‘You stay where you are,’ I ordered, pushing her back down into her seat. The last thing people wanted to hear was how what we perceived as love was nothing but a chemical reaction and the statistical probability of divorce after the age of sixty. ‘I’ll do it.’

Edging my way down the row of chairs, I hopped up onto the stage where Mum and Dad were still lost in a world of their own.

‘I’m going to say something,’ I said, picking up the microphone and switching it on. ‘Let people know what’s going on now, if that’s all right?’

‘Oh, love,’ Mum pressed her hands to her heart. ‘That would be wonderful.’

Dad took the microphone out of my hand and banged it against the palm of his hand, silencing the room with a screech of feedback and warming up a few migraines.

‘Everybody,’ he said, speaking far too loudly into the mic. ‘Our eldest daughter, Rosalind, would like to make a speech so, yes, let’s let her do that.’

‘Not a speech,’ I said quickly. ‘I was just going to tell them what the plan was for the afternoon.’

‘Well, you’re doing a speech now,’ Mum said as she stepped down off the stage and took my seat in the front row. ‘Let’s hear it.’

Dad handed me the microphone as everyone began to applaud and, for the second time in two days, I found myself on stage in front of a group of people with no idea what I was going to say.

‘Erm. I recently read a book called Starting Over,’ I began, trying to keep my eyes on the back of the room, away from my friends, my sister and John. ‘It was very interesting, all about how we shouldn’t stay so attached to our past that we can’t move on with our future. You know, I think we all do that a bit these days, don’t we? It used to just be our grandparents but now it’s everyone, talking about how brilliant things used to be back in the day when people weren’t so angry all the time and we didn’t fall out with the neighbours over who they voted for and before Facebook ruined everybody’s life.’

‘Where’s she going with this?’ I heard Adrian not-quite whisper to Sumi who didn’t seem to have an answer and looked as though she was holding her breath.