I’d never run in my life until we moved here. At first, I did it because it seemed like the sort of thing people in their thirties did when they left London and, frankly, I was a bit lost. The endless space around me felt as though it might suffocate me, in a weird way, and I couldn’t get used to everyone looking the same. Why are people so obsessed with having space? Buildings make me feel secure. I’ve never had much of a desire to be the tallest thing on the horizon.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who thinks London is the be-all and end-all of civilization. I wouldn’t want to have stayed where I grew up, in a shitty council flat in one of the more depressing bits of north London. It was just a bit more of an adjustment than I’d expected it to be.

Anya grew up in the next town along.

Lathebridge is a genteel place, with its famous Grand Hotel on the front that hosts a small arts festival every year, and its white regency houses along the seafront.

Casterbourne is more crummy arcades and charity shops than cream teas and literary folk, but it was cheap enough for us to buy a small house, with help, and well, there was always the sea. Right now, a silvery band was spreading across the horizon and promising brightness to come. It was one of the things I’d come to love about living here, that the weather could change so quickly. I could see for miles as I reached the top.

I was starting to feel simultaneously better and absolutely knackered, so I looped round past the fort and made my way back down towards home.

I pictured what Anya was probably doing right now. She’d be on the long sofa in their living room – sitting room – probably curled up watching telly and maybe drinking her beloved green tea.

I had an idea; maybe I’d have a shower and just turn up. No one was going to object, were they?

Many, perhaps most, people felt quite differently about their parents-in-law.

When friends made disparaging jokes about their own, bemoaning Christmases and birthdays in their company, I smiled along as though I got it, but really, mine were two of my favourite people in the world.

When I first met Julia and Patrick, I was a little nervous of what they would make of me. I worried that a primary school teacher who came from my sort of background would be a terrible shock to their middle-class sensibilities. All manner of Tobys and Julians and whatever, with Oxbridge degrees and jobs in the City, must have been queuing up.

I had enough of a chip on my shoulder without them even knowing my full story. They still don’t know about my so-called father. Only Anya does.