“Pretty is out of fashion, it’s all about being hot”

HOME, 2pm. My mother is in the conservatory, in combative form.

She is reading a newspaper article about “how life is more difficult for teenage girls now” and cannot agree with a word of the argument put forward in it.

My daughters lie at my mother’s feet, draped across each other in front of the wood-burning stove, overwhelmed by the rigours of the first stage of their recovery from a night out.