‘Want watch Barney!’ Minnie barges into me, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Want watch Barney, not Mummy. Not Mummy,’ she repeats disparagingly.

I suppose it is a bit boring, watching your mother on a loop on the TV when you were hoping for a big purple dinosaur.

‘Come on.’ I lift her up, all cosy in her rabbit dressing gown and slippers. ‘Let’s find you Barney.’

I settle her upstairs, watching Barney on our bed with a bowl of sugar-free spelt puffs. (Totally tasteless but, unbelievably, her favourite snack. She really is becoming a child of LA.) Then I pull back the curtains and do a double-take. There’s a camera crew outside our gates. An actual camera crew! The next minute I hear the entrance buzzer sounding. Someone’s pressing it, over and over. I bolt along the landing and start running down the stairs, but Luke is at the bottom, waiting for me.

‘Don’t answer it!’ he says. ‘Aran will take care of it.’

He shepherds me away from the door, into the kitchen. ‘You’re going to have to keep a very low profile over the next few days,’ he says. ‘Which is boring, but that’s how these things go. We’ll draft a statement and release it mid-morning.’

‘Becky!’ I can hear a man’s faint voice from outside. ‘Becky, we want to offer you an exclusive!’

‘Should I maybe give an interview?’ I turn to Luke. ‘Like, make things clear?’

‘No!’ says Luke, as though the idea is anathema. ‘A statement is enough. We don’t want to feed the frenzy. The more you give them, the more they’ll want. Coffee?’

‘Thanks. I just need to … get my lip gloss …’

I dart into the hall again and run halfway up the stairs. There’s a window from where I can see out to the front, and I peer through the glass. Aran is at the gates, talking to the camera crew. He’s laughing and looks relaxed and even high-fives one of them. I can’t imagine Luke behaving like that.

‘Sorry, guys,’ I hear him say, and then he turns back towards the house. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as.’

‘Aran!’ I say, as the front door opens. ‘What’s going on?’ I walk back down the stairs to talk to him.

‘Oh, nothing much.’ He smiles easily. ‘World’s press descending: same old same old.’

‘And they want to interview me?’

‘They sure do.’

‘What did you say to them?’

‘I said don’t scratch the gates, you miserable bloodsucking low-life.’

I can’t help smiling. Aran seems so relaxed about things. The buzzer sounds again and he peers out of a side window.

‘What do you know,’ he observes. ‘ABC just turned up. This story is going mainstream.’

‘Luke says I should stay inside and ignore them,’ I venture. ‘And we’ll just give out a statement later.’

‘If you want this to go away, that’s the best thing you can do,’ he says, in neutral tones. ‘Totally. Keep your head down and they’ll get bored.’