‘Sick! But you like this dress,’ I protest, before she exits. ‘It’s not the black one, the one you told me you didn’t want even after I was dead! It’s a different one, from the Joseph sale.’

‘Oh Mum, you’re, like, so out of date. Sick means good. You’re rocking that dress. You own that dress. You look quite hot – for you, that is,’ my daughter continues. ‘Even if you have put on, like, a tiny bit of weight recently, it still looks nice.’ And I glow with pride. From Mirabel, this is highest praise, even if her compliment contained, as compliments often do, an implied criticism or insult.

It is enough for me, for now, that I look nice in that dress, even if I only look nice compared to how I look the rest of the time.

Ralph points the Subaru in the direction of Court Place, and I look at my make-up in the mirror and perform a swift teeth and nostril check. As Mirabel points out, my teeth act as a sort of trap or net, efficiently snagging food before it passes down my throat and, as for the nostrils – why does 1. no one ever tell you about the sudden efflorescence of nostril hair in one’s late thirties and 2. how to remove it?

So, Court Place. At last.

There’s a huge house and outbuildings, a shoot and a farm shop with fourteen different sorts of sausage, she’s got four children, like all alpha mothers, and he’s something in hedge funds or private equity, like all alpha fathers.

While most women with four or more children will never, ever leave this fact alone, Cath does. Four children is just another thing she does along with everything else.

While men with loads of money would never dream of ramming it down your throat, most women with lots of children are always saying things like, ‘We’re taking the four children to Klosters!’ to me; or ‘He’s easily the brightest of my five – his IQ is off the charts!’ as if I don’t know how many children they have, and need reminding; or they piously explain to women who work because they have to, or because they would go mad if they didn’t, ‘With four children and two dogs and three houses to look after, there just isn’t much time for work,’ as if not having a job was the noble price they pay for their high-maintenance show-life, and that mothers with the privilege of having to earn a living – the only privilege these poor, unfortunate women lack – should feel sorry for them.

I can’t count the number of times a mother of four has told me that she has ‘four children in four different schools’ and left me in no doubt that she has attended four carol services in one week in December and four sports days in late June, as if there should be some special medal struck in her honour. I don’t think I’ve ever once said, ‘I’m taking the three children to the dentist or Butlins,’ for example. Or, ‘I’m taking all three children to Tesco.’ I’d sound even dafter than I do already.