‘I know.’ She grinned. ‘Now I suppose I’ll have to make some more.’

‘I’ll help, if you like. Give you a break.’

She paused at that. Seemed to consider it, as if it were something much more than simple chocolate-making.

‘I promise you, I’m a fast learner.’

Of course I am. I’ve had to be. When you have had a mother like mine, you either learn fast or you don’t survive. An inner-city London school, fresh from the ravages of the comprehensive system and packed with thugs, immigrants and the damned. That was my training ground – and I learnt fast.

My mother had tried to teach me at home. By the time I was ten, I could read, write and do the double lotus. But then the Social Services got involved; pointed out Mother’s lack of qualifications, and I was packed off to St Michael’s-on-the-Green, a pit of roughly two thousand souls, which swallowed me up in less than no time.

My System was still in its infancy then. I had no defences; I wore green velvet dungarees with appliquéd dolphins on the pockets, and a turquoise headband to align my chakras. My mother picked me up at the school gates; on the first day, a small crowd gathered to watch. On the second, someone threw a stone.

Hard to imagine that kind of thing now. It happens, though – and for far less. It happened here, at Annie’s school – and for nothing more than a headscarf or two. Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the love-birds and the yellow canaries – escaped from their cages, hoping to get a taste of the sky – usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins.

It was inevitable. For the first six months I cried myself to sleep. I begged to be sent to some other school. I ran away; I was brought back; I prayed fervently to Jesus, Osiris and Quetzalcoatl to save me from the demons of St Michael’s-on-the-Green.

Unsurprisingly, nothing worked. I tried to adapt: changed my dungarees for jeans and a T-shirt, took up smoking, hung out with the crowd, but it was already too late. The bar had been set. Every school needs its freak; and for the next five years or so, I was it.

It was then that I could have used someone like Zozie de l’Alba. What use was my mother, that second-rate, patchouli-scented wannabe witch, with all her crystals and dreamcatchers and glib talk of karma? I didn’t care about karmic retribution. I wanted my retribution to be real: for my tormentors to be laid low, not later, not in some future lifetime, but paid back in full, in blood and in the present.