‘It hasn’t been three months,’ I counter, going to the phone in no hurry and hoping whoever it is will ring off before I get there. ‘Perhaps it’s PPI. Remember how Nonna got so fed up with cold-callers she used to hang up every single phone call she got, even if it was her own friends or the doctor’s surgery?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ says Dad. ‘Answer it, then, in case it is Angela.’

‘Hello?’ I say into the phone.

‘Oh, I thought you weren’t going to bother answering,’ says a cool voice. It’s her. ‘You sound tired.’

I want to say, ‘I was up all last night, shagging’, even though I wasn’t – what exactly was last night? – but instead I say, ‘Do I? You sound chipper, as usual. Just come across a new cupcake recipe?’

‘No,’ says Angela. ‘How’s Dad?’

‘He’s good, thanks. To what do we owe the pleasure?’

She ignores me. ‘Been out anywhere else?’

‘Yeah,’ I say absent-mindedly. ‘Liberty and the Albert Hall and the Shard. Do you want to speak to Dad?’

‘Not just yet. Any news?’

‘Like what?’ She never asks for news. ‘We’ve been to the Albert Hall and Liberty and the Shard,’ I repeat. I won’t tell her anything about Salvi. My sister and I don’t have that kind of relationship. We have the kind of relationship that if I told her the miracle that I’ve met someone, she’d bang on about Warren for twenty-five minutes without a breath, both to convince herself she still likes him and to maintain her one-upmanship.

‘I’ve got some news,’ she says.

Well, this is no surprise. There’s always something to boast about or to be a drama llama over: a milestone reached at school or nursery for one of her kids; an altercation with another Alpha Mom at the school gate in which she emerged indignant and victorious – most of which is already on Facebook.

‘I’m going to write to Mum in Sweden,’ she says. ‘To Torge’s address, if he’s still there.’

‘Are you?’ Now this is unexpected. Angela never says anything unexpected on the phone; I could pretty much write every line of every conversation, like a script. ‘Why?’ I take the phone into the bedroom. ‘Just checking a label of something of mine, for Angela,’ I call out to Dad. ‘Why are you going to write to her?’ I ask.

‘I realized something the other day,’ she says. She suddenly sounds a little breathless. ‘That my two girls are the same ages we were when Mum left that first time. For her little “holiday”. It shook me, actually. Made me hold on to them really tight. But I want to write to her. Find out if she’s happy.’

‘Why do you care if she’s happy? I doubt she’s sitting there musing that about us.’