‘Do you wish you had had a proper career? Instead of having to look after me?’

Her mother got cross then. ‘I’ve had lots of proper careers, Eliza. Don’t be snobby about the different jobs in the world. No, I’m not a glamorous actor or an art expert, but how long would the world keep going without someone like me stacking supermarket shelves? What would people eat if there weren’t hard workers like me in food-processing factories, or waitressing in cafés, or serving drinks in bars? I choose to do the kind of work I do and I don’t regret it for one minute.’

The teenage Eliza pushed it. ‘So you won’t mind if I do waitressing or factory work instead of uni?’

‘If you don’t go to uni, I will kill you. And that’s a promise.’

‘That’s hypocritical, isn’t it?’

‘I’m your mother. I want the best for you. That allows me to be as hypocritical as I want.’

There was one subject they fought about more than anything. Her mother’s drinking.

It had been part of their lives for as long as Eliza could remember. Her mother called it a way to relax at the end of a long day. To Eliza, it seemed more like desperation than relaxation. It worried her how quickly her mother drank. Sometimes, after work, she’d drink two glasses of wine as if they were water.

‘I’m dying of thirst today,’ she’d say if Eliza was there doing her homework. Eliza would stare down at her book, wishing her mother would quench her thirst with water like most people.

It took years for her to summon the courage to say anything. She knew how hard her mother worked. Who was she to tell her how to relax? But one month in particular, the year Eliza was fifteen, her mother drank a bottle of wine a night. One night it was two bottles. The following morning, as Eliza was leaving for school, she emerged hungover, eyes panda-like with mascara.

‘I think I have a touch of that flu going around,’ she said. ‘Call in sick for me, sweetheart, would you?’

Eliza had made that call before. She had the phone in her hand and was about to dial when something made her put the receiver down and turn back to her mother.

‘It’s not the flu, Mum. It’s a hangover.’

‘I think I can tell the difference, Eliza. Fine, if you won’t phone them, I will.’

It was hard, but she stood in front of the phone. ‘I think you have a problem.’

‘Oh, you do, do you? And what kind of problem is that?’

‘Mum, please don’t use that tone with me. You know what I mean. I think you’re drinking too much.’

‘How much am I allowed to drink?’ She laughed and then abruptly stopped. ‘I don’t tell you how to live your life. So please don’t start on me, missy.’

‘But you do tell me how to live my life. And I don’t want you to kill yourself.’