Don’t blurt every graphic, gruesome detail; they’ll only piss themselves laughing, I told myself . . . before immediately blurting every graphic, gruesome detail – because that’s what sisters do – and concluding by opening my bathrobe with a dramatic flourish. ‘And then there’s this!’

‘Oh my god. Well, that’s something a person hopes they won’t live long enough to witness!’ Amber said, shielding her eyes.

‘What on earth . . .?’ Medically minded Emerald knelt down for a closer inspection. ‘It gives “read my lips” a whole new meaning,’ she chortled.

‘That lip reader is shouting!’ Amber added, now bent double with laughter.

It wasn’t exactly the sympathetic reaction I’d been hoping for. ‘It’s not funny! I think I must have had an allergic reaction to his aftershave. I could kill that dim-witted motherfucker!’

This set my sisters off on big, gulping guffaws. Usually Amber’s idiosyncratically perfect vowels gave the impression that she’d learnt elocution from a sequestered British monarch, but not this morning.

‘Motherfucker,’ she repeated, snorting away.

‘It’s a motherfucking boat all right,’ Emerald managed to add. ‘Chock-full of mother-fucking motherfuckers.’

I stood, legs akimbo, listening to them laugh at my expense. My hot-pink, swollen labia had parted my pubes in the most comical way. It gave ‘bad hair day’ a whole new meaning.

‘Look, it’s great to see my sisters finally getting along, it really is, but what the hell am I going to do about the Mick Jagger impersonator between my legs?!’

‘Getting along?’ Emerald’s eyebrows collided for a perplexed moment. ‘Hey, I’d get on with Amber all the time if she wasn’t always saying mean things behind my back,’ she backhanded, all merriment evaporating.

‘What?’ Amber pointed an admonishing coffee spoon in Emerald’s direction. ‘I do not say mean things behind your back! Although you do. Mum says that you’re always calling me vain, before adding how lucky I am to be “photogenic” – which basically means I look crap in the flesh,’ she fired back.

‘I never said that! Mum told me that you’re always saying I’m fat, and that clearly there was a thin person inside me, but I ate her,’ Emerald retorted.

Amber turned to scrutinise our older sister. ‘I would never say that! Mum told me that you said I’m too thin. She said that you liked the skirt I wore to her birthday barbecue, but then commented how lovely it is that my spindly legs don’t seem to bother me.’

‘Too thin? Is there such a thing?! When we discussed taking the kids to Disneyland she said your response was, “Good idea! Americans are so obese; Emerald might even look slim there.” She said you reckoned that my body wasn’t so much a temple as a disused warehouse.’