My face looked puff-cheeked and elderly all day. I avoided mirrors – they insisted on showing me a long-dead uncle. I dragged the stone in my chest over to the picture window to await the return of the walkers. The gargle of a neighbour’s intercom reached me through the Sunday silence. Standing there, I found myself choked with love for Spumante Court – for the democracy of identical houses, for the fed and drowsy people inside, for the big, benevolent sky watching over our unexceptional lives. Certain lilac evenings returned, king prawns on the barbecue and the pylons like kindly guardians along the horizon. The Hills Hoist and the Roll-A-Door pleaded their immense, practical goodness. Why were we leaving? This flat, unsexy street produced our tall children. This house had accommodated the sorrows of our family, and its joys. I wanted Spumante Court and The Coffee Spot and the consoling purr of the freeway for the rest of my life.

Chanel had walked backwards into the kitchen and was calling out, saying that Gavina had a new post on Facebook. Yes, as soon as we signed the Prime Cut contract, Chanel and Gavina became Facebook friends. We’ve seen Craigles in the Goddess Pose in his happy place, and Gavina reading The Little Book of Mindful Capitalism. I returned to the kitchen and beheld the twins on their sixteenth birthday in identical vintage T-shirts that said NICK WELCUM IN MY CAVE.

The front door opened. Ivy disappeared into her bathroom, and Fanta seemed disposed to stand by the door, waiting like a horse. ‘There’s cake in here,’ I said, sticking my head into the hall. ‘Just baked. Don’t worry about Ivy – she’ll be a while.’

‘I know,’ said Fanta, bristling at the suggestion that there might be a corner of Ivy’s existence into which she hadn’t peeped. But the smell of cake lassoed her into the kitchen, and Chanel cut her a gigantic wedge. Fanta’s hair was freshly mutilated, and she’d swapped her sleepwear for a tent. Toilet-water blue, it buttoned loosely down the front and had long, wide sleeves. When she heaved herself onto a barstool, the bottom of the tent fell open to expose knees like boulders. Further down, there were feet jailed in patent-leather ankle boots. Fanta always dresses up for church on Sundays. Attendance is mandatory for ex-Muslims and is tracked on an app. Ivy says that Fanta watches YouTube on her phone during the service – what’s required of her is obedience, not belief. The church is an enlightened one, with a smiling pastor in a navy-blue blazer. It’s replaced all that archaic harping on right and wrong with a single, positive teaching: the higher the income, the closer to God. The downside is that Fanta is encouraged to authorise a monthly transfer from her bank account to the pastor’s. In return, she receives a discount on all Justin Bieber tribute albums, available exclusively on the church’s website for the first month of release.