“This is not trivial shit, Jackie. I want Holly to be aware that there is a difference between truth and meaningless gibberish bullshit. She’s completely surrounded, from every angle, by people telling her that reality is one hundred percent subjective: if you really believe you’re a star, then you deserve a record contract whether or not you can sing for shit, and if you really believe in weapons of mass destruction, then it doesn’t actually matter whether they exist or not, and fame is the be-all and end-all because you don’t exist unless enough people are paying attention to you. I want my daughter to learn that not everything in this world is determined by how often she hears it or how much she wants it to be true or how many other people are looking. Somewhere in there, for a thing to count as real, there has got to be some actual bloody reality. God knows she’s not going to learn that anywhere else. So I’m going to have to teach her all by myself. If she occasionally gets a little stroppy along the way, so be it.”

Jackie raised her eyebrows and primmed up her lips. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “I’ll just keep my mouth shut, will I?”

Both of us did that for a while. Holly had got herself a new swing and was painstakingly turning in circles to wind the chains into a snarl.

“Shay was right about one thing,” I said. “Any country that worships Celia Bailey is just about ready to go down the tubes.”

Jackie clicked her tongue. “Don’t be calling down trouble.”

“I’m not. If you ask me, a crash might not be a bad thing.”

“Jaysus, Francis!”

“I’m trying to bring up a kid, Jackie. That alone is enough to scare the living daylights out of any sane human being. Throw in the fact that I’m trying to bring her up in a setting where she’s constantly being told to think about nothing except fashion, fame and body fat, ignore the man behind the curtain and go buy yourself something pretty . . . I’m petrified, all the time. I could just about stay on top of it when she was a little kid, but every day she’s getting older and I’m getting scareder. Call me crazy, but I kind of like the thought of her growing up in a country where people occasionally have no choice but to focus on something more crucial than dick-replacement cars and Paris Hilton.”

Jackie said, with a wicked little grin pulling at the corner of her mouth, “D’you know who you sound like? Shay.”

“Sweet jumping Jesus. If I thought that was true, I’d blow my brains out.”