I’m seeing my home town with new eyes—now that I’m about to leave. Better late than never, I suppose. It’s neat and tidy and inoffensive in every way. It has served me well for many years. It has a lot going for it, not least that you can make enough off your property in a few years to retire on. I think of the loving care that the Nepali women lavish on their mudbrick homes and would speculate that they don’t view them purely for their future investment potential. And there’s lots of culture here—it was a major Roman town, for heaven’s sake. There are bits of Roman ruins sticking up all over the place. It’s just that it doesn’t feel very Roman. We have a watered-down version of culture—nice to have it in the background, but not so that it infringes on our daily lives. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice, but not in any remote sense exotic. But will I miss it? I think not.

‘Why do you think we’ve been summoned?’ my sister asks anxiously.

‘No idea.’ We stop at the traffic lights. My sibling and I have been invited to Sunday lunch at our mother’s house. Edie was instructed to come alone, minus husband and any grandchildren. This is not a good sign. It means our mother has something serious to say. We are very grateful that these family pow-wows don’t happen very often. When they do, they involve eating Mum’s indigestible food in stony silence and conclude with either myself or Edie getting a good telling-off about some minor—and usually imagined—misdemeanour. We can only hope the flowers will be enough.

‘She’ll go bonkers when I tell her I’m going to have another baby.’ Edie fidgets with the fringes of her handbag.

We are taking this opportunity to make sure she has something to tell us off about. Edie, as she has mentioned, has yet to come clean about her forthcoming joyous event. And I’ve yet to tell her that I’m planning to do a moonlight flit to Nepal.

‘It’s only just hit me that I’m really pregnant again, Lyssa.’ My sister shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe it. I’m going to end up as one of those women they feature in the middle spread of the Express with twelve ghastly looking children in tow. It’ll be one of those articles about how many loaves of bread and pints of milk we get through in a week and how many long hours I spend ironing.’

Not enough is my usual reckoning.

‘And there’ll be a picture of us all smiling,’ she continues. ‘Except Lee, who’ll be looking harried, and all the readers will think “Poor bastard”.’