Without waiting for an answer, she tore the curtains back from the window, and that same summery light flooded in. I saw the dress clearly in her hands, the fabric she had complimented now diminished in my estimation, limp and blue and childish, like the skirt she had made for me so many years before. But it was too late to stop; soon we were talking through the problems I had experienced with hand-sewing, and the modifications I had made to the pattern I bought, which were designed to nip the dress in firmly at the waist, giving more support.

She insisted we check all my measurements before she would get the sewing machine out. I found myself standing in the middle of my room, my mother’s cool hands looping the fabric tape measure around my ribs beneath my pyjamas.

‘You haven’t allowed that much for the seams,’ she said. ‘I’d let out another half inch or so. You don’t want to do all that sewing then find you can’t zip it up.’

‘The seams are fine,’ I said, not wanting to tell her that I’d done this kind of thing before, that I knew my measurements precisely, though surely my possession of a tape measure and a sewing kit must have stirred her suspicions. If they did, she didn’t mention it.

‘They seem very slim,’ she insisted.

‘They’re fine.’

‘In that case,’ she said, pursing her lips again, ‘it should be quite simple. Just a straight stitch here and here’ – she pointed – ‘and zigzag for the rest. Shall I set up the machine? Do you want me to do it? It’s just that machine’s a bit tricky if you haven’t used it before. It can chew things up. I wouldn’t want you chewing your lovely material.’

‘Is it really that bad?’

‘Well, yes,’ she said, turning away, ‘it’s chewed a few things of mine before. But it’s your dress – it’s really up to you.’

I showered, then, trying to wash the last of the illness away. When I came downstairs the sewing machine was out on the kitchen table, all plugged in and ready to go. I saw my own thread on the bobbin.

‘I said I’d do it.’

‘I heard the water running,’ she said. ‘I thought I could save you some time.’

I sat down in front of the shining machine, which was three times the size of Gemma’s, and looked so heavy it must have immobilised the table under its weight. There was sweat on my mother’s hairline from the effort of setting it up. I couldn’t see a manual.