‘Should they be?’ she asked, allowing me to sneak a second sugared almond. The blue ones were just as rank as the pink. ‘As I recall, it didn’t end terribly well.’

‘It’s complicated,’ I told her. ‘But we were both at fault.’

She sipped her tea in her cardigan and bikini while I carried on putting sugared almonds in bags, waiting for her next move.

‘We met him once, didn’t we?’ she asked eventually. ‘He was the writer, the clever one?’

‘Yes,’ I confirmed, pleased with the description. He’d like that, my former literature professor mother remembered him as clever. ‘But you make it sound like a bad thing.’

‘Not at all,’ Mum replied. ‘I’m clever, you’re clever. But I wouldn’t want it to be the first thing people thought of when my name came up.’

I’d never heard her complain when people went out of their way to tell her how clever Jo was, although, to be fair, the word used most often in that scenario was genius. Not that it bothered me at all.

‘What’s so bad about people thinking you’re clever?’

‘There are a million things a person can be and clever is a decent piece of the puzzle,’ she said kindly. ‘But I would hope you would think of a lot of other words to describe me first. Kind, funny … snazzy dresser?’

With an eye roll and a snicker, I felt the sugared almond get sucked into the back of my throat and immediately spat it out into my hand. The sweets were out to get me. Funny and kind. Those were two of the words John had used to describe me. At least me when Patrick wasn’t around. Clever Patrick.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, arranging my sugared almonds into patterns on the floor. ‘I always liked how clever he was.’

Mum added a blue almond to my pink trail. ‘But?’ she prompted, sensing the word before I could say it.

‘Patrick is everything I ever wanted,’ I began, not quite sure where I was going to end up. ‘And now he wants me. Or at least I think he does. But something isn’t quite right.’

Picking up a reel of white ribbon and a pair of scissors, Mum slowly rolled out the ribbon and began snipping it into six-inch lengths.

‘Ros,’ she said, rolling and snipping, rolling and snipping. ‘Do you know why there are so many books about people falling in love and people getting their hearts broken?’

‘Because we’re all simple idiots?’ I suggested.