‘I think you’d be a great counsellor. And, Annie, for what it’s worth: I think it’s pretty cool that you’re going to create a life instead of settling for the one you might otherwise have just fallen into.’

‘Even if it makes me feel like a child?’

‘We all feel like children. I signed for the mortgage on this house with the worst hangover of my life. Last week Kwame wore swimming trunks under his jeans because neither of us had done laundry.’

I laughed. ‘Is that true?’

‘No,’ she replied, moving a pillow to behind her lower back. I could tell she was really uncomfortable. The doctors had said if the baby didn’t come within the next few days they’d induce her. ‘I was just trying to make you feel better. But he could do that, and it wouldn’t make him any less of a good partner, or dad, or human.’

‘That’s a very Patrick Hummingbird line,’ I said, approvingly. ‘He’s very much into imperfection as a lifestyle choice.’

‘Honestly, I cannot wait to meet him.’

I bit my tongue again, but she could tell I was hiding something.

‘Annie?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’

She smiled. ‘If it’s nothing, there’s no reason not to tell me then, is there?’

I swirled the dregs of my coffee around my mug. ‘I really like him,’ I said. ‘I do. But Mum said something, and it’s really lodged in my head.’

‘Now there’s a shocker,’ Jo retorted, rubbing her belly. ‘Your mum is always saying stuff, and she is nearly always wrong. We know this. This isn’t news.’

‘I know!’ I said. ‘But she pointed out that it’s a bit rash, getting out of an engagement and then having a new boyfriend a month later.’

‘It is quick,’ Jo said, nonplussed. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.’

‘I’ve just not had a minute to think. I was so sad, and then meeting him and going away together happened so fast, and Australia wasn’t real life, it was …’

‘A holiday from life,’ she supplied.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s not too late to slow it down. If it was too fast, now you can take your time and enjoy it. And look – if it isn’t right, you don’t have to stay together for ten years. It can be right, but for a month. It can be right, but for a year. Nobody is saying this has to be for a lifetime – by the sounds of it, not even your mother.’

I used the last of my crumpet to scoop up the jam that had gone rogue on my plate.

‘He just seems so sure. I think it took a lot for him to get here after his wife.’