I’ve laid them out in a neat row on the bed. The duvet’s plain white and they stand out nicely. “I need to tell you something you’re not going to like at all,” I say to Adam. “But first I want to tell you a story about when I was a child, and I want you to tell me what you think about that story.” Without waiting for his agreement, I start to tell him.

I stole the three angels from my playgroup when I was four years old. One is pink, one green and one yellow.

At age four, I didn’t realize I’d stolen them. I simply saw them in the toy tin at playgroup, loved the way they looked and decided to take them home with me. When I showed them to Mum, excited about my haul, she didn’t say a word, but she looked at them as if they were capsules containing ricin. She went to get Dad, who bellowed at me until long after it got dark—about serious crimes and punishment and bad people getting their hands chopped off.

The next day, Mum stood over me at playgroup while I recited the apology she and Dad had made me learn by heart and practice in front of them several times over breakfast. It contained none of my own words. Neither of them had smiled at me even once since my semi-accidental confession the day before; both were still as angry as they’d been at the moment of discovery.

I returned the angels to the tin and did an excellent job of pretending I didn’t care. Inside, I was screaming, But I need them! By this point, I’d decided that I preferred the three angels to my parents. The woman who ran the playgroup kept telling my mum that it wasn’t important, and Mum kept contradicting her and saying that it was. After Mum had gone home, the nice playgroup owner said I could have the angels as a present, since I liked them so much. I remember thanking her, and thinking, You’ve no idea, have you? There’s no way I could ever take them home and let my parents see them, no matter what story I tell them—not even if they’re accompanied by a letter from you insisting that you want me to have them and that it was your initiative, not mine.

Being four, I didn’t phrase it to myself quite like that, but I understood the impossibility of taking the three beautiful angels home. I also understood that the kind playgroup woman didn’t understand, which was even more distressing.