Anyway, Mimi doesn’t bat an eyelid at any of this mass of pointless personal data, as I knew she wouldn’t, as she adores trivia and claims to remember everything she’s ever read in Heat or Grazia but not a single fact from her four-year university degree course in Edinburgh, where she met Ralph.

‘At the time this caused a frisson in the village, but only a mild frisson,’ I tell Mimi. ‘Everyone’s glued to The Archers, so nothing – gay marriage, incest, poaching, blended families –surprises them any longer, let alone a little light lesbianism.’

‘Mild frisson… maybe I’m in cold turkey cos there’re so few expensive shops in Dorset, but that does sound lovely, don’t you think?’ Mimi says with a dreamy sigh. ‘Like a French shoe designer…’ Then she pauses. ‘By the way, I wasn’t worried about the wedding magazines, actually,’ she admits, stuffing them back into her bag. Then she covers her face with her hands. ‘I haven’t told anyone yet. Not even Ralph, and I haven’t found out for sure yet, but I think I’m…’

I raise my eyebrows, and Mimi nods.

I like to be in the kitchen when Jesse Marlon arrives; it looks more inviting. This morning I’m holding on to the kettle’s black Bakelite handle as if for strength, thinking, rather Mimi than me.

There are some women who just love being pregnant, relish the attention and the power, and revel in the role of mother hen with all their pretty chicks, and are quite happy at the sandpit or the swings, and enjoy the company of other mums at play-group and one o’clock club, or under-fives drop-ins in dark churches, making homemade chicken nuggets and Play-Doh and clever things with felt and pipe-cleaners.

Not me. The nursery world is too dreary for words. I fall into the category of women for whom ‘Mummmeeee! Can we do fingerpainting?’ are among the most terrifying words in the English language, and feel endlessly grateful that I was blessed with Ceci, who was a bookish, easygoing pre-Raphaelite little girlchild I could dress like a dolly in smocks by Valerie Goad. I could have so easily had a little Action Man-type boy who wanted a skinhead haircut and to dress in camouflage and combat gear. You just never know what you’re going to get, it seems, with children, and I don’t really like surprises. As for the thought of having a baby now, just as I am putting the Dairy products on the Dorset food map… makes my blood run cold.

As I think about Mimi, and wonder whether she’s going to want me to be involved in any way, I’m clearing the bowls that have held mine and Ceci’s breakfast of Dorset Cereals Cherry, Cranberry and Almond muesli topped with non-fat yoghurt and milled linseed and blueberries before they get to the point when I have to pick the flakes with my fingernails before popping them into the Miele.

I’m arranging the scene just so, with the sparkling cafetière sitting in a patch of weak sunlight on the beech worktop next to two glazed French earthenware mugs and some homemade shortbread in a battered enamel tin, with all the auteurish eye of Sofia Coppola styling a film set. The kitchen is warm, peaceful, filled with a glow from the light coming through the windows and bouncing off the walls painted a Provençal yellow I mixed myself. What I think of as the colour of sunshine.