‘It was all just a bit too horrifying for her,’ Simone says. ‘That was the word she used. Horrifying. And grotesque. It’s a shock to hear your mother call you grotesque, even if you know she’s going to, or at least think she might. I’d steeled myself for the worst, but it’s still no fun to get it.’

Her pale hand reaches up and pushes a strand of hair back behind her ear. She does it like a movie star from the forties. It’s a Simone gesture, not Simon at all. I don’t know how she could have seen the hair where it had fallen, not with Simon’s eyes, hemmed in by the painted irises. But she knew, somehow.

My forearms have been resting on the plastic tablemat, and now they’ve stuck themselves to it. Lacy’s hand is on my left arm, just above the wrist, holding it, letting me know she’s there.

‘Best thing for getting past Mum’s response was the CABG,’ Simone’s saying. ‘Shame it was so many years later.’ She lowers her arm to her side, and her fingers brush against her robe. ‘You get some counselling as part of the package, and I just decided to unload. Didn’t decide – it just came out.’

‘It was a good thing,’ Faye says, taking Simone’s hand again. ‘Good to talk to a professional who was not part of the situation. Talk about parents, Simone.’

‘I think about Mum differently now,’ Simone says. ‘She was always the stylish one, always the hostess when she got the chance. I kind of fell for that image, but now I think she was lost in that life, and never really found herself. I think she went along with expectations in the best way she could. I think that’s how she held things together. That’s why the truth about me was horrifying. Maybe. I think there was a sad side to her that I couldn’t properly see at the time, but I can now. It was there in London, and after. Maybe she had an affair with Emerson, maybe she didn’t. Dad’s first heart attack happened at close to midnight in the studio apartment of a junior female journalist. I know that much.’

She stops. Maybe it’s for me to speak, but nothing comes. For a few seconds, the only sound is breath, easing out through the mouth of the mask.

‘When you split the estate with me,’ Simone says, ‘when Mum died, I wanted to tell you about myself. Then at my fiftieth, the whole time you were here. I don’t even know if I should have taken the money, but I was angry with them, angry about being cut out. Because of who I am. I’m sorry if that was the wrong choice, taking the money. That anger’s gone now.’