I’ve been thinking back, wondering what that first big shock was, Dr. R. I was sitting at home with Annie on the sofa when the phone call came. It was dusk, but I hadn’t drawn the curtains. Outside I could see a bright, sharp fingernail moon clinging on to the electric blue sky above the footbridge. Commuters trudged past our house in clusters from the station, their faces like ghosts lit up by their phone screens. Occasionally one of them looked up and glanced through our window and I was aware of how snug we looked, how pretty the room was, how fantastic my life was. I was feeling better than I had felt for years in the post-agreement high, you see. Life was suddenly full of potential. Josh was out at soccer training and Karl had a meeting in Soho, so Annie and I had decided to watch Toy Story 3 for the five-hundredth time. Annie was dressed as a nun. She was in a religious phase, aided, I now understand, by me. She and Polly had been rummaging around in my box in the attic and found a kinky little nun outfit that I’d forgotten about. She’d appeared in it (accompanied by Polly in a slightly soiled nurse’s uniform, eek) and had been wearing it ever since. It fitted her much better than me but it wasn’t a look I encouraged and I certainly didn’t want her going out in it.

She was sprawled out with her legs on top of me, a bowl of popcorn balancing on her nylon fire-risk habit.

‘When God’s met a girl he really likes and respects, does he do sex with her?’ she asked.

‘What makes you so sure God’s a man?’ I said, in my responsible feminist mother voice. She sat up, stopped chomping the popcorn and thought about it. The whole of Year Four had had a sex-education class at school that day.

‘He might be both. He might have a peanut and a womb so he could make babies with himself.’

‘Penis. Yes. Makes sense,’ I said, trying to picture it. I was enjoying Toy Story 3 more than she was. She went for another handful and nestled her cold foot into my cardigan sleeve.

‘I think I’ll probably be quite good at doing sex when I’m older.’

‘Oh?’ She didn’t lack confidence, my Annie. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I like looking at bottoms and things.’ It’s hard to know exactly what expression to pull sometimes with one’s children. I focused on the film. We were at the bit where the stripy bear turns out to be a right bastard.

‘Danny thinks he might be gay,’ she said. I turned to her, leant forward and grabbed a handful of popcorn myself. Evidently the sex-education discussion had continued out of the classroom and into the playground. I should check with Ness what Polly had been reporting back.