‘Olivia said she was writing to you about how good I’d been. Did she say something else? Was I bad?’

Her mother’s mood changed instantly, as it often did; sunshine after a storm. She opened her arms. ‘Sweetheart, of course she didn’t say that. She thinks the world of you. Maxie thinks the sun shines out of you. They’re both right, of course. You are the most wonderful girl in the world.’

‘Then why are you so cross?’

‘Olivia and I have, over the years, had cause to disagree on occasional matters. This, sadly, is one of those times.’ Her mother was speaking now in a posh accent, sounding like a TV newsreader. ‘Olivia is an art historian, darling. She loves details and facts. I must remind her that it’s humour and imagination that will keep the human race afloat, not rigid adherence to some dry fucking truth.’

Eliza winced at the swearword. Her mother noticed.

‘Oops, I better not swear in front of you either, should I, or Police Commissioner Olivia or Nazi Nanny of the World Maxine will have something to say about that too, won’t they? You think I’m a good mother, Eliza, don’t you? You love me? Love the games we play, the stories I tell, the fun we have?’

There was a strange, urgent tone to her voice. Eliza almost preferred the newsreader one. ‘Of course, Mummy.’ She hadn’t called her that in years. ‘I love you. You’re the best mother in the world.’

‘Write that down for me, darling, would you? Here, on this piece of paper. Use this black pen.’ Eliza found herself almost dragged to the table, the pen put in her hand, the paper in front of her. ‘I’m going to write to Olivia tonight and I think it would be marvellous to include that as well.’

She never knew if her mother posted that letter. She didn’t know if Jeannie and Olivia had a fight about it. She spent the next months wondering if that was the last godmother trip she’d ever have.

But, six months later, Maxie’s holiday plan arrived. After that, Olivia’s. If there had been a rupture between her mother and godmothers, it was healed, as if nothing had happened. Except something did change. Eliza made sure never to tell Olivia or Maxie any more of the stories her mother told her.

As Eliza became a teenager, she and her mother began to argue more often. Sometimes it was about Eliza’s plans after she left school. Jeannie was insistent that she go to university.

‘It’s one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t go, Eliza. Oh, I thought I was so rebellious, thumbing my nose at studying, heading off overseas to go travelling.’ She’d told Eliza she’d received an unexpected inheritance from her grandmother and used every cent to go backpacking. ‘I was horrible to Maxie and Olivia too, I’m sure. Sending them gloating postcards from all sorts of places. I might have gone to uni when I got back, but then when you came along – well, of course I’d much rather spend hours staring at your beautiful face than any study papers or history books.’