“We’d slope back into whatever room the rest of the family was in and pretend nothing had happened.”

“Your parents would pretend nothing had happened, too?”

“Yeah.”

I’m telling him too much. He’s feeding me questions like he fed them to Leanne, but there’s a part of me that wants to answer him. I don’t know if it’s because Daisy and I aren’t speaking so I haven’t got anyone to confide in apart from Al, or because there’s a tiny part of me that’s flattered that Isaac’s showing an interest.

“Did anyone ever stand their ground instead of running off?” he asks.

“No, if you did that you’d be ignored. Dad would pick up the paper and Mum would close down emotionally. No conversation, no eye contact, no warmth. It was like being shut out in the cold.”

“So you learned that, in order to be loved, you should remain agreeable.”

“Pretty much.”

Isaac rubs a thumb over his cheekbone and gazes at me thoughtfully. “You mention your mum as having a reaction, but not your dad.”

“She was the one who’d discipline us. Dad would keep quiet. I don’t think he liked being on the wrong side of her, either.”

“And you wanted her to be proud of you, to love you?”

“What child doesn’t? My brothers and sister – George, Henry and Isabella – they made her proud with their sporting achievements and their dancing and their acting, but I wasn’t good at any of those things. There was a space in our family for ‘the intelligent child’ – we already had sporty, beautiful and funny – and I tried to fill it. I worked really, really hard. I wasn’t being Miss World when I told you about loving animals and wanting to be a vet. The plan was to get three As at A-level and then study veterinary science at uni. Then I got pregnant and it ruined everything.”

“You got pregnant?”

My cigarette has gone out so I lean over and flick the butt into the bin. “I was seventeen. I’d had the same boyfriend – Ben – for a year and we got drunk one night and didn’t bother with a condom. I took the morning-after pill the next day but … it didn’t work.”

“So you had a baby?”