‘I keep thinking about what your man Will said,’ she remarked, as we sat around the table in the pub garden, watching Thom periodically butt heads with the other children on the sagging bouncy castle. ‘You only get the one life – isn’t that what he told you?’ She was wearing her usual blue short-sleeved shirt, but she had tied her hair back in a way I hadn’t seen before and looked oddly youthful. ‘So I just want to make the most of things. Learn a little. Take the rubber gloves off once in a while.’

‘Dad’s quite pissed off,’ I said.

‘Language.’

‘It’s a sandwich,’ said my sister. ‘He’s not trekking forty days through the Gobi desert for food.’

‘And it’s a ten-week course. He’ll live,’ said my mother, firmly, then sat back and surveyed the two of us. ‘Well, now, isn’t this nice? I’m not sure the three of us have been out together since … well, since you were teenagers and we would go shopping in town of a Saturday.’

‘And Treena would complain that all the shops were boring.’

‘Yeah, but that’s because Lou liked charity shops that smelt of people’s armpits.’

‘It’s nice to see you in some of your favourite things again.’ Mum nodded at me admiringly. I had put on a bright yellow T-shirt in the hope that it would make me look happier than I felt.

They asked about Lily, and I said she was back with her mother, and had been a bit of a handful, and they exchanged looks, like that was pretty much what they had expected me to say. I didn’t tell them about Mrs Traynor.

‘That whole Lily thing was a very odd situation. I can’t think much of that mother just handing her daughter over to you.’

‘Mum means that nicely, by the way,’ said Treena.

‘But that job of yours, Lou, love. I don’t like the thought of you prancing around behind a bar in your next-to-nothings. It sounds like that place … What is it?’

‘Hooters,’ said Treena.

‘It’s not like Hooters. It’s an airport. My hooters are fully suited and hooted.’

‘Nobody toots those hooters,’ said Treena.

‘But you’re wearing a sexist costume to serve drinks. If that’s what you want to do, you could do that at … I don’t know, Disneyland Paris. If you were Minnie, or Winnie the Pooh, you wouldn’t even have to show your legs.’

‘You’ll be thirty soon,’ said my sister. ‘Minnie, Winnie or Nell Gwynnie. The choice is yours.’

‘Well,’ I said, as the waitress brought our chicken and chips, ‘I’ve been thinking, and, yes, you’re right. From now on I’m going to move on. Focus on my career.’

‘Can you say that again?’ My sister moved some of the chips from her plate on to Thom’s. The pub garden had become noisier.

‘Focus on my career,’ I said, louder.

‘No. That bit where you said I was right. I’m not sure you’ve said that since 1997. Thom, don’t go back on the bouncy castle yet, sweetheart. You’ll be sick.’

We sat there for a good part of the afternoon, avoiding Dad’s increasingly cross texts demanding to know what we were doing. I had never sat with my mother and sister, like normal people, grown-ups, having conversations that didn’t involve putting anything away or somebody being so annoying. We found ourselves surprisingly interested in each other’s lives and opinions, as if we had suddenly realized each of us might have roles beyond the brainy one, the chaotic one, and the one who does all the housework.

It was an odd sensation, having to view my family as human beings.

‘Mum,’ I said, shortly after Thom had finished his chicken and run off to play, and about five minutes before he would lose his lunch on the bouncy castle and put it out of action for the rest of the afternoon, ‘do you ever mind not having had a career?’

‘No. I loved being a mum. I really did. But it’s odd … Everything that’s happened over the past two years, it does make you think.’

I waited.

‘I’ve been reading about all these women – these brave souls who made such a difference in the world to the way people think and do things. And I look at what I’ve done and wonder whether, well, whether anyone would notice a jot if I wasn’t here.’

She said this quite evenly so I couldn’t tell if she was actually much more upset about it than she was prepared to let on. ‘We’d notice more than a jot, Mum,’ I said.

‘But it’s not like I’ve made an impact on much, is it? I don’t know. I’ve always been content. But it’s like I’ve spent thirty years doing one thing and now everything I read, the television, the papers, it’s like everyone’s telling me it was worth nothing.’

My sister and I stared at each other.

‘It wasn’t nothing to us, Mum.’

‘You’re sweet girls.’

‘I mean it. You …’ I thought suddenly of Tanya Houghton-Miller ‘… you made us feel safe. And loved. I liked you being there every day when we came home.’

Mum put her hand on mine. ‘I’m fine. I’m so proud of the pair of you, making your own way in the world. Really. But I just need to work out some things for myself. And it’s an interesting journey, really it is. I’m loving the reading. Mrs Deans at the library is calling in all sorts of things she thinks I might be interested in. I’m going to move on to the American New Wave feminists next. Very interesting, all their theories.’ She folded her paper napkin neatly. ‘I do wish they’d all stop arguing with each other, though. I slightly want to smack their heads together.’

‘And … are you really still not shaving your legs?’

I had gone too far. My mother’s face closed off, and she gave me the fishy eye. ‘Sometimes, it takes you a while to wake up to a true sign of oppression. I have told your father, and I’ll tell you girls, the day he goes to the salon to have his legs covered with hot wax, then have it ripped off by a ruddy twenty-one-year-old is the day I’ll start doing mine again.’

The sun eased down over Stortfold, like melting butter. I stayed much later into the evening than I had intended, said goodbye to my family, climbed into my car and drove home. I felt grounded, tethered. After the emotional turbulence of the past week, it was good to be surrounded by a bit of normality. And my sister, who never showed signs of weakness, had confessed that she thought she would remain single for ever, brushing away Mum’s insistence that she was ‘a gorgeous-looking girl’.