‘Honestly.’ My daughter grimaced. ‘Straight girls are nothing but trouble.’

‘Ali!’

‘And what does Zach say about all that?’

‘He can’t remember, he says. He can barely remember kissing Ceci; he can’t remember getting into bed with Willow at all. I mean, even if he was really drunk – is that normal?’ I sighed. ‘I don’t know. There’s something about that lass, Ali – something I can’t put my finger on. Something about the whole family that makes me uncomfortable.’

‘Like I said, straight girls.’

‘Ali! Don’t be daft. That’s just – straight-ist!’

‘So? And it totally doesn’t make sense, Mum,’ Ali said warmly. ‘We just need to get to the bottom of it. Together.’

Her phone beeped; she dug it out of her denim dungarees. Like mother, like daughter, I thought. She was wearing actual legwarmers too, bottle green, bunched round her ankles.

Very Flashdance, I’d said earlier, remembering us watching that film together, years ago.

Ali and me. When Jonny left briefly: went back to live with his parents, with his own mum, Gloria. For a while, it had just been the two of us.

It had been tough; Jonny and I had been fighting, exhausted, skint, and then he had a wobble. A big one. Too much, he said, too young. Like the old song.

Ali, aged three, and me: on our own. Only my nana Daffodil sticking up for me when my own mother would barely speak to me because not only had I had a child out of wedlock, but the father was mixed-race.

I didn’t even know which she thought was worse.

But all of it just pushed Ali and I closer.

We’d sit on our tiny sofa, in our flat – not here, a boxy damp flat in an old Victorian terraced house, on the other side of the green. When I wasn’t working or studying, when she was with me and not at her Grandma Gloria’s, we’d sit watching – what? It was all a bit of a blur, but I knew: Disney films.

Our salvation: bright rays in long, difficult days.

The Little Mermaid, she’d loved, known every word; Peter Pan. My favourite, Lady and the Tramp, and hers, The Jungle Book.

Life was sad without her dad, but simple. Not always sad even: simple and – female. Uncomplicated, at that stage.

I looked at her hair now, a deep rich colour, tight in wiry French braids, and I said, ‘Do you remember when you wanted to be Ariel?’

‘I thought it was Mowgli?’ Ali didn’t look up from her phone.

‘Hmm, yeah, maybe. But I think Ariel was your first real love.’

‘Only cos I probably fancied her. Or cos there were no black princesses then. Now I’d be Moana.’

‘Oh.’ I considered this for a second. ‘What about Pocahontas?’

‘Pocahontas was a bit dead.’ She glanced up. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh. Well, I don’t know Moana. After my time.’ All the things we missed as our children grew. Up and away.