They sat down with the other parents on the rows of little chairs that ran along the side of the wall, and Frankie gave Fergus a tiny secret wave with the tips of her fingers, twinkling her eyes at him. ‘Should get a thousand words’ copy out of this,’ Craig had said earlier, only half-joking, as they’d left the flat. It was his catchphrase, one shared with every other journalist; always looking for the story. Fergus’s first tooth? A column. First steps? A column. First words, and funny habits, and comic misunderstandings – all captured lovingly in print, there on a digital file somewhere for evermore.

Each piece had been written out of affection, no question, but every now and then Frankie had found herself nagged by the worry that the Fergus of the future might not appreciate having his life mined for copy in this way. A prickly teenage Fergus, for instance, might resent his potty-training antics being recorded for posterity online, leaving him vulnerable to being teased by his peers. Similarly, a job-seeking Fergus might not be thrilled that a prospective employer’s Internet search of his name could reveal the story about his floor-punching tantrum in the Asda baked-goods aisle, or his brief obsession with random women’s breasts, which compelled him to comment on them with the authoritative air of a connoisseur (‘That lady got BIG boobies. BIG!’).

Periodically Frankie had voiced her concerns to Craig, who’d admitted wishing he’d given Fergus a pseudonym from the start, rather than using his real (and fairly unusual) name. ‘But it’s no worse than all those parents who document everything on Facebook, is it?’ he’d reasoned. ‘Everyone does it, it’s just life.’

And yet now here was Julia, sanctimoniously holding up her moral mirror in order to shine a light on Craig’s writing and question it in the interests of Fergus, far more loudly and publicly than Frankie had ever done. Did that make her a better woman than Frankie? Shouldn’t Frankie have tried harder to make this same point?

‘Hello, everyone, and welcome to our very special leavers’ celebration,’ said Chimoa, Marie’s second-in-command, just then. ‘Okay, then, children, are we all ready?’ she asked, clapping her hands. She was perched on a small wooden chair and pretended to be blown backwards by the raucous cheer that went up. ‘Excellent! Parents and carers, are we all ready?’

‘Yes!’ replied Frankie along with all the other adults, apart from Craig, who made a tutting noise as he read something on his phone – whatever Lloyd had just emailed him, presumably. She elbowed him, not wanting Fergus to be overshadowed. ‘Craig!’ she hissed.