‘Mum, I think you’re amazing and we should definitely be celebrating that,’ I said, trying very hard not to look at It. ‘But that dress just isn’t special enough. We need to find something that’s worthy of you.’

She gazed at herself in the mirror before casting a disparaging look at my choice of dress. ‘Your nana wouldn’t wear that blue frock.’

‘Is Nana coming to the ceremony?’ I asked, clutching non-existent pearls at the thought.

‘Christ, I suppose she’ll have to,’ Mum muttered. ‘Perhaps it’s not too late to call the whole thing off.’

‘We’ll get her drunk and make Adrian talk to her,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘She loves Adrian.’

My nana loved Adrian because my dad hated Adrian. It was simple family maths.

‘Everyone says you’ll feel terrible when your children leave home.’ Mum trotted back into her stall and drew the curtain with considerably less vigour. ‘Empty nest syndrome, they said. Thought your dad and I would be rattling around the empty house without a clue what to say to each other but to be entirely honest, Ros, we’ve never been happier.’

‘Jo was a handful,’ I nodded sympathetically.

‘Not just Jo,’ Mum replied with a pointed peek through the curtain. ‘Do you remember Avaline who did the accounts for your dad?’

I nodded even though I didn’t. No need to make the story a thousand times longer than necessary.

‘She went totally loopy when her youngest went off to uni. Left her husband, shacked up with a woman and started dressing head to toe in leather. Invited everyone at work to join her Facebook group for BSM, very awkward business.’

I sucked on my straw until my coffee was empty, frowning at myself in the mirror.

‘She was moonlighting for the British School of Motoring?’

‘No, not that BSM,’ Mum stuck a disembodied head out of the curtains. ‘Whips and chains and all that malarkey. There’s a club down on Swinnow Street that has swingers’ night on a Tuesday. You’d never know to look at it from the outside.’

My eyes grew so big, I thought they might fall out. If she’d just told me this story the moment I arrived home, I’d have offered to sleep at the bottom of the garden.

‘I’m sure you don’t want to hear it but staying married for forty years isn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially when thirty-two of those years are mostly taken up by keeping two other human beings alive every day.’

‘Also known as your children,’ I added. ‘Who you love very much.’