In Rosaline’s experience this was what victory over institutional prejudice looked like: nobody actually apologising or admitting they’d done anything wrong, but the institution in question generously offering to pretend that nothing had happened. So—win?

“That’s probably wise,” she said, hoping she’d at least taught Amelie a valuable lesson about standing up for yourself, or compromise, or . . . or . . . something?

“What happened to you?” asked Lauren as they got settled in the car.

Rosaline clicked her seat belt into place and checked over her shoulder to make sure Amelie had done the same. “Don’t even.”

“I got into trouble,” said Amelie, “for saying Mummy is bisexual, which is silly because she is. So then Mummy told Miss Wooding that was discrimination and then Miss Wooding got really upset and then we got to come home.”

“Fuck me,” muttered Lauren. “What a pile of reprehensible bullshit.”

Taking way more care than she usually did now there was a child in the vehicle, she eased the car away from the kerb. And, on the one hand, that was good because they wouldn’t crash and kill Amelie. On the other hand: train, running late, argh.

“‘Reprehensible’ means ‘very bad,’” offered Amelie.

“Just to check”—Rosaline twisted round in her seat—“of the words in that sentence, which are you allowed to say in school?”

“Me. What. A. Of. Reprehensible. And pile.” Amelie paused a moment. “But not fuck or bullshit because some people think those words are bad. Which is silly because they’re only words.”

Oh God. This felt like a parenting moment. “Sometimes,” said Rosaline slowly, “there are things that seem silly to you that are important to other people. Just like sometimes things that are important to you seem silly to other people. And that’s why it’s important to think about what you’re saying and doing.”

Amelie digested this. “Like the way Miss Wooding thinks it’s silly to have a bisexual mummy?”

Lauren gave an unhelpful snort of laughter.

“A bit.” As so often happened, what had begun as an opportunity to pass on positive values and hard-earned wisdom to her daughter had sharply derailed into not having a fucking clue what she was talking about. “But we’ve agreed to pay more attention to each other’s feelings in future.”

There was exactly enough silence to lull Rosaline into a false sense of security.

“Auntie Lauren?” piped up Amelie. “Why did you stop going out with Mummy? Did you think it was silly she’s bisexual?”

“No.” Lauren kept her eyes firmly on the road. “I’m not the sort of lesbian who thinks bisexuals are letting the side down. I’m more of a vagina half-full kind of homosexual.”

“Oh.” The advantage of having a sesquipedalian eight-year-old was that Amelie didn’t like to admit that she hadn’t understood things she probably shouldn’t. “So what happened?”

“She dumped me. Because I’d been seeing another girl without telling her.”

“Oh,” said Amelie again. She seemed to be giving this serious consideration, and Rosaline tried to develop a sudden interest in passing licence plates. “Did you like the other girl better?”

“Not for long, but by then the damage was done. And she wasn’t even a natural redhead.” She shot a nostalgic look at Rosaline. “What might have been, eh?”

Might have been wasn’t something Rosaline liked thinking about too often. Might have been too easily turned into should have been. After all, if she’d stayed with Lauren she wouldn’t have rebounded with Tom, wouldn’t have decided it was probably fine to skip the condom one “just this once” too many, and would have lived the life she’d always assumed she was meant to. But then she wouldn’t have had Amelie and that was unthinkable in a whole different way.

“So”—Amelie fiddled with her seat belt in precisely the way Rosaline kept telling her not to—“would you have been my other mummy now, if Mummy hadn’t left you?”

“Not exactly.” Lauren really needed to learn when to bail on a conversation. Especially with Amelie.

“If I’d never left Auntie Lauren,” Rosaline interrupted, “you’d never have been born.”

Once again, Rosaline could practically hear the cogs whirring in her daughter’s head. Every parent, she suspected, thought their kid was clever, but she liked to think that Amelie actually was, at least a bit. “Thank you for making Mummy dump you, Auntie Lauren.”

There was a little pause, and, glancing over, Rosaline was slightly surprised to realise that Lauren genuinely didn’t have a reply. Sincerity had never been her forte.

“Do you have homework for the weekend?” Rosaline asked, turning to look at her daughter.

Amelie shook her head.

“Remember, I know you were doing spelling today. And that you have spelling every week. So, I’m going to ask you again: Do you have any homework for the weekend, and is it spelling?”

Amelie nodded.

“Then learn your words when you get home, before you do anything else. And Auntie Lauren will test you tomorrow, won’t you, Auntie Lauren?”

“I will,” Lauren agreed, “although my spelling is terrible.”

“You write for a living, Loz. How bad can it be?”

Lauren raised an eyebrow. “You see, they’ve got these fancy new machines now that check your spelling for you. Also I’m a bit offended that you think the most important skill in my job is spelling words right.”

They pulled into the station car park and Rosaline concluded that she could still make her train as long as she was very brusque in leaving her only child and only friend and as long as Great Western Railway was staying true to form and running at least six minutes late.

“Well.” Lauren turned off the engine. “This is it. Time to go be moderately famous.”

Rosaline dragged her bag out of the footwell. “I don’t want to be famous. I just want . . . enough money to pay for some things and enough people to think I’m good at baking that I might be able to get a slightly better job.”

“Truly. Yours is a hubris of Homeric proportions.”

“I think you’re good at baking, Mummy,” said Amelie. “What’s hubris?”