But later, when the muffins had been eaten and conversation had run dry and they were watching the end of the Wallace and Gromit movie, Antonia grew agitated, and there was nothing Tamsin could do or say to placate her. The problem was the evil penguin, who in the tradition of cartoon villains everywhere was being sent to stripy-pyjamaed, iron-barred gaol.

‘But that’s disgusting,’ Antonia said. ‘That’s outrageous. Is there no one on the penguin’s side?’

Tamsin tried to explain that the penguin had committed a crime; then, when that line of argument failed, she pointed out that it was all made up anyway.

‘Nonsense. It’s the principle of the thing,’ Antonia spat, looking really angry now. ‘What we need is – what we need is – an elderly gentleman to represent him!’

‘Yes,’ agreed Tamsin. ‘That’s just what we need.’

‘Well? Aren’t you going to do something, girl? Are you just going to sit there?’

Tamsin stood up slowly, propelled by the force of Antonia’s will, by the perverse logic of her madness.

‘That’s it, go on, don’t drag your heels now.’ Antonia was waving Tamsin towards the door with furious flicks of her hands, as if she were shooing some unwanted animal from the room.

‘But, Antonia, I just—’

‘I said go on! Go away! Leave me alone!

Tamsin gave up and made her way downstairs to the front door, stopping en route to let one of the care workers – Magda, the redhead – know that somebody should probably go and check on Antonia.

‘Okay. Sank you. I see her in a little moment,’ said Magda with a smile that implied she would do no such thing.

Outside it was raining heavily. Usually Tamsin was someone who raged against the weather whenever it didn’t go her way, just as she did with train delays, or inconveniently timed traffic lights. But today the rain felt grimly appropriate: yet another piece of misfortune in the washout that was her life. Career, Callum, Hortensia Court. All at once she thought of her mother, and felt a righteous little hiccup of anger. It wasn’t fair: she’d been there for Roz, year after year, staying in for her, passing up all sort of opportunities, and now she, Tamsin, was in trouble, where was Roz? Out, all the time, with god knew who. She had to admit that her mother’s absence accounted for some of her reluctance to follow through with her New Year’s resolution. If she broke up with Callum, there would be even more evenings when she found herself alone in the house in Notting Hill, eating some basic pasta supper instead of Callum’s wonderful food, passing the time with crap TV or by playing the piano, not well enough, and then, at the end of all this, crawling into bed in the room next door to her mother at the age of twenty-six.