I’ll get my hair done, I think.’ And a whole new wardrobe. And personality. And face.