In fact, she has barely mentioned him, beyond remarking that he was hardly a hands-on father – ‘He’d rather have chopped off his own foot than change a nappy’ – and started a new life in Canada after they’d split. When I asked if he is still alive, she shrugged and said, ‘Allegedly.’

‘Well, yes, you have a bit,’ I say now. ‘But I wondered … was there something specific that happened?’

‘A final straw kind of thing?’ she asks, getting up from the bench as Bobby potters out of sight. ‘Well, yes,’ she continues, ‘there was the soup incident …’

‘What happened?’

She chuckles. ‘I’ve told you what Brian was like. Big-shot architect, shagging half the office, probably, surrounded by dolly birds, as he called them …’

‘Was it that? Was he sleeping with other women?’

‘Oh, almost definitely,’ she says blithely as she clips on Bobby’s lead. ‘But that wasn’t the reason. Everyone in our circle was doing it. It was more how he viewed me, you know?’

I nod, although I don’t really understand. The girls run over to us, pleading for ice creams. Izzy takes Bobby’s lead as we leave the park and make our way towards the van. ‘I mean, these days you’d never be expected to do this,’ Penny goes on, ‘but back then, men like Brian wanted the corporate wife back at home. You know – the good little woman flapping about in a pinny, rustling up dinner parties for his colleagues …’

‘Surely he didn’t expect that from you!’ I exclaim.

She sniggers. ‘Unfortunately, he did. You mean, you can’t imagine me topping up glasses and handing out vol-au-vents?’

‘Absolutely not.’

Izzy looks round. ‘What’s volly vonts?’

‘Little pies,’ Penny replies, ‘with something like mushrooms inside, in a creamy sauce.’

‘Ugh,’ exclaims Maeve.

‘You didn’t make them, did you?’ I ask. I have encountered Penny’s ‘experimental’ cooking a couple of times: her ‘mango pork’ consisting of anaemic-looking chops and sliced fruit in a dish of cider, and a lime cheesecake with the texture of blackboard chalk. She seems to exist mainly on boxed meals from her freezer.

‘Of course not,’ she declares as we join the small queue at the ice cream van. ‘But one day, Brian phoned from his office – never mind that I was up to my neck with a new baby – and said, “Pen, darling, Roger and Cleo are coming over for dinner. Make sure you put together something nice, would you?”’

‘What did you do?’