‘Jesus – how does that happen?’

‘Not enough nutrients, I guess.’

‘That poor kid.’

‘I know. I feel so sad when I see them, it looks pretty irreversible … I mean look, I don’t believe in reading parenting blogs or anything, but I think parenting is pretty simple, or at least instinctive.’

‘I’m not sure, but that’s a bit of a cock-up, isn’t it? Giving your kid rickets.’

‘Yeah.’

I pause for a moment. ‘How do you cope with it all, Bea?’

‘What love?’

‘The endless pressures of parenting. All the potential mess-ups.’

‘Well at the end of the day I suppose all children need is love, education, a goodish balanced diet and some fresh air – that’s literally it. It is hard, don’t get me wrong. But you get the hang of it,’ she says.

This is the biggest difference between us. Bea is just naturally good at life. Good at running a household, good at organizing and planning and preparing. She enjoys it. She has never really understood why I find these things so hard in comparison. Perhaps I keep kidding myself that my friends and I are more similar than we actually are – than we were.

Bea just isn’t as highly strung as I am, she doesn’t get as fixated on things. She believes the answer to a problem is always solved in nature: a walk, a kick around a field, the petting of a soft animal. In Bea’s book, you embrace the madness of life and stop trying to control everything by keeping your life clean and orderly. You let the dog sit on the new sofa. You drink the expensive wine. You use your best moisturizer instead of just leaving it to gather dust in a drawer. This was one of my favourite things about Bea: her ability to just go with it, and get on with it. She was always the person who looked after me and swooped in with solutions when life was feeling too hard. Like the time I was feeling low for months at university because I was worrying about my mum (the first time she had told us she was on anti-depressants) and she bought us a house rabbit! We called him Mr Peterson. He chewed my wires occasionally, but he also would snuggle with us on the sofa when we felt sad.

We slurp our tea and hear the roar of a car engine outside: it’s Cecily. She slams her car door and walks past the kitchen window, bump first. We get up from the kitchen bench and race over to her, cooing.

‘You are glowing,’ Bea says.

‘You really are. Wait … Are you wearing Ugg boots?’ I say.

‘Yes – hahaha, they are so comfy.’ Cec bursts out laughing.

‘You look a lot better than I did at this stage. I remember practically melting into the sofa – no one could move me. I’m so glad you could make it.’ Bea kisses Cec.

‘I didn’t want to miss our last sleepover before I’m chained to my new baby,’ Cec says. She gives me a sideways hug.