My job of Assistant House Manager was under the generally amenable and delegation-addicted Sister Zygotia, which made Fat Thursday celebrations pretty much my responsibility. And while leaving me open to perhaps more criticism than usual, it was a welcome break from the day-to-day tedium of running St Granata’s Pooled Parentage Station. Basically, Fat Thursday required only three things: enough food, enough chairs, and trying not to let Sister Placentia get her hands on the gin.

Megan Hughes was the first to arrive. She’d spent twelve years at the Pool until she got picked out by a wealthy couple in Bangor. Was married last I heard to someone big in the Mrs Nesbit Traditional Tearooms empire, and was now one of St Granata’s patrons: we made a good income selling child offsets to people like Megan, who saw the whole baby thing as insufferably farmyard. It was sort of ironic, really, that she had a career at OffPop – the Office for Population Control – ensuring other women were responsibly discharging their duties. Megan and I had not met for a couple of years but every time we did, she told me how much she really admired me when we were growing up, and how inspiring I was.

‘Wonky!’ she said in a mock-excited kind of way. ‘You look absolutely marvellous.’

‘Thank you, but it’s Charlie now.’

‘Sorry. Charlie.’ She paused for thought. ‘I think of you and St Granata’s all the time.’

‘Do you now?’

‘Yes. And,’ she added, leaning closer, ‘you know what?’

Here it comes.

‘What?’

‘I always really admired you growing up. Always smiling through your unhappiness. A real inspiration.’

‘I wasn’t unhappy.’

‘You looked unhappy.’

‘Looks can be deceptive.’

‘All too true,’ she said, ‘but I meant what I said: inspirational in a sort of tragic way, like you’re the failure in the family, but always looked on the bright side of everything.’

‘You’re very kind,’ I said, long used to Megan’s ways, ‘but it could have been much worse: I could have been born without tact or empathy, and be shallow, self-absorbed and hideously patronising.’

‘That’s true too,’ she said with a smile, laying a hand on my arm. ‘We are so blessed, you and I. Did I tell you that I got a promotion at OffPop? Thirty-four K plus car and pension.’

‘That’s a huge weight off my mind,’ I said.

She beamed.

‘You are so very kind. Well, mustn’t tarry. So long, Wonky.’

‘Charlie.’

‘Right. Charlie. Inspirational.’

And she walked off up the corridor. It would have been easy to dislike her intensely, but I actually felt nothing for her at all.

*   *   *