Tyger wiggled round in my arms and licked my neck. He smelled of vodka and damp earth.

‘Yeah, very sexy, Tyger.’

A white car passed slowly. Fraser’s. It stopped just ahead and I ran, as much as you can run with a limp, wet beanbag in your arms, and bumped up to the passenger window.

‘Look!’

A woman was sitting there, looking faintly alarmed, her head turned to Fraser, who was in the driver’s seat. They had the same nose. She wound the window down two inches. It was the woman whose garden I’d climbed into.

‘Hi – hello, sorry, I just wanted to show, um, Fraser—’ I hoisted Tyger up and he scrabbled slightly at the slanting bit of the window.

Fraser bent his head. ‘This is my ma.’ He sounded more polite than normal, like he was wearing a tie.

Her smile didn’t quite reach the middle of her cheeks. ‘Jeannie Robertson.’

‘Hello! How are you, hi!’ Ouch. Telesales operator greeting.

‘And you are?’ She glanced at Fraser.

He didn’t quite meet my eye.

‘I’m Polly.’

‘Polly … ?’

Just Polly, I thought. ‘Vaughan.’ From Redhill, four A levels, two bronze ballet medals, little brother, does a mean spag bol with chorizo, always first on the dance floor and last to leave, broken home, serious lack of friends, shit at English, abandons people dying on the street, loser.

Her earrings were like the old coins you might dig up in an archaeological hoard, so worn that you couldn’t see the runes or kings or dragons. This was the point when she was supposed to say, ‘A pleasure to meet you, Polly,’ or, ‘So you’re the lovely girl Fraser’s been telling us so much about.’ Instead, she just gave me another tight-lipped excuse for a smile.

‘Yeah, anyway, got to get him back.’ I began to wave Tyger’s paw at them and then thought better of it.

Fraser grinned at me guiltily as his mum wound up the window.

I had never done a meet-the-folks thing, not for anyone. Mostly because I’d not had a single relationship that lasted longer than a month. Enough to find out how useless they were in bed or how gloopy they were – flowers and fluffy Disney animals once, seriously – or, the other way round, how completely wet and munterish I was.

It hadn’t exactly been an auspicious first go. Still, she hadn’t given me much to work with, looking at me like I was a smear of birdshit on the window, and Fraser had done me no favours. Whatever. I didn’t care. Tyger was my boy. We basically snogged all the way home.

I set him down in the hallway and he looked up at me uncertainly.

‘Go on then, scrapper.’ I nodded at the living room door.

He scuttled in and there was a cross between a horrified scream and orgasmic sigh. Lottie came out with Tyger doing lizard tongue-flicks at her earlobe. ‘You didn’t go back there in the dark?’