I’d spent a decade blaming myself. Rationale and reason were too tardy. The psychology isn’t difficult to figure out. Intense feelings of betrayal, blah, blah, blah. I have a complex about men not loving me enough to stay and about their general ability to be faithful. My defence is a life awash with cynicism, constraint and calculation. And it’s an extremely effective preclusion to pain. I hurt before I can be harmed. I dump before I’m damaged. I never get involved.

‘The mistake everyone makes is thinking sex and love are at all compatible. Why? No one imagines they are in love because they feel hungry or tired or cold. Why imagine you are if you feel randy?’

‘Oh, you are too clever for me.’ Issie evades my argument. She doesn’t think I’m clever, she thinks I’m cruel, but she’s too polite to say so.

I had planned to spend Sunday afternoon with my mother, and Issie decides to join me, as she can’t face a Sunday afternoon on her own. I’m pleased she’s joining me but frustrated that she thinks there is such a thing as ‘on your own’ when you live in a city with seven million inhabitants, dozens of museums, scores of galleries, hundreds of shops, and millions of bars and restaurants.

When we arrive at my mother’s, she is sitting in the garden reading a romantic novel. I pointedly put down the bag of improving books that I have brought for her. She thanks me, but I doubt she’ll swap the stolen glances and passionate embraces to learn more about the trials of the Irish during the potato famine. My mother is delighted to have both Issie and me to fuss over and immediately scuttles to the kitchen to put on the kettle.

Mum lives in a small, immaculate house in Cockfosters. The house is crammed full of furniture that she rescued from her marriage. My mother brought everything from our five-bedroom detached home and put it into her two-bedroom terraced house.