‘Of course he does.’ But he doesn’t, primarily because I haven’t yet told him. I just thought I’d turn up and see how it goes. Is that reckless? It feels like it.

‘I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ John says bravely—which earns him a glare from my mother. ‘Do something meaningful while you’re young. I’m sure it will be marvellous.’ He pats my mother’s shoulder. ‘Mrs Devereux’s daughter, Colette, was a well-respected lawyer, and she gave it all up to work at a women’s refuge in Egypt.’

My mother beams, her tears suddenly arrested. Her hand goes to her pearls. ‘Really?’ Mrs Devereux runs the local Women’s Institute and is ‘high up’ in the church hierarchy. John winks at me. I love this man already. He has just provided my mother with a whole new world of kudos. Anything Mrs Devereux’s daughter can do, hers can do better! I can see it whirring in my mother’s brain—helping needy children must surely carry more clout than helping needy adults.

Lee is leaning against the fridge in his kitchen nursing a bottle of beer instead of his usual hammer. ‘Who’s Edie going to ring when she’s in a panic about her morning sickness or some other girly nonsense?’ my brother-in-law asks.

‘She’s had six kids already,’ I point out. ‘She knows a hell of a lot more about these things than me. All I’ve had is the theory from a weekly letters page. I’m sure she’ll manage.’

My sister has taken to tying a jumper round her waist to hide her bump. Not that she has one—she still looks like a stick insect—but I know from past experience that it won’t be long before her feet disappear from view. She comes and wraps herself around me. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she cries.

‘I’ll miss you too,’ I whisper into her hair.

‘You won’t be around when my bump’s born,’ she complains.

I hate to say that the more children she has, the less of an event it becomes for me. And I haven’t had the customary pangs of longing that have accompanied all of Edie’s other pregnancies. Maybe it will do us both good for me not to be so closely involved in this one. Or, in a few months’ time, I might regret not being around—but either way, we’ll have to live with it. I’m sure that in different ways we’ll both have more than enough to occupy us.

I glance at my watch. ‘I’d better be going.’

Edie, my mother and Daisy burst into fresh bouts of weeping and it’s all I can do to drag myself out of the kitchen.

My lovely brother-in-law comes to my rescue. ‘Bye, sis,’ he says, kissing me warmly as he squeezes me.