‘It’s no problem,’ Avó says. She peers closely at me, before taking my face in her hands. I can smell the hand lotion she uses, and the floral oil in her hair. She looks up at me, her black eyes intent on my face. She is at least five inches shorter than me and I feel like a giant beside her. ‘You are not happy,’ she says. ‘There is something wrong.’

‘I’m fine.’ Her fingers are cold on my face and I resist the urge to pull away. ‘Just tired, like Rav said, I had a late night, and he wanted me to sleep.’

‘Hmmm.’ Her eyes are bright with suspicion. ‘You always say you are just tired. I don’t think so.’

‘I am, Avó, I swear. There’s nothing else.’

‘You are sure?’

‘Yes.’ I squeeze out a laugh and, uncomfortable under her scrutiny, give in to the urge to pull back. ‘I’m sure.’

‘You seem agitated, like someone has upset you,’ she needles on.

‘I said I’m fine,’ I snap, regretting it immediately. ‘Sorry, Avó, I was late for Mina, and I got upset, you were right. Please don’t mention it to Rav? I’m OK now, I promise.’

Avó follows me to the front door, watching silently as I struggle to get the pram over the threshold. I get the feeling that there is more she wants to say to me, but she says nothing, instead reaching up to kiss me on the cheek as I turn to say goodbye. She has never done that before, and I don’t really know what to make of it.

I can feel it the moment we step back into the hallway, Mina running upstairs as the baby starts to grizzle in the pram. The air is disturbed, and I know someone is in the house.

‘Rav?’ I call out cautiously, even though I know it would be nigh on impossible for him to get home before me unless he’d already left when he called. ‘Is that you?’

My mother appears in the kitchen doorway, watching as I wrestle a now screaming baby from the pram. She looks as chic as ever, this time wearing a white shift dress that I remember from my childhood. She used to wear it through the summer to pick me up from school, with a pair of hot pink wedges and huge sunglasses on her face. I was always mortified when she turned up to collect me in her glamorous outfits, my tiny ears not immune to what the other mothers were saying about her. I thought I remembered her throwing the dress out with a bundle of other things when she moved into her Paris apartment, but clearly not. She looks cool and fresh, while I am sweating, the baby cross and red-faced in my arms, my trainers covered with dust from the walk home along the country lane.