But I did wonder, as usual, if she’d considered getting her sinuses seen to.

‘Shall I?’ I peered past Pat. ‘Or can I give you a hand?’

‘Och, no!’ She smiled. ‘Get on wi’ you, poppet. I’ll not be long.’

Through the open kitchen door, I could see Jan on her iPad, getting ready to post, no doubt: she’d asked Nella if it was ‘cool to vlog about the party’. Lena was just visible too, out in the conservatory, talking into her phone with animation.

She’d probably arrived early to get away from the monstrous Heathcliff, but now she was studiously ignoring Jan, it seemed.

Lena raised a hand, and I waved back. Although appointed to be in charge of PR, so far Lena’s efforts seemed confined to her own Instagram and Twitter accounts; the former usually full of photos of Heathcliff looking far cuter than he was in real life, or pictures of Lena’s recent fashion purchases, accompanied by an impromptu effort every now and then to get a hashtag trending:

#COMMUNITY COUNTS Come celebrate with us 🙂#Supportthestreets you live in #StreetParty #NGSquare

Or some such. Still, everyone lived in hope that the big day would bring hordes of locals, ready to raise money, along with a new sense of neighbourly love and, more importantly, all the celebrities the Jacksons had promised.

The latest rumour was that they had arranged for Stormzy to open events. Probably started by Lena, who’d struggled a bit since her husband Ish had thrown in his GP role and taken up environmental activism instead.

‘Nella’s running slightly late,’ Pat murmured in the kitchen, as if Nella could hear us, despite not being here, ‘which is good, because I promised I’d get the whiteboard ready, but Bathsheba’s still doing her snail art project on it.’ Pat was very big into home-schooling, although her older children either went, or had gone, to Northgate High. ‘She’s ever so good at snails. I do hope Jan and Lena are OK out there together. There was that dreadful thing little Audrey said about Lena’s wee lamb.’

‘Aha.’ The memory fell into place – something awful about half-breeds. ‘So it was Heathcliff she went in on!’ Yes, it was Lena’s kid who’d apparently fallen prey to Jan’s youngest at the primary; some nasty comments about his colour not washing off in the bath, like her mum’s fake tan did. ‘Little cow.’

‘It was pretty bad.’ Pat didn’t even raise a brow at my epithet, which meant it really must have been. ‘Why don’t you go through?’

‘I will. Is lovely Paul here?’ The benign vicar who everybody adored. Honestly, I didn’t know what Pat’s magic was exactly, but they were the perfect family; skint maybe, and a bit homespun, but gorgeous together.

A shaft of pure guilt pierced my defensive perimeter, somewhere near my heart.

‘Around, I think. Upstairs, probably, writing Sunday’s sermon.’ Pat removed half a lentil from a smock seam. ‘The loaves and the fishes – very apt when the teenagers keep eating all my provisions.’