My mother is a delicate woman – willowy and elegant and rather tired, like the sort of hothouse flower that droops easily. She is lovely-looking now, but I’ve seen the pictures and I know that she was very, very beautiful when she was my age. She still carries that beauty around in her bones in a way that makes people turn in the street to look at her. She can occasionally be found, flicking through the pages of old fashion magazines with a mournful sigh, gazing longingly at the images of immaculately turned-out debutantes.

“Oh yes,” I say, with what I hope is a pacifying smile. “You look very nice.” Mother’s disapproving glare somehow snaps straight on to the jam jar that is concealed by my dress and would be completely invisible to any other person but her.

“And is there any sensible reason,” she asks, her voice dangerously calm, “why you are standing barefoot and covered in filth in the middle of our lake?”

To be fair, it’s really more of a large pond than a lake, but I cannot deny that I am certainly in it. And that my feet are bare and covered in mud and weeds. As are my legs. And a fair few inches of my dress. The woman in front of me definitely wouldn’t see the appeal of removing her stockings to feel the mud squishing between her toes.

I clear my throat and try the smile again. I aim for the sort of soothing tone one might employ upon a highly strung horse. “Lampyris noctiluca.” I hold the jar forward and tilt it slightly. “Absolutely fascinating.”

Mother’s face remains stony.

“They’ll be more interesting later on,” I explain. “They’re currently in their larval form, but I wanted to observe the bioluminescence more closely once they graduate to adulthood.” No response. “They glow,” I add, a little desperately now. “They’re glow-worms.”

“Of course.” Mother’s voice is flat. “You went into the lake to get glow-worms.”

“Yes.” I nod encouragingly. “Lovely, magical glow-worms.”

I hope that some of my enthusiasm might prove contagious, although if history is anything to go by it is unlikely that the woman in front of me is about to suddenly develop a keen scientific interest in the natural world. Far more likely that I’m about to receive a lecture. These can last quite a long time and require minimal input from me and so I keep a wary eye on her but turn my mind to the question of what I should feed the larvae while they remain in my care.

Mother lifts her hands weakly to her head, rubbing her temples: a weary gesture that I am all too familiar with.

“And did the hunt for these magical … worms … drag you through some kind of swamp?”