‘Anyway, here’s an unasked-for life lesson from yer Auntie Clio, as she’s had a bit to drink and feels like spreading her wisdom. I was you for years, sitting at weddings as the people my age paired off and had their babies and stopped being fun. I realized after a while you just need to find the people who are still at your level. The kids and the gays, basically. No offence, pal. Obviously. Because I don’t know about you, but I’m not really interested in the conversation of parents, and I don’t think they’re interested in me. No matter what they believed in before those wee darlings popped out, no matter how radical they thought they were, there’s something that changes about them. All they really want to do is sit on some comfy seats with other parents, comparing notes on exhaustion and bleeding nipples and laughing at cute little flubbed sentences, maybe get competitive about which one walked first. It’s evolution, isn’t it? Mama Nature ensuring that parents can’t think beyond their babies for more than five minutes at a time means those babies don’t get eaten by wolves. Good parents make shitty friends, hon, as I’m sure you’re finding out.’

‘You’ve never fancied it yourself?’

‘A big fat no to that. I’m one of the ones who’d make a shitty parent – fortunately I realized it in time.’

‘Maybe you’re just too good a friend,’ he said, toasting her. Her face wasn’t quite readable.

‘Kids chain you down. That’s not really a new observation, but it’s something I saw happening from quite a young age to my pals, and realized I couldny take it myself. Maybe I’m just too selfish, ha. Anyway, I come to the weddings of people I’ve loved through their twenties and sometimes they ask me to sing, and it’s all very nice, but what they don’t realize is that in my head, as I’m raising a glass, I’m saying a silent goodbye. I mean, what do you give it before these two are letting us all know about the little bundle of joy on the way?’

‘Six months. You are inside my head.’

Clink.