‘She might be,’ says Angela, and I know she is pouting. That, whatever her age, she will always be pouting about something. ‘She might be thinking about us all the time but be too scared to get in touch.’

‘I doubt it,’ I say. ‘I think it’s all too late.’

‘You never know.’ Angela sounds clipped, like she’s been rehearsing this. ‘I want to reach out, as they say these days.’

‘Like the Four Tops? I wouldn’t bother.’ My bulletproof heart is very cold beneath its crust today. Although other parts of me are very warm indeed. For Salvi.

‘OK, well, I’ve already sent it. The letter. A couple of weeks back.’

‘Oh. What on earth did you say?’

‘I said I hoped she was well and gave her my address if she wanted to get in touch.’

‘Well,’ I say. ‘I suppose you never know.’ I think of all the letters Angela wrote before and all the stupid postcards I sent her to stop her crying. Maybe I shouldn’t have done. Maybe I should have erased all hope way back then, so it couldn’t resurface now. Angela may be under the misapprehension we have a mother who replies.

‘Well, good luck,’ I say.

‘You don’t need to sound so stroppy about it. I can do what I like. “Doing your own thing is a generous act” – Barbara Sher said that.’

‘Never heard of her. And of course you can. Haven’t you always?’

Angela tuts, then gives a huge weary sigh. ‘You sound desperately unhappy, Prue. But haven’t you always?’

‘Actually, I’m not,’ I say. ‘I’m very happy indeed, as it happens.’ I’m not sure if this is true, or not. ‘I guess you’re the one who’s unhappy if you’re writing to Mum again.’

‘Don’t you feel there’s something missing in your life?’

‘There’s loads of stuff missing!’ I laugh. ‘Though I’m working on it. But Ellen is not one of them.’

‘Don’t call her Ellen.’

‘She’s lucky I’m mentioning her at all! You think she mentions our names? Tells people she has daughters? I bet she doesn’t, because then those people might ask her what we’re up to and her answer – “I have absolutely no clue. I don’t even know what they look like any more” – might shock people.’

‘You don’t miss her.’ A flat statement.

‘No.’ An equally flat statement. ‘Why are you always asking me this?’ Our mother’s simply a missing jigsaw piece, I think, of a puzzle that makes just as much sense without it. The corner of a square that suddenly became a triangle, and so what? ‘Anyway, do you want to speak to Dad?’

I am already up and out of the bedroom and taking the phone over to him in the sitting room.