‘Thanks for travelling all the way here. You still got insomnia?’ I ask.

‘A little bit, god, it’s been awful. I’m feeling much better now though – Bea, thanks for your recommendation on that sleeping app. What an idea! Celebs reading bedtime stories. I’ll tell you what, it’s really helped falling asleep to Matthew McConaughey’s voice.’

‘Oh yes, it was a godsend when I was having Amelia. I was like a zombie I was so tired – and that was before she even arrived!’

‘I honestly don’t know what I’d have done without your advice,’ Cec says, sliding herself onto a stool.

They carry on discussing and comparing pregnancy notes. Their different symptoms, private jokes, funny moments, advice and anecdotes.

I open my mouth to say something but realize I have nothing to add.

I’ve noticed that Cecily and Bea have got closer recently; they’ve been bonding via late-night discussions on babies. Cecily is currently in full-blown preparation mode. She is hoovering up all the parenting blogs, magazines, and any ‘advice’, which people seem to love dishing out to her. She wants to make sure everything is done correctly. She has paid an obscene amount for an interior designer to Laurence-Llewelyn-Bowen-up her baby’s new nursery. It feels a far cry from my carefree Cec, who used to dance around our student house in a thong.

We go to sit down in Bea’s spacious but messy living room, Moroccan rugs hanging on the walls, half-used scented candles everywhere, and cushions all over the floor from the kids making a den. Cec shows me a picture on her phone of the monogrammed blanket for Oscar Arnie Pinkington – aka, OAP – and I can’t help but laugh. Everything related to the baby has been personalized with initials.

‘Cec … sorry, but you’re naming your kid after a pensioner.’

‘Oh Ol, you overthink these things,’ Cec says, snatching her phone away grumpily.

‘OAP though,’ I snort.

‘Piss off.’

Bea giggles behind her cup of tea.

I burst out laughing some more and Cec rolls her eyes before her face softens into a smile. She’d picked his name before she’d even conceived. It was always going to be Oscar.

‘I can see you’ve left the price tag on – £75 for that? Ouch,’ I say.

I can’t help thinking that you could get a cheap flight to somewhere sunny in Europe for £75. That is a lot of money for a miniature blanket that will soon be covered in sick and shit.

‘I want everything to be nice for him! It’s his first muslin.’

How did our lives diverge so quickly? Every tiny moment of OAP’s babyhood is going to be scrapbooked and diarized and Instagrammed to within an inch of his life. The first time Oscar touches his thumb and forefinger together! He’s so clever! The first time Oscar does a smelly poo! The first time Oscar screams the house down! The first time he eats a bogey!

‘It’s so weird, being pregnant now and immediately getting all this attention, you know,’ Cec says. ‘I feel like Mother bloody Teresa or something. People talk to me on the Tube! They stop in the street to let me walk past; people actually smile at me. In London! Can you believe that?’