I’m still holding the newspaper but I can’t see anywhere to put it, so I figure I may as well add petty theft to my list of dental misdemeanours. When I push open the door, the chair finally releases its grip and lands upside down behind me with a plastic twang. A couple of heads pop up as I step out on to the street, but I’m gone girl.

I break into a jog, backpack bouncing on my shoulders, slapping the newspaper on the top of my leg with every step, keeping the beat and giving me something to aim for. I feel a sudden change in pressure as my toes make a break for it through the cat’s-bum sock, and in the end, the end’s a relief. Thanks for the memories, Costanza.

I speed up, and I know if I take West Green Road and cut across the common, at this pace I can make it home in twenty minutes.

So, fuck the Tube and pardon my French.

I don’t like watching reality TV, but I do like watching my mother watch it.

There’s a method to my madness.

The Great British Bake Off (more than any other show, for some reason) gives me a good opportunity to test out my mind-reading skills. This is how I do it. I keep an eye on my mother’s face, specifically her jaw, and when it looks like she’s about to talk, I take a quick guess at what she’s going to say, which is usually something encouraging to the person who’s about to make a massive baking balls-up. My strike rate averages around seventy–thirty to me, because there’s some pretty rubbish cooks on there and I know my mother.

I’m scrunched up at the end of the sofa with her heavy leg cast resting on my lap, and I run my tongue over my smooth descaled teeth, which that dentist has done a great job on, despite me. I watch, but this time even some guy making a mess of a plain vanilla sponge isn’t doing much to my mother’s facial real estate. I look around for something else to occupy my mind and see the paper I took from the dentist’s sticking out of the top of my school backpack, within reach.

I open it up flat across the cast, and on the bottom half of the page with the picture of the dude giving two fingers there’s a photo of an old man standing beside a red postbox. Genaro Politti posts a letter to his teenage sweetheart, sixty-two years after they lost touch. Even though I have full respect for Genaro and his boo navigating Friends Reunited or whatever at their age, with the prospect of another twenty minutes of Bake Off, I have no issues giving him a beard, a beret and some dangly earrings. When I compare it to the top photo, though, I have to admit it’s missing something, so I take a closer look at the artist’s technique.