‘Did you have a nice drink with Jez?’ her mother asked as she scrubbed mud from the carrots, passing them to Pip to peel and chop for the pot. ‘That’s twice you’ve been out now, isn’t it?’

The question was innocently asked, Pip knew, but she baulked at it. Her default setting as a teenager had always been to guard any information about her life preciously, but what harm could it possibly do to share her thoughts with her mother now – or even then, for that matter?

‘Yes, although tonight’s was a bit spur of the moment,’ she said. ‘It was lovely to chat, though. He hasn’t changed a bit. I’m not sure why I left it so long to talk to him, to be honest.’

‘You’ve had a lot to deal with,’ her mother said simply.

‘And he’s getting married?’ Pip continued, anxious to make light of the news before her mother mentioned it. ‘You never said.’

‘Didn’t I?’ replied her mother casually. ‘I must have forgotten.’

Pip could see straight through her mother’s attempts at insouciance.

‘I was never going to marry Jez, Mum,’ she laughed, although a tiny part of her was still smarting at his announcement.

‘You could have done a lot worse,’ her mother replied. ‘He’s a good man.’

Pip thought of the trouble she and Jez sought out when they were young, something her mother had either forgotten or had never known of in the first place. Or perhaps she was just choosing to overlook that, now Pip was very firmly on the shelf and Jez was about to tie the knot.

‘Jez and I would never have worked,’ she said. ‘In fact, we’d have been disastrous together.’ She had been aiming for confident, but her voice sounded closer to wistful. ‘What’s she like, anyway, the fiancée? Have you met her?’

‘Teresa? Oh yes. She’s very . . .’ Her mother paused, and Pip knew that she was searching for a way to express her doubts without being critical. ‘Very . . . confident.’

Pip smiled to herself. Pushy, then.

‘I think there’s money there,’ her mother added, in that way that she talked about people she considered socially superior to her and that Pip had always hated. ‘Jez has never said, but there’s something about the way she holds herself. You can tell. And her clothes. I think she’s quite posh.’

Pip could read her mother’s code as clearly as if it were written in the Queen’s English. Too posh for Jez. But not as posh as me, Pip wanted to say. Not as posh as Rose Appleby, at least. Her mother wouldn’t understand, though, and anyway, what was the point? What did it matter how you behaved or spoke or dressed? There were so many more important things to life, not least being alive.

‘I gather she’s got a good job,’ Pip continued.