I’m finally brought my tea and two Custard Creams – one with a corner snapped off. I remove the top of one biscuit and scrape out the cream with my bottom teeth. I put the two sides back together and munch it until it makes a neat circle of spitty biscuit between my thumbs, then I put it in my mouth ’til it dissolves. I don’t realise until I swallow that Steffi has been watching me. My cheeks flame as red as my roots.

But then my phone pings in my handbag and I rifle around to find it. ‘Probably Daddy, checking in on his girls.’

‘Ahhh,’ says Steffi, all misty-eyed.

It isn’t Daddy. It’s an email from eBay, letting me know about their half term sale on personalised school stationery.

‘Was it him?’ says Steffi, combing my colour through.

‘Yeah. He’s asking if I want anything brought in. Bless him.’

‘He sounds like a keeper.’ I hold up my iPhone screen to show her his photo. She takes it off me and squints. ‘Blimey, he’s gorgeous.’

I know what she’s thinking – that a woman like me couldn’t have possibly ‘got’ a guy like him. ‘I’m very lucky.’ She returns me the phone and I put him away safely in my bag. ‘We were childhood sweethearts.’

‘You started early then. I thought you looked young to have five kids.’

‘I had the first one at fourteen.’

‘Blimey.’

‘Then the twins, then Harry. Wasn’t easy with the medical degree, but we managed. Then this little surprise came along.’

‘I met my Rich on a hen weekend.’

I hadn’t asked and it’s not interesting to me but I pretend it’s the most interesting thing because for some reason I’m happy in her company. Two married mums together. ‘I love a good knees-up.’

‘Yeah it did get a bit rowdy,’ she laughs. ‘He did karaoke to “Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady” and pointed at me when he was singing. I knew then he was The One.’

I smile at the mirror. ‘The One. It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, we have our moments. He woke up yesterday with a cold, right? And his breathing has become all like that Darth Wossit. And I said to him “Rich, I swear to God, if you breathe like that anymore, I’m gonna ram your head in the bacon slicer.” He was winding me up that much.’

I don’t get that. Why stay with a person whose breathing makes you want to commit actual murder on their head? So I ask her.

‘So you don’t love him anymore?’

‘Oh, course I do,’ she laughs. ‘I were only joking. Just wish he worked on an oil rig or summut, so he’d leave the bloody house once in a while, you know?’