‘Though,’ Lena said, draining her drink, ‘I still don’t get why no newspaper’s reported Marcus’s bribery attempt.’ She slipped her coat on. ‘But hey, good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Know what I mean, darl?’

In the Telegraph piece, Marcus revealed he was giving a large portion of the inherited family fortune to charity, setting up scholarships for deprived inner-city kids at two of the UK’s top schools.

Finally, some of the reasons Marcus had been so keen to home in on Zach became clearer to me.

On a good day, I might have believed it was some kind of redemption he sought for the sins of his forefathers.

Except, honestly? It was far more likely he’d seen us – and Zach in particular – as collateral ourselves: merely great PR to aid his political aims.

And his daughter? Was Willow a truly mean girl in the Hollywood ilk, or did she actually have a heart that had been wounded?

The latter, I chose to believe.

Especially since I’d seen Marcus kissing the waitress Dores in the back yard of the café that morning. Since Melissa told me what Willow had said about me trying it on with her dad, other things stacked up more easily now. Where exactly was the responsibility in all this? What had I done to cause it?

No one behaves like a monster unless something monstrous is done to them first: isn’t that the current school of thinking?

Ali and I debated this into the night. My brilliant daughter had studied psychology at university until she’d decided – to my dismay – she wanted to be a trapeze artist instead – ‘Risk-taking, Mum, it makes me feel like I’m alive again.’ I still hoped she’d return to her degree at some point, take fewer risks – but it was her life, and we only got one.

‘You’re a sap, Mum.’ Ali grinned. ‘Some people are just born bad.’

‘Oh, come on! You don’t really believe that, do you?’ I refilled our glasses. ‘I don’t think she was born bad. Just – neglected, I’d say.’

‘How can you plead neglect when you live in the most expensive house in the square though?’

‘Money doesn’t equal love though, does it? And it’s not the most expensive.’ I toasted her with my rum. ‘That was the dastardly Bill’s.’

She grinned again. ‘What a shame you never hooked up with him then!’

I supposed I should be glad my daughter could imagine me dating at all. She’d suffered awfully when her father died: utterly derailed for a while. But she’d not gone the way of Willow at least.

I thought briefly of Marcus, and then I turned my thoughts away again. What a fool I’d been to fall for his patter. How ashamed I was that I’d fallen for his schmoozing. But how relieved I hadn’t got in any deeper.

I hadn’t seen how cracked the picture was at the Jacksons; at first, I only saw the shine, the polish on the glass, the perfect union they wanted to portray. The beautiful family: the privilege that was hard not to envy sometimes. But it was all fake.