‘How’s production going?’ Mum asks one summer day, as I’m grabbing a piece of toast in the kitchen. ‘Of the bags? They can’t make them fast enough. Thank goodness Andy Elat’s offered to help with distribution and stuff. I saw ten people on Oxford Street with them yesterday. It’s crazy. There were orders for half a million bags, the last I heard, and loads of co-operatives are making them. Edie says they’re going to be able to buy whole new libraries with the money. And pay for more girls to go to school. Queen Fadilah keeps going on about it in the press. She’s offered to give me an interview next month. I’m just working out my questions for her.’

‘I’m glad,’ Mum says, in a ‘That wasn’t what I really wanted to talk about’ sort of way. ‘I’ve made coffee for us both. Why don’t you sit down?’

‘Sure,’ I say. Then I stop dead. All the blood runs out of my head, into my feet. I have hot legs (not in a good way) and I feel dizzy. It’s just occurred to me: I took my last A-level paper two days ago. We’re in the kitchen. It’s time for Mum’s ‘little discussion’. No escaping it now.

Somehow, I make it to the nearest chair. It’s not so much sitting as letting my legs buckle under me. Mum pushes a mug of coffee towards me.

‘I should have told you this ages ago,’ she says.

I start nodding then shaking my head. ‘You didn’t need to,’ I whisper. It comes out as a sort of a squeak. She gives me a funny look.

‘I’ve been seeing someone for a while,’ she goes on. ‘I wanted to talk to you about it, but I know it’s hard for you. I wanted to wait till all your exams were over. Silly, I know . . .’

For a moment, I’m not really listening. I’m having an imaginary conversation with Liam. He’s going, ‘Oh my God, you were totally right. You CAN suss people out. I am SO sorry, Nonie. Will you forgive me for ever doubting you?’ And I’m going, ‘YES! See? Told you.’ The conversation we’ll be having later today, in fact, when he’s finished working at his dad’s caff and I’ve finished here, with Mum, and crawled over to him.

‘. . . nearly a year now,’ Mum’s saying. I’ve obviously missed a bit. Hope it wasn’t crucial. ‘But actually, it started in February last year, after Harry’s engagement party, so—’

‘Yes, Mum, I know. Honestly,’ I interrupt. Can we just speed this up?

She looks surprised, then smiles.

‘I suppose I can’t really keep things from you, can I?’ she says. ‘I mean, sharing a house with my only daughter. Of course you’re going to work it out for yourself. It’s just that you didn’t say anything. I tried to tell you at Crow’s birthday party, but then everything went wrong . . .’

‘Look, Mum,’ I say, ‘I’m thrilled for you. I really am. He’s a lovely man. But can we keep the house? Please? I mean, Harry’s not getting married any more, so he’ll be here a bit. He can keep an eye on me. And you’ll have your own place in Brazil, so . . .’

‘Brazil?’ Mum says. She looks surprised.

‘Yeah. Won’t you be going there? Or is he coming here? But how will he run his projects?’

‘Just like he always has done,’ Mum says. ‘From his office in the garden. Except it will be our garden. Wait a minute . . . Brazil?’

‘Well, he lives there,’ I point out.

‘Peter? No he doesn’t. He lives next door.’

‘Peter?’

‘Peter Anderson. Who did you think I meant? Wait – not Vicente?’

I nod. Of course, Vicente. Who else?

‘But, you’ve always loved him,’ I say shakily. This Peter Anderson thing is very confusing. ‘And he sent you all those white roses.’

‘Roses? Oh – no, that wasn’t him,’ Mum says. ‘Well, he sent that big lot last year. Very over the top, I thought. But Peter’s been sending them since then. They’re my favourite flower. Hang on a minute – Vicente? What made you think it was Vicente?’

So I explain, in a very wobbly voice, about everything I know. The time she and Vicente were ‘on a break’. Her meeting Dad and accidentally getting pregnant with me. Wanting to go back to Vicente and not being able to. The wedding that never happened. The whole lot.

I’ve no idea what Mum’s reaction is, because I’m staring at a particular pattern in the marble tabletop as I talk, but I can feel the blood heading back up from my legs and settling in my face, which is now hot enough to reheat my untouched coffee.

I get to the end and there’s silence. I look up at Mum at last and she’s just staring at me. She can’t speak for a moment. She looks anguished. Eventually, her voice comes back.

‘You thought that?’ she says. ‘All this time? Why? I mean, how did you put together all that stuff?’

‘Phonecalls,’ I explain. ‘You talking to your friends. Granny. You know . . .’

‘That woman!’ Mum looks exasperated now. Then she takes both my hands in hers and looks into my eyes. ‘I’m so, so sorry, darling,’ she says. ‘Do you know – of all people, it was Gloria who told me I should have talked to you about this, years ago. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’

I shrug. Nothing to apologise for. Accidents happen.

Mum lets go of one of my hands and strokes the side of my face.

‘Nonie! I can’t bear it! Oh my God. I’m going to have to tell you the whole thing, aren’t I?’

I shrug again. She might as well, if she wants to. Whatever.

