‘She keeps coming over when you’re at work and sitting on us,’ he said. Dave seemed genuinely upset. ‘She’s having a detrimental effect on our studying.’

He pointed to the cat hairs on his jumper.

‘And she’s been lying all over our books and lecture notes. Marvin missed a seminar and a tutorial last week because of her – and Martin was ten minutes late for an exam.’

I promised to have a word with her. When I went back in, the cat was sitting in the seat I’d just vacated. I looked her in the eye and told her that it simply wasn’t acceptable; we were busy people; we had our own lives to live, too; we had hopes and dreams just like her.

She blinked back lazily but I knew my comments had hit home: she wore the sheepish look of a cat who knows it’s in the doghouse.

Saturday February 3rd

Another drubbing for Dylan’s team today. But he should take heart from his own performance; some of the parents on the touchline even compared him to Maradona (although Maradona punched the ball into his opponent’s net). As part of my new fitness drive, I volunteered to run the line. I kept up with play well at first but, ten minutes in, began to flag. There were a lot of people shouting at me.

When I dropped him home later, Sophie reminded me about parents’ evening.

‘It’s on Wednesday. You hadn’t forgotten, had you?’

‘No, not at all.’ I looked at my shoes.

‘You had. It starts at six. And please try to be more . . . normal this time.’

I took this as a thinly veiled reference to last year’s meeting. I had been having a perfectly civilised discussion with Ms Thornton, Dylan’s English teacher, about how, on the poster outside the school hall, there was a missing apostrophe in ‘PARENTS EVENING’. Even now I don’t know why she got so angry with me.

‘I am normal,’ I said.

Sophie gave me one of her looks. I put it in my coat pocket.

‘Well, just don’t be late. 6 p.m., remember?’

When I got home, I tried to write a poem about missing apostrophes. But I just couldn’t settle down to it. I think this may be due to the absence of the cat. She’s still sulking from yesterday’s reprimand and has taken up residence in the airing cupboard.

Sunday February 4th

I rose early at 11 a.m. for my run: over the bridge, down onto the footpath that follows the bend of the river, across the bridge, and through the back streets home. My surroundings went by in a blur – I’d forgotten to put my contact lenses in – but rarely have I felt so alive. I treated myself to a super-sized fry-up brunch in celebration: two extra quorn sausages!