So . . . Scotch, Momo, Lizard, Chocapic and the others — my gang — they had all been arrested. I found out from Philippe who’d invited me to spend a weekend with his son at Le Touquet. That suited me. Everything suited me. I was on cloud nine.

Philippe and I were not sharing a room, we just ate and swam in the hotel pool together. I’m not going to lie, I was very happy for those two days, walking along the beach with DNA and pretending I had a family.

My mother, who had occupied the planet for ninety-two years, finally died on 28 March 2017.

Thinking she was doing the right thing, Anta had combed her mop of grey hair so it looked like a halo around her head. It was ridiculous. My girls and I were sitting around her bed looking at her, and all of a sudden, all three of us burst out laughing.

Despite everything, I knew they were sad because they really did love their grandmother. I can’t deny that she had always been there to look after them when I’d had to work forty-eight hours straight without setting foot in the house. Part of the money my father had left her, she had blown on them in a whirlwind of flouncy dresses and holidays on the other side of the world, buying them all the clothes I refused to pay for. Everything nice they did during their childhood, they did with her, while I was busy struggling to keep my head above water. Assuming she was capable of feeling anything, I think she loved them a hundred times more than she loved me, her only daughter, whom she saw as the enemy of her happiness and who represented everything that was hard in life. To hell with Patience and all her misfortunes, the spectacle of her misery offends me! This is all such a bore . . . let’s go to the sales! She was a selfish mother, and horribly unjust.

Since we didn’t have a family plot, she had asked to be cremated, with her ashes scattered in a department store.

The girls and I carried out her final wishes, selecting the Galeries Lafayette. After the ceremony at the crematorium, we divided the contents of the urn between us. I chose to scatter my share through the boutiques of her favourite designers. If you happened to find a bit of grey dust or some strange little bits of matter at the bottom of your Dior, Nina Ricci or Balenciaga suit pockets from the Spring–Summer 2017 collection — that was my mother. As for my daughters, I saw them gently sprinkle the rest over the perfume department as they stood side by side at the balustrade under the stained glass dome.

To finish up, we went off to stuff ourselves at Angelina’s tearoom in the bra section.

It’s hard to imagine a more girly celebration. For once my mother would have been satisfied.