‘It’s not your fault that Dad is the way he is. You tried to stop him.’

She shrugged. Her face was bleak and I knew she was remembering the rows she’d tried to shelter me from before he’d left. Then she gave herself a little shake. ‘What’s done can’t be undone,’ she said. ‘But I promise you, Mark has only the best intentions. He may not get everything right, but he’s willing to learn. Just give him a chance.’

That was when I realised how serious she was. That it wasn’t going to be a case of ‘If you don’t like him, I’ll get shot of him’. It was like he was already part of our lives whether Ellie and I wanted him there or not. Like he was suddenly just as important as we were.

‘Look, I didn’t particularly want to meet him,’ I said. ‘But I’m here, aren’t I? Are we going to go soon?’

She looked at my reflection in the mirror like there was something she wanted to explain but couldn’t. Then she said, ‘Please, Ava, for once in your life, just try to be nice,’ and banged the door on her way out.

I checked my phone. Sure enough, she’d posted an update with a picture of the spread we’d just tucked into, and a slightly cryptic caption: A nice cup of tea… and the rest. Poor old Karen had already liked it. I only hesitated for an instant before liking it too. A guilt like. Dad wasn’t on Facebook, didn’t believe in it, so he’d never see it.

How was he going to feel about this? He could probably have coped with Mum dating someone who ticked all of the boxes, who was well-off and had a good job and so on. He could have just been cynical about it. But if Mum was properly serious about it… and if we didn’t think Mark was all bad, apart from the situation taking some getting used to… how would he deal with it then?

Back at our table I made a bit more of an effort, but it didn’t come naturally. I felt exhausted by the whole thing. It was a relief when Mark paid the bill and we left. I wondered how much it had all come to, but didn’t get the chance to see.

He took us all the way back to our flat. You didn’t see many Jags on our road – even our landlady only drove a Ford – so we were pretty conspicuous. It felt good, and at the same time I felt uneasy about it.

It reminded me of when we’d lived in a part of south London that was notorious for kerb-crawling, and one evening, not even that late – I’d been walking home from the supermarket or something – I’d seen a young woman, scantily dressed despite the cold, getting into a car. I had felt awful about it, about what was going to happen between that girl and the driver next, and furious: not with her, but with him. It was frightening how vulnerable she was, and maddening how easy it was for him to exploit her.