‘Here’s what I’m trying to get at, right. Do you remember that conversation we had, my boyo, my love? When we decided to have a baby in the first place? I mean, I don’t want to say you got me at a low point, but we both know that you did. You talked to me about being twenty-six and time ticking on, and it not being the end of my career, just the right time to take stock. It’s not a failure, you said, it’s maybe just the world letting you know you need to make a change. Just do something differently, just for a while. And it’s like my mum always told me: never be beholden to a man for money or it’ll work on you. I didn’t listen because I never listened to my mum, but she was right, and it’s worked on me. I can’t deny either of those things. But that’s not the point. Imagine me, right. I take the kid out to local mums and tots groups or whatsit to try and make pals, but the other mums all look down on me right away, because we live in a posh area and I give my baby crisps or I’m doing something wrong that seemed perfectly normal to me where I came from like, fucksake, putting whisky on its dummy to make it sleep or whatever, I don’t know. And it’s just me and this kid all day, and I love it, of course I do because it’s my kid and that’s what you do, but I don’t know, maybe I hate it too because I’m thinking where’s me, or whatever. You hear that, don’t you? Women just dying for a wee bit of adult conversation. Oh, you probably don’t, babe. Where would you hear that? You don’t talk to women who aren’t your wife, or lovely young musicians, or Francesca in the office with the perky tits.’

‘Clio. Babe. There’s nobody in my office called Francesca—’