‘To us,’ Mark said, proposing a toast, and we all clinked glasses. ‘To the holidays.’ Then: ‘Girls, we have some news to tell both of you.’

OK. This was it. I braced myself. Mark put his arm round Mum and pulled her in close. I’d have been irritated if he had done that to me. Well, maybe not if I was in love with him. Mum didn’t seem annoyed. She looked overwhelmed and hopeful. Like she might be about to cry the way people do when they win something big and it catches them by surprise.

‘We’re having a baby,’ Mum said.

I wondered if they’d rehearsed it. The double act: Mark introducing the topic, Mum following up. There was a short, very intense silence, during which I was mainly conscious of Mark watching me as if I was the only one who really mattered, as if all this had somehow been done for my benefit. Then Ellie squealed and launched herself forward into Mum’s arms, and Mark withdrew his arm from Mum’s shoulders and carried on watching me.

Ellie buried her face in Mum’s chest and Mum embraced her fondly, but as if there was something else going on that was likely to require her attention at any moment. Perhaps this was how it was going to be from now on. Maybe that was how we would lose her: not tragically, not with any drama, but because she would always be distracted. The new baby would inevitably take over and we, who were old enough to more or less look after ourselves, would fade into the background.

Mark was still watching me. It was too much. It made me want to shout at him. Why did he have to be so intense about it? Did he want me to fall over myself to accept him, like Oh please won’t you be my daddy? If that was what he expected he could forget it. I’d got by for years without a dad around, and I certainly didn’t need a replacement.

Anyway, surely he’d stop caring now he was having a baby of his own.

Ellie withdrew and said, ‘It is all right to hug you, isn’t it, Mum?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mum said, and stroked her hair – if she had tried that on me, I’d have told her to keep her hands to herself. But then, she would probably have known better than to try. ‘Of course it is,’ Mum went on. ‘You can hug me as much as you like. You won’t hurt the baby. It’s safe.’

And then she looked up at me and her expression was proud and pleading all at once, and I knew she wanted me to hug her too and say that it was great news and congratulations to them both.

Which would have been a lie.

It wasn’t great news. Apart from the mysterious fling or flirtation or whatever it was that had happened between them when they’d first met, Mum and Mark had only been together for about five minutes, and now they were going to be parents, which was running before you could walk with a little new human life added into the mix. Not the best idea. Also, one little sister was quite enough.