‘You were the most loved baby girl in the world,’ she says tenderly. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t realise. OK, it’s true, after I’d started dating your dad, I knew we were never going to make it as a couple. I was pregnant, but I wondered if I’d made a mistake breaking up with Vicente. Your damned granny urged me to go back to him . . . try and make it up. After all, he and I already had Harry together. But I think it was his estate that Granny loved. She wanted me to marry his acres. Anyway, I went to see him in Brazil and he said yes, he’d love to get back together, but not with a new baby. And that’s when I realised, Nonie. That’s when I knew how much I loved you. Because it never occurred to me, not even for a second, to think I’d missed out on Vicente when I could have you. Even though you were still about the size of a jelly bean inside me, I loved you so much.’

She’s crying by now. I’m crying. There’s a lot of crying going on. I hope tears won’t spoil the surface of the marble, because if so, we’re in trouble. And all the time, she’s stroking my face and my wonky hair.

‘So I went back to Paris,’ she goes on. ‘I told your dad about you, and he was over the moon. He painted an exquisite series of pictures for you – the moon in a starlit sky, in fact. We were going to keep them for you but he was offered such a staggering sum of money for them, and normally he was so poor, that he couldn’t say no. That money paid for his flat. All the time I was pregnant, he looked after Harry and me so beautifully. Then you were born. You were stunning. People used to stop me in the street with the pram to tell me how beautiful you were. We had a year of happy times. But I needed to work again, and I wanted to be in London. Vicente helped me buy this house because of Harry. Granny’s right about him being a very generous man. And your dad helped me find contacts in the art world so I could set up my business.’

She pauses and sighs deeply.

‘That’s what happened, darling. And all the time you were growing up, I was so proud of how brave you were, and how beautiful you were, and your sense of style, and your loyalty to your friends. You may have been an accident, Nonie, but you were never a mistake. Never. I just can’t believe you didn’t know that.’

‘But Granny . . .’ I stutter through my tears, ‘I heard her. About me stopping two family weddings. Harry’s and yours.’

Mum’s lips harden into a thin line.

‘Your granny is not my favourite person at the moment. You were right about Harry and Isabelle. Of course I was upset, but I realised straight away that you’d saved him from a big mistake. And she was ridiculous to bring Vicente into it. I told her so at the time. I haven’t spoken to her since, actually.’

Hmm. True. I thought I hadn’t seen Granny around much recently. I assumed she was busy redecorating or something. But I’m not really thinking about Granny. I’m mentally having my conversation with Liam again. It’s going a bit differently this time. My opportunity to say ‘I told you so’ isn’t quite as obvious as I thought.

Mum’s BlackBerry goes off to say she’s got a text. She checks the screen. This time, instead of assuming I know what it’s about, I check.

‘Peter Anderson?’ I ask. ‘Wondering if we’ve had our little discussion?’

She looks at me and laughs.

‘Absolutely! God, what shall I tell him?’

‘Well, I’m still not exactly sure what’s going on,’ I say. ‘I kind of interrupted you. Tell me about him.’

So she does. How she went round to his house to apologise after the whole ‘Turn the bloody music down or I’ll sue’ incident and they clicked. The meals at his restaurants (he owns three), the visits to her artists’ exhibitions (there are loads), and then falling headlong in love last summer. It’s funny to think you can do it when you’re as old as Mum, but I’ve checked the symptoms and it seems it’s true. They were terrified that I’d hate the idea of Mum with a new man after all this time. Because, despite having a combined age of over eighty, they can be really stupid sometimes. Why would I mind? And yes, Mum is selling her share of the house to pay Vicente back, but she’s selling it to Mr Anderson. He’s always preferred our house to his own. He’s moving in over the summer, if that’s OK with me.

‘So I get to keep my room?’ I check. I hate this all to come down to my room after everything else, but it’s important.

‘Yes, Nonie. You get to keep your room.’

‘Yay!’

‘And I’ll get that four poster you’ve always wanted. And your mirrored wardrobe. I kind of promised you.’

‘Yay!’

‘And you’re OK with Peter moving in?’

‘Of course. If you love him that much, he must be OK. I’ll get used to him. As long as he doesn’t ask me to tidy up too often . . .’

‘Oh, thank God.’

After we’ve talked, I go back up to my room and stare out across the rooftops at the blue Kensington sky. It’s the view I’ve known since I was tiny, but it looks new, somehow. Different. Something has changed. It takes me ages, standing there in front of the window, to work out what it is.

I’ve changed. A piece of me that’s been missing all my life has finally clicked into place. True, I’ve found out that I am TOTALLY RUBBISH at sussing people out, including my own mother, and can never trust my own opinion on anyone ever again. But I feel whole, and light as air. Mum called me brave, but underneath I’ve always felt pretty terrified about the future. I didn’t feel ready for it. I didn’t feel good enough for it. Now I do.

I text Liam.

‘Had the talk with mum. You were totally right. love u xxx’

I stare at it for a while. It’s the first time I’ve told Liam in writing that I love him, although it must be pretty obvious by now. But it’s sort of a big deal when you see it there on the screen. I wonder if I should really do it. Might this turn me into the sort of clingy girlfriend that every boy hates?

Then I get my light-as-air feeling again. If you love someone, you should say so. I think everything will be OK this time.

I press Send.