It was electrifying. At least, that was what everyone else said at the end of the class, and Lana didn’t want to be the odd one out. So she’d agreed with them all, ‘even though inside I was thinking, What a load of wank!’

‘I have to say I couldn’t agree more!’ said Jude, but Lana carried on.

‘Yeah, but wait, so then it was my turn to share with the group. I told them I couldn’t think of anything, so Belle said she’d help me by asking a few pertinent questions about my childhood, my upbringing an’ that. And before I knew it, I was talking about when my mum died …’

There was a pause; the moment left hanging between them. Judith looked surprised. It was a subject Lana never mentioned even to her and Catrin, let alone to a group of strangers.

‘That’s a bit much, isn’t it?’ she said.

Lana took a big gulp of wine. ‘I dunno, Jude, it was … it was kind of … cathartic, you know?’

‘So what did you tell them?’

‘Exactly what happened, I guess. One day she was there, the next she wasn’t. And I remember being given a load of presents and people around me crying all the time and me clinging on to Dad wherever he went, not really knowing what was going on.’

The two girls fell silent as the bustle of the wine bar carried on around them. Lana wasn’t used to being vulnerable. She carried on, her voice quieter, gentler, the usual bombastic Lana having left the scene. ‘I think I liked it, y’know, when it was just me and Dad. Christ, I can’t remember much, Jude, I was only four. But me and him, we’d go places together – Griffin Park and up Brecon – well, I think it was Brecon, I remember a mountain, anyway … but then it was over, that bit.’

‘When Janis came along?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ Lana was pensive again. She knew that neither Catrin nor Judith ever thought of Janis as her stepmother, just her mum. She’d been part of Lana’s life for as long as her friends had known her – just like George had been for Judith. ‘I do love Janis, y’know.’

‘Well, of course you do,’ said Judith, who had never doubted it.

‘But then there was a baby, and then another one, and suddenly Dad wasn’t my dad any more, he was our dad. Janis was like a machine – popping them out like one a year, it seemed!’

Judith smiled, relieved that Lana was bouncing back.

‘And so I told them – the other students, I mean – I said, now I’m like surrounded by siblings! I mean seriously. They’re coming out of my ears! Five kids. It’s disgusting,’ she said, exaggerating her Welsh accent because she knew this made her sound funnier. ‘And like everything is rationed. Because, y’know, when you’re a family of seven, there’s just never enough to go round. So it’s each man for himself …’