‘It was worth a try.’

‘Trust me on this. Have I ever taken you somewhere you haven’t enjoyed?’

‘Never,’ I told her. It was the truth.

‘Thank God for that,’ she said with a broad smile. ‘I’m surprised you’re so resistant to the whole opera thing.’

‘You know I love music, right? But, a few months back, I had to go to a musical with the school.’

‘You poor boy. What did they make you see?’

‘Joseph.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Aunty Kaye said, shuddering at the thought. ‘You – a musician – subjected to Andrew Lloyd Webber! Were you not tempted to hang yourself in the interval?’

‘I did try slitting my wrists with a plastic ice-cream spoon. In the end, I just used it to gouge my eardrums out.’

Aunty Kaye ejected a mouthful of coffee back into her mug, her eyes crinkling as she laughed. It was only when she’d pop in for a chat in the mornings, before her trademark vintage make-up was applied, before her bobbed hair was perfectly styled, that it was possible to believe she and Mum were even close to the same age.

‘You need to be strong and set that traumatic experience to one side,’ she told me. ‘As you will find, opera and musicals are two very different things. Prepare to be amazed.’

Her assurance was encouragement enough for me to drag myself out of bed. I dressed in my favourite torn jeans, which had taken two years of wilful neglect to achieve their finish. Coupled with the fourth-hand leather jacket I’d picked up in the Lanes, I was dressed more for a motorbike rally than a trip to Glyndebourne. The ensemble was topped off – of course – with my black pork-pie hat, a concession to the predicted rain, I told myself.

Our lazy late breakfasts were my contribution to those holidays. It was as we sat down to my usual one-pot fry-up that Aunty Kaye came out with an awesome idea.

‘How you getting on at school these days?’ she asked as I dished up in the white-walled courtyard outside her kitchen.

My enthusiasm for conversation dimmed in the way it always did when someone quizzed me about school during the holidays. ‘All right,’ was as much as I could offer.

‘That’s not what your gramps says. You know he photocopies your reports and posts them to me? They make for impressive reading, Ollie.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘I know. Someone still using snail mail.’

‘You never ask me about school.’

‘Quite deliberate, actually,’ she said, smiling. ‘Not just you either. I never ask anyone about school. Isn’t it what everyone bloody asks? There’s a million interesting things in a young person’s head. Why ruin a conversation making them talk about something they hate? I did notice how you died behind the eyes the second I mentioned it.’

‘It’s all fine. Lots of warnings that I need to guard against complacency.’