The kitchen of their house couldn’t be more different to ours. It is warm, the heat from the Aga radiating cosiness, and the counters are strewn with all sorts of random objects – books, unopened post, sunglasses, a baseball cap, batteries, bowls of fruit, lengths of cable. There is a long table down the middle of the room that also seems to be covered in various household objects, including the end of a vacuum cleaner, as well as breakfast cereal boxes, empty bowls and splatters of milk.

Tracey’s mum, who introduces herself as Gloria, is simultaneously fussing around me, clearing the breakfast bowls, wiping the table and running a sink of hot water for me to wash my hands. Doing a million little things at once, all with a warm smile on her face, which is free of any discernible make-up. Her afro is held back from her coffee-coloured face with a brightly coloured scarf knotted at the nape of her neck and she is wearing baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. I have never seen my mother in denim. A radio is playing and she is humming along to the song – ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ by Wham – her ample hips shimmying to the beat.

Tracey is rummaging through a basket of clean clothes stashed in the corner. She pulls out a skirt and hands it to me.

“I hope it fits ok – you’re much smaller than me.”

I don’t think I am. I think I have quite sizeable hips, especially compared to Eloise, and I start to worry that the skirt won’t fit and then I’ll be mortified all over again.

“The downstairs loo is just through there if you want to change,” Tracey says and points down a narrow corridor off the kitchen.

The loo is a tiny room, painted in a bright sunshine yellow with small, framed pictures of Tracey and her brother that hang haphazardly on the walls. Photos of sunshine, holidays and stolen family moments. There is a basket on the floor full of comic books and the smell of vanilla wafts from an air freshener on the windowsill.

I wiggle out of my dirty skirt and into Tracey’s clean one, then hold in my stomach as much as I can while I pull up the zip at the back. It just fits, but it is a bit tight and I will have to be careful not to breathe out too much when I’m at school.