‘What’s your great news?’ asked Elizabeth, choosing to set this latest insult aside as she turned to her boyfriend. Wilkes broke into a proud, self-satisfied smile.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘from now on, I would appreciate it if you would stop referring to me as he.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said George.

‘That’s all right. No need to apologize. You weren’t to know.’

‘I wasn’t apologizing. I was expressing the fact that I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about.’

‘Whatever this is,’ said Elizabeth, ‘perhaps it can wait until another time? When we don’t have our other news to impart?’

‘If you’re pregnant—’ began Beverley.

‘I’m not. Wilkes doesn’t believe in ejaculating inside a woman. He calls it a form of colonial ingress.’

‘The other news is important, yes,’ said Wilkes. ‘But so is this. It would just mean the world to us if, from now on, everyone could make an effort to get our pronouns right.’

‘What’s he talking about now?’ asked Beverley, turning to her husband and making the hand signal that she always employed when she wanted a large glass of wine. He opened a new bottle, suspecting that she’d need a lot of it before the night was over, and poured an extremely healthy measure.

‘As of today,’ continued Wilkes, ‘we are officially non-binary.’

‘Non-whattary?’ asked George.

‘Non-binary. We no longer identify as male or female.’

‘Oh, Christ on a bike,’ muttered George, filling a second glass with whisky.

‘If it’s helpful at all,’ said Beverley, ‘I’ve always had trouble identifying you as either. I’ve never been entirely sure that you’re even human.’

‘We do love your sense of humour, Bev,’ said Wilkes, sitting back on the sofa and placing a cushion behind his back. George, watching, made a mental note to have the cushion incinerated later. ‘But you see—’

Before he could continue his sentence, Beverley had leapt from her seat, charged across the room and, ignoring the foul odour that wrapped itself around her like an Edwardian greatcoat, pointed her index finger in his face. ‘Do not ever – ever – call me Bev,’ she shouted. ‘My name is Beverley Cleverley. You can call me Mrs Cleverley, or Beverley, if you must, but never Bev. And, all being well, after the new year, it will be Lady Cleverley, if my husband hasn’t managed to mess that up too.’

‘Beverley,’ said Wilkes, holding his filthy hands in the air in an act of surrender. ‘We only meant that we no longer wish to be associated with the heteronormative constraints of traditional male and female identities. We don’t want to be labelled.’

‘I labelled you as a complete moron from the moment I met you,’ said George.

‘So, it would be great if you could bear this in mind from now on. That’s all we’re asking.’

‘I don’t care what you call yourself,’ replied Beverley, sitting down again, confident that she’d got her point across. ‘You can call yourself Ozymandias, King of Kings, if it makes you happy. Just don’t ever call me Bev.’