Ella shrugged. “Yeah, we have. But my mother doesn’t know that.”

I pursed my lips. “What you’re really saying,” I said, “is that your mother doesn’t like me because I’m not like Carla Santini.”

Most of the mothers in Deadwood – and all of the mothers in the private community of Woodford – want their daughters to be like Carla Santini; most of the teachers wish all their students could be like Carla Santini; most of the girls in school wish they could be Carla Santini, even the girls she treats the worst; and as for the boys – except for Sam Creek, who seems totally impervious to the Santini charms – any one of them would sell his soul for the chance of getting his tongue into Carla Santini’s mouth.

Ella rolled her eyes. “Oh, please… Will you stop with the Carla Santini obsession for a few minutes?” She pursed her lips, looking at me as though she were wondering how honest she could really risk being. “The thing is…” she went on, slowly and carefully choosing her words.

“The thing is that I’m not your mother’s idea of a suitable companion for you.” Mrs Gerard wants Ella to hang out with other well-off, middle-class kids who will all go to the same good colleges and eventually have the same narcotic if perfect lives as their parents. She doesn’t want her only offspring running around with someone who has the soul and passion of a gipsy and lives in an old house without a microwave.

“Actually,” said Ella, her eyes on the thick white carpet, “it’s more your mother than you that my mother doesn’t think is suitable.”

I gazed at her incredulously.

“My mother?” Thinking my mother isn’t suitable is like thinking Santa Claus is a highwayman. My mother is eminently suitable – in an ordinary way. “Not suitable for what?”

Ella squirmed uncomfortably. “It’s not big things…” she mumbled, still studying the two-inch pile. “I mean, remember when they met at Parents’ Night?”