It was a fine autumn day, but chilly, and we decided to stay below deck. Mum made us peppermint tea and we settled in a pair of slightly uncomfortable cane chairs in the big, curved-walled room that was the houseboat’s main living space. It was dim, with diffuse light coming in through the row of portholes high on either side, and it was never quite still: the current was too gentle for the movement to feel like rocking, but there was a sense of instability, of slight but constant motion. It made me queasy. Visiting my mother was actually worse for me than morning sickness.

Mum was wearing long jade earrings and a vivid green dress, and had a yellow silk scarf tied round her curly red hair; she was the only person I knew who still used henna, and she smelled of it, very faintly – a sort of muddy undertone, overlaid by incense and patchouli. I tried to imagine her holding a baby in her arms. It was a lot easier to imagine her putting it down and getting on with something else.

She said, ‘So have you got any holidays planned? I know how Mark loves to travel.’

‘We haven’t at the moment, actually.’

‘Well, you must at least have a few ideas.’

‘Not really. We’ve put all that on the back burner for the moment.’

‘Oh. Well, don’t leave it too long. You’re in such a privileged position, having plenty of money and no ties. You really should make the most of it.’

‘You mean, while we don’t have any children,’ I said. ‘But you can keep on going on holiday once you have them, you know. Lots of people do.’

‘I know people try, but it’s just not the same, is it? You’re so much freer to see the sights when it’s just the two of you. Babies come with so much kit, and they do limit your options. Not that I ever went anywhere much with your father, before or after I had you – but at least I’ve had plenty of chances to make up for lost time.’

I was going to have to tell Dad about the baby too, sooner rather than later; maybe that evening, if I had the energy. Our phone conversations were invariably short, but were still oddly demanding; he wasn’t much of a talker. Since he’d retired, he seemed happy to live the life of a recluse.

Poor Dad. In the end, he’d been faced with unavoidable evidence of Mum’s infidelities – he had quite literally come home and found her with the milkman, a story she had made much of since. He had startled her by insisting on a divorce, and had fled to a small house in a pebbledashed terrace in south Wales, which he could comfortably afford with his share of the value of the family home and his salary as a signalman on the railways. He’d lived a quiet existence there ever since, and had never, to my knowledge, risked falling in love again.