Leah’s brother and Karl had met and got on like a house on fire; they supported the same soccer team, knew a few characters in common. (What is it with men and characters? Why are they so eager to lay claim to them? Is it that they think a little of this character will rub off on them?) We knew Ness and Leah’s story by now: the kids’ biological father was a gay friend of theirs who now lived in France and Ness was the biological mother. Their past interested me: Leah had always been gay but Ness had only been in heterosexual relationships until they met; she’d been with her ex-boyfriend for five years. I assumed she must have always had a sexual interest in women, but she waved away my comments: I just fell in love and it happened to be with a woman.

I became quite fascinated by how they functioned as a couple, eager to pin them down and define them in some way, wanting them to take on traditional gender roles, which they did to a degree. In some respects Leah was the more masculine partner: she wasn’t vain, she never wore make-up when she wasn’t on television, she never wore skirts, she was sporty and practical, she got drunk like a man, loud and leery. And Ness looked after Leah, shielding her from the public interest, buoying her up, batting away the depression that never seemed far from Leah’s surface. Ness was somehow more sensible than Leah, more responsible. Apart from being gay, she was surprisingly straight. And yet every now and then she would take me by surprise: she was partial to a spliff, she could stay up all night, she had no qualms about breaking wind (a gentle inoffensive gust, but nevertheless she was unabashed); there was a subversiveness in there somewhere.

The journey flew by as we gossiped. Ness had plugged in her phone and was playing a Rufus Wainwright track; she’d unwound the window and was leaning out to feel the wind in her face. ‘Going to a Town’ – do you know it, Dr. R? If not, Spotify it right now and think of us in the car, windows down, London behind us, singing along lustily to Rufus. It was one of those moments of happiness that seem to belong to a different lifetime now. I am smiling to recall it. I may not have been blessed with a melodious voice, but I’d been top of the queue when they were handing out gusto. Ness, however, had a sweet voice (I know, I know, what doesn’t she have?). It transpired that she’d actually met Mr. Wainwright at some celebrity do with Leah. As I said, she was cool in her straight way, Dr. R, or are you impervious to such things? I think not.