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‘No, you don’t!’ Albie protested, looking betrayed. ‘And since when were you this great defender of home, Mum? You said you hated it too.’

Had she? Connie, moving on, said, ‘Cat, my son is posturing for your benefit. Carry on. You were saying.’

Cat was ramming salami inside a baguette with a dirty thumb. ‘Anyway, my dad, who’s a complete and utter bastard, insisted that I study engineering at the uni, which was a complete waste of time …’

Albie was grinning at me but I declined to meet his eye and poured more coffee. ‘Well, not a complete waste of time,’ I said.

‘It is if you hate it. I wanted to experience things, see things.’

‘So what did you study instead?’

‘Ventriloquism.’ She held a marmalade jar to her ear and a small voice said, help me! help me! ‘That got me into puppetry and improv and I joined this street theatre group, operating these giant marionettes, and we just hit the road, travelled all over Europe, had a wild time until they all wimped out and went home to their little jobs and little houses and dull, predictable little lives. So I carried on, travelling solo. Love it! Haven’t seen my parents now for four years.’

‘Oh Cat, that’s terrible,’ said Connie.

‘It’s not terrible! It’s been amazing for me. No roots, no rent, meeting the most incredible people. I can live wherever I want now. Except Portugal. I’m not allowed into Portugal, for reasons which I am not at liberty to divulge …’

‘But what about your parents?’

‘I send my mum postcards. I phone her twice a year, Christmas and birthday. She knows I’m fine.’

‘Hers or yours?’ said Connie.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You said you phone her Christmas and birthday. D’you phone her on her birthday or your birthday?’

The question seemed to puzzle Cat. ‘My birthday, of course,’ she said, and Connie nodded.

‘And your father?’ I asked.

‘My father can go screw himself,’ she said proudly, popping the bread into her mouth, and I noted how Albie could barely contain his admiration.

‘That seems a little harsh.’

‘Not if you met him. If you met him, it’s a grrr-eat review!’ She laughed her laugh again, the kind you see in films to denote madness and the waiter’s stare got a little harder. Despite my best efforts, I was finding it difficult to warm to Cat. She was somewhat older than Albie, which made me feel absurdly defensive of him, and her skin had a chafed look, as if it had been scoured with some sort of abrasive — my son’s face, presumably. There were panda smudges around her eyes and a red smear around her mouth, again attributable to my son, and high arched eyebrows that seemed drawn on. What did she remind me of? When I first arrived at university I attended a fancy-dress screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with the aforementioned Liza Godwin, which remains one of the most wearying evenings of enforced wackiness that I have ever writhed through in my life. The things I did for love! I am not a religious man but I vividly remember sitting in my seat wearing a pair of Liza Godwin’s torn tights, with a lipsticked rictus grin on my face, praying, please, God, if you do exist, let me not do ‘The Time Warp’ again.

And yes, there was something of that Rocky Horror quality to Cat, and perhaps this appealed to our son, his hand on the small of her back, her fingers exploring the torn knees of his jeans. It was all rather disturbing, and I must confess a certain relief when she said:

‘Okay, you good people, it was a pleasure to encounter you. You’ve got a fine young man here!’ She slapped his thigh for emphasis.

‘Yes, we’re aware of that,’ said Connie.

‘Enjoy the sights! Young man, escort me to the door — I don’t want the buffet police to wrestle me to the floor and strip-search me!’ There was a guffaw and the scrape of a chair as she hoisted the accordion called Steve from his seat and squashed her bowler hat down on to her curls. A high trill from Steve, and they were gone.

We sat in the kind of silence that follows a collision, until Connie said, ‘Never trust a woman in a bowler hat.’

We laughed, enjoying the sweet marital pleasure of shared dislike. ‘“Mum, Dad, I’d like you to meet the woman I intend to marry.”’

‘Douglas, don’t even joke about it.’

‘Well I liked her.’

‘Is that why you told her to put her breakfast back?’ giggled Connie.

‘Was that too much, d’you think?’

‘For once, Douglas, I say no.’

‘So what do you think he sees in her? I think it’s the laugh.’

‘I don’t think it’s just the laugh. I think sex might have something to do with it too. Oh, Albie,’ she sighed, and a look of awful sadness came across her face. ‘Douglas,’ she said, her head on my shoulder, ‘our boy’s all grown-up now.’