Andrew’s face twisted with derision. ‘You’re in serious danger of taking this useful, simplistic persona you’ve created for publishing your popular polemics and turning it into your actual personality. Which would be a shame, because you have a good mind beneath this bullshit. You wanted some material for a column, that’s all. Of course it’s wrong that you can get away with stealing a dress when someone else can’t. That’s your moral failure, not the system’s. The system is like it is because people with your advantages don’t tend to steal dresses, unless they’re suffering a mental breakdown. So it was easy to convince them what you did was a result of a mental breakdown, and that you weren’t on your way to steal another one. You’ve proven nothing of worth at all.’

This was an interesting lesson in how to argue. By now Amy and I would have got personal and started screaming at each other.

‘People like me do steal dresses. Dad. And don’t talk about my moral failings. I don’t see why some of us are allowed to display outrageous morals and others aren’t.’

And now it began to resemble the arguments I knew well.

Andrew slapped his hand down on the table. ‘I am trying to stay calm here, Sophie. Which outrageous morals of mine are we talking about? Why don’t you state it clearly rather than make these petty allusions?’

He pushed his chair back and strode from the room. We heard his sandals slapping on the floorboards as he walked the length of the corridors.

Emily topped up all of our glasses of wine, looking down at the table as she did, and opened her mouth in a yawn.

‘Were we boring you, Emily?’ asked Sophie, who was looking a bit shaken.

‘Occasionally,’ said Emily. ‘Shall we try to change the subject before he’s back?’

‘What was it that was so boring to you?’

‘I’m just not really into such muscular sports. It’s like watching two thugs play tennis. Just whack whack whack.’

‘We like to have debate over dinner in our family, Emily,’ she said.

‘We did not,’ said Emily. ‘And I’m willing to learn new things, but only up to a point.’ She picked up her glass, took an infinitesimal sip, holding eye contact with Sophie, then lowered the glass back down.

Sophie turned to me. ‘And were you bored too, Paul?’

I tried to think of something to change the subject. ‘And how is your writing going?’ had been a disastrous question.

Sophie carried on. ‘Dad mentioned you two were going to go on holiday to the seaside together without him.’