Dr. Rhys Evans (I needed to keep this professional) didn’t seem to notice the immense effort my mother had gone to, which I couldn’t help but hold against her. A fleeting comment on how well she looked, how pretty her dress was, would have gone far to soothe the nerves. However, her interest went straight to me as we walked in. ‘Hi, Connie, how are you?’ She was grinning. She grinned a lot and spoke through clenched teeth like a ventriloquist. It was most disconcerting. I suspect she even gave grisly prognoses with that lockjawed grin, her hand flapping in a rubber glove. Anita Rhys Evans was one of those women who was desperate to be a hit on the social scene but unfortunately managed to get on everyone’s nerves. ‘I read that interview you did with er . . . what’s his name . . . the disgraced MP?’ she said. ‘I loved it.’ I murmured thanks. ‘But Tom felt it was a bit far-fetched . . .’ She always did this. She loved to deflate; I’m not even sure it was deliberate – it was probably part of her make-up. I was quite susceptible to deflation that day and I had an instinctive, almost visceral response to flee from Anita.

Anita Rhys Evans was a space-invader, always standing those few inches too close, and she had the most peculiar habit of looking you up and down as she spoke to you, her eyes settling on vulnerable parts of your anatomy for whole sentences. I’m used to men having conversations with my breasts but I’d never encountered it in a woman before. And she never actually listened to what was being said; to ensure that she didn’t have to, she had developed an elongated blink that prevented interruption. She was a brain drain; I always left her company feeling emptied of life. And she certainly wasn’t the one I wanted to hear bad news from; there would be an edge of glee in the telling.

So we asked after each other’s kids. Hannah – not the sharpest tool in the box – had been force-fed tutors from Year Four and was doing absolutely amazingly at St. Poshy-Posh-Posh School for Girls, while Josh – averagely sharp but lazy tool – was learning how to illegally download anything he wanted at Statey-McState Academy round the corner. I’d bumped into Hannah on the bus and been bemused by the new accent and the inordinate number of times she said like (actually she said lake) in one sentence. So within the first minute of sitting on the chair and listening to how Hannah had joined the rowing team and was climbing mountains for Duke of Edinburgh (what is that?) and was almost fluent in Spanish after two years, I felt a new component in my increasing unhappiness: guilt at the shabby education I was giving my son.