‘Have you noticed anything strange about Achilles lately?’ asked Beverley, putting the phone down, having ordered something wholesome and overpriced.

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘I try to avoid Achilles most of the time. He’s an idiot.’

‘Do you think so? I’ve always found him the most companionable of my children. No offence.’

‘How could I possibly be offended?’

A thought occurred to her and she posted the following tweet:

@TruthIsASword @AchillesCleverley u know there’s a rumour going round yr school that u have a tiny cock? And that u have 3 nipples?

She waited a minute to see whether he would reply and, to her surprise, it only took a few moments for him to simply block her account. She frowned, wondering whether he might not be such an idiot after all.

‘It’s not that I love him any more than you or Nelson,’ continued Beverley, pouring herself a glass of white wine. ‘Although, in a way, I do. It’s just that, speaking as a mother, he’s always had a certain … how shall I put this? A certain je ne sais quoi. Nelson is so furtive and you’re so angry all the time. But Achilles—’

‘I’m not angry all the time!’

‘Oh, darling, you’re permanently furious. You’re like a Labour backbencher at Prime Minister’s Questions. Achilles, on the other hand, just larks around and brightens everyone’s day. Every house should have an Achilles, don’t you think?’

‘We could send him out on work experience,’ suggested Elizabeth, tweeting a nineties pop star who’d recently announced that she needed a liver transplant to suggest that she’d got herself into this mess by spending most of her adult life as a dipsomaniac. When the pop star replied, threatening a lawsuit, Elizabeth responded by telling her to ‘finish off that bottle of wine in your fridge, love’ before laying bare her hypocrisy by adding that ‘kindness will be the fixing of this’. ‘Why do you ask anyway?’ she said, putting her phone down for a moment and massaging the fingers of her right hand with those of her left. She was starting to worry that she might be developing carpal tunnel syndrome in her thumb, as it ached constantly. ‘What’s he done?’

‘He hasn’t done anything as such,’ said Beverley. ‘But he’s being very secretive, that’s all. Coming and going at the strangest times and behaving in a shifty fashion. And I don’t know where he gets the money to buy himself all these fancy toys. You don’t think he’s dealing drugs, do you?’

Elizabeth thought about it and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s not the type. I think he’d find it a bit grubby, to be honest.’

‘Perhaps he has a girlfriend. An older woman. And he’s nervous about introducing her to us.’

‘The last I heard, he was having a fling with some boy.’