‘Her name’s Carla. She was a dancer. A bloody good one too. Went all over Europe with bands in the early nineties. There’s a video of Simple Minds on YouTube where you can just about see her in the background. I’ll show you sometime.’

‘Wow.’ Sophia drew the word out. ‘So that’s where you get your talent from?’

‘Now what did I tell you about that word?’

She slapped her own wrist. ‘You’re such a dick. So that’s where you get your working hard at something till you get good from?’

‘Well remembered. Yes. That’s where I get that.’

‘You must miss having her around.’

‘It’s been this way for so long. Like since I was three or four. What’s to complain about?’

Her eyes widened as I spoke. Sympathy maybe, but she almost looked impressed. It was a subject I generally avoided, but, as I told Sophia, I felt myself becoming more complex to her, more intense, more mature.

‘You mustn’t feel you can’t tell people about her, Ollie,’ she said. ‘She has a mental health problem, that’s all. This is the twenty-first century. I figured she must be in prison or something!’

My mum in prison. I laughed aloud at the image. It’s the last place in the world she’d end up. ‘People don’t understand like you do.’

‘They’re idiots. What’s to understand?’

‘They think she must be dangerous or something.’

Sophia grimaced. ‘I’m guessing that, if there’s any danger at all, it’s only to herself.’

‘Exactly that,’ I said.

I dug in my pocket for my wallet, retrieving the little photo-booth picture of Mum and Aunty Kaye from their student days. I’d carried it for years, but couldn’t remember when I’d last looked at it. A grid of white lines had etched away the gloss where it had been folded, but you could still make the two of them out – pouting down the lens, with hair so big it stretched clean out of shot. ‘Ah, the ecstasy years,’ Aunty Kaye had said when she’d seen the snap. Whatever substances they might have been enjoying, it was a photo that served to remind me that my parents’ generation were so much cooler than mine.

‘She’s so pretty,’ Sophia said. ‘You and her look so similar. You see her much?’

‘Every Saturday if I can.’

‘You going tomorrow?’

It took a moment to orient myself in the week. Friday’s school day was an unpleasant memory, but a distant one now, tomorrow a vacant space I’d yet to envisage. ‘Guess so.’

‘Can I come with you? I’d love to meet her.’