‘Edith, I’m shocked.’ He sat down and winked at me. ‘You mean to say you don’t want to spend your afternoon hearing about the growth of a tomato plant?’

‘You’re pushing it, sunshine.’ Mum kissed him on the head and then took the seat next to him. ‘You haven’t had a biscuit.’ Taking it as a cue, Dad leaned forward and grabbed a cookie from the centre plate. Mum tutted. ‘I was talking to Edi.’

‘Either way …’ He was already chewing. ‘I also hadn’t had a biscuit.’ He made appreciative noises and I wondered whether they were genuine, or whether they were styled to soften Mum. ‘Oat and raisin? Am I getting hints of cinnamon?’

I laughed, leaned forward and took a cookie from the first plate. I made a show of sniffing the outer edge and matched Dad’s noises. ‘Am I getting … Is that a hint of dark chocolate? Chilli, even?’

‘Shut up, the pair of you.’ Mum reached for the one plate that no one had sampled. ‘Edi, yours is dark chocolate and you …’ She nudged Dad. ‘You know bloody well I’d always make your favourite.’

The cookie, at least, gave me an excuse not to talk. But it didn’t slow Dad down. ‘No Rowan again this time?’ He leaned forward for another biscuit. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s missing.’

Mum didn’t flinch at the mention of Rowan’s name. She must have guessed that something was wrong, I decided then, but not guessed at what. Of course, how could she have? Rowan and I were childhood sweethearts. Looking at my parents for the last twenty-something years had always felt, to me, like looking into our future. And maybe I still was: the sight of them laughing and joking, with cookie crumbs flecking out from their widening smiles. But it just wouldn’t be with Rowan. Not for the first time in the days post-break-up, I felt such a swell of sadness that I had to straighten my back up against my chair; for fear that otherwise I’d double over.

It didn’t mean I’d made the wrong decision, though, I realised that too; only that I was sad at the decision I’d had to make. ‘Which is allowed,’ Molly had reminded me (when I called her at one in the morning to ask whether I’d ruined my relationship and life in one dramatic swoop). The girls had taken it in turns to fall asleep on the phone with me; they’d worked alternate shifts to answer my middle-of-the-night phone calls, too. My parents may have a decent relationship, I thought, but did they have a fall-asleep-on-the-phone, call-me-when-you-panic kind of relationship? Probably. I sucked in a big breath. But they didn’t have five of them, did they?

‘Rowan and I broke up.’

Dad’s cookie fell from his hand and landed on the table with a soft thud. ‘What did he do?’