When Ellie was little she’d drawn endless pictures of wedding dresses, each one more ornate than the last. They’d been great big tiered creations like something from the court of Marie Antoinette, with bows and frills and flowery embroidery, painstakingly coloured in around the white of the blank page. She’d asked for the same bedtime story night after night: it was about a little girl who got to be a bridesmaid and was naughty and spoiled her gloves, and was rescued at the last minute when somebody gave her a spare pair. Sit still and look nice, was the moral of the story.

I was always the one who had to read it to her, while Mum sorted out her appointments diary and checked her supplies and so on. Eventually I got so sick of it I said she couldn’t have it any more, and made her choose something else.

‘As long as you don’t expect me to be a sodding bridesmaid,’ I grumbled.

Mum hugged Ellie close again, as if she was embracing her all the more tightly because I was being so difficult, such a teenager. But why should I be anything else?

Mark exhaled. The battle was over before it had even begun: I’d capitulated. He turned to Mum and said, ‘I think we should leave it there for now, don’t you?’

She hesitated. Suddenly it struck me that she looked exhausted. It must have taken it out of her, all this. Figuring out how to tell us. Worrying about it. I felt bad for not having made it easier for her.

‘There’ll be plenty of other chances to talk about things,’ Mark said. ‘Everything else will keep. Let’s finish our drinks and go down to dinner.’

She met his eyes, and that was when I realised for the first time how serious this was. She trusted him. In some way that I didn’t fully understand, she’d given herself up to him. Was this love? Was this what love looked like? My mum, who had always been so independent, was willing to put her life in this man’s hands.

‘All right,’ she said.

‘Good. You look a little bit pale, and it’s been a long day. I expect Junior needs feeding.’

I sipped my wine. Junior! Probably he was going to talk to Mum’s tummy and all that rubbish. Or already did. Which was really just a way of being smug about having got her pregnant.

Where could they possibly have done it? They must have done it somewhere. They went on dates all the time, but it wasn’t like he ever slept over. Mum had said he had a house in the countryside somewhere, near Oxford, but that was miles from London.

Probably he’d impregnated her on the back seat of the Jag. Yeah, right on those leather seats that Ellie and I had to sit on whenever he drove us around.

Welcome to the world, Junior. What a family. Still, there were only two years to go and I’d be eighteen and adult, and out of it. I could move to the other side of the world if I wanted, or at least to the other side of the country. I would be a free agent.