After a while, you leant towards me. ‘Well, Julie,’ you said.

Julie. Miles’ ex-girlfriend, and now Aiden’s current squeeze.

‘It’s Saffron,’ I replied, with what I hoped was a wide friendly smile.

‘Well,’ you coughed. ‘Sa … a … a … ffron. Tell me how you two met.’ Too much emphasis on the a. Long and slow. As if my name was difficult to pronounce.

I couldn’t tell you the truth. No mother wants to hear her son was seduced at a party when he was drunk and then didn’t leave his new girlfriend’s room for over a week because they were smoking dope and having experimental sex. So I just smiled and explained that we met at college.

‘Oh. Are you at the poly?’ you asked.

Aiden and Miles both laughed.

‘Polys don’t exist anymore. Haven’t for almost twenty years. You know that, Mum. They’re new universities now. Cambridge poly is Anglia Ruskin University,’ Aiden said through a mouthful of homemade Yorkshire pudding.

‘Is that where you’re studying, Anglia Ruskin, dear?’ you asked, with a strong false emphasis on the word dear that made me squirm inside.

‘No. Actually I’m at the old university; Trinity College with Miles.’

Your lips tightened. ‘A bluestocking, then?’

‘She doesn’t exactly look like a bluestocking, does she?’ Rupert trumpeted from the end of the table.

Annoyed by this attempt at a compliment, you thwarted your husband with your eyes. The room fell silent again, interrupted only by the scraping of knives and forks across fine china. After a while you leant towards me again. ‘Now, Cinnamon …’ you said.

After a heavy Sunday lunch of roast beef with all the trimmings, followed by apple pie, which settled like lead on my stomach – I was already well on the way to being a vegetarian and subsequently a vegan – you asked me to help clear the table and wash up, while Miles’ father invited his sons to admire the new dahlia border in the garden. A sexist division of duties. A throwback to the 1950s. But, on my best behaviour with the family of the man I was besotted with, I didn’t comment or complain.

As we were loading the dishwasher I saw the men walking along the path at the side of the house, past the kitchen window.

Rupert’s voice crashed towards us. ‘Your girlfriend’s a pretty filly. Taut and muscular like a fine racehorse.’

Sexist again. My stomach tightened. So he thought I was pretty. Despite the sexism of the comment, that pleased me. But I sensed your body stiffen with envious displeasure. I guessed that, as far as you were concerned, it was unnecessarily flattering.

We continued our chores. You washed the pans and I dried, racking my brains for something to say, wanting to fill the airwaves with friendship and conversation.

‘It’s a lovely area. How long have you lived here?’ I tried.

‘All my life.’