‘Maybe Helen’s jealous.’

‘Jealous!’ Suddenly it all made sense to Mum. ‘Sure of course she is! That’s what’s up with her. But you’re OK yourself? And you’re coming home soon?’

Then Dad made the same sort of enquiries about my general well-being, though of course, being a man and worse still being an Irish man, he did it more obliquely and without eye contact. ‘You’re looking… healthy.’

‘I’m fine, Dad.’

‘You’ve been… eating properly and all that?’

‘Yes, Dad, I’m fine and you’re not to worry about what you told me about seeing Garv.’

‘It was his cousin?’

‘Ah no, it wasn’t. But don’t worry, it’s still OK. Right, I’ll go on home. I’m sure you’re all knackered, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

From the clamour of disagreement that ensued, this was clearly the wrong thing to say.

‘But it’s gone midnight in Ireland,’ I protested. ‘What about your jet lag?’

‘The best way to deal with jet lag is to try and stay awake, then go to sleep at the normal time,’ Mum said knowledgeably. I looked at her in wonder. Since when had she become such an expert traveller? ‘That’s what Nuala Freeman said.’

‘Oh well, if Nuala Freeman said it, it must be true,’ Helen said bitterly. And I had to agree with her; Nuala Freeman sounded like a right pain in the bum.

‘And we have to have our dinner,’ Mum said. ‘How can we go to bed before we have our dinner?’ They are creatures of routine, my parents.

‘Is it too late to go to Disneyland today?’ Dad asked.

‘It’s half-four, you old fool,’ Helen said.

‘But it stays open till midnight,’ Mum supplied. ‘Nuala Freeman said.’

Before Helen could round up a lynch mob for Nuala Freeman, I quickly told Dad that it was a two-hour drive to Disneyland and that we’d be better off going another day. I suggested that they unpack and spend some time by the pool, then we’d go out for an early dinner.

‘What about you?’ I asked Helen and Anna. Surely they’d want to go out, get pissed and look for surf gods? But they decided to come – they had to eat and Dad was paying.

‘And what about Emily?’ Mum asked. ‘I told Mrs Emily I’d look in on her and make sure she’s eating properly and looking after herself.’

‘Emily’s very busy,’ I said, but Mum had got that look.

‘All right,’ I caved in. ‘But I’d better bring her car home in case she needs it. I’ll tell her to expect us all later.’

‘Then you’ll be right back?’

Yes.’

I whizzed home, warned a knackered-looking Emily that they’d be calling in to her for a quick drink before dinner, then returned to the Ocean View, where we whiled away a not-unpleasant couple of hours, unpacking and bickering.

At six o’clock, we walked the six blocks from the hotel to Emily’s. Even though this was Santa Monica, where people were occasionally spotted getting from A to Β without vehicular assistance, the sight of five people walking on their hind legs caused almost as much of a stir as it must have done when the prehistoric tree-dwellers first came down to terra firma and decided to give it a go. Cars kept slowing down to stare at us, like we had two heads each. ‘What’s up with them?’ Mum tisked, as yet another car beeped us. ‘Helen, what have you been doing?’

‘Nothing!’ She didn’t sound innocent, so I relaxed. It’s when she sounds innocent that you really have to worry.

When we got to Emily’s street, Helen noticed the surveillance-equipment shop at the end of it and made us all go in, where she quizzed the man up and down about what the stuff was for.

‘Mostly domestic use,’ he said. ‘We got hidden cameras and tiny microphones if you suspect that your husband is having an affair and want to tape his… like… activities.’

The jokey way the man said it meant he thought it was out of the question that a husband of Helen’s would ever have an affair and need to be taped, but a pall suddenly settled on our little group and everyone avoided meeting my eyes.

‘And I supply quite a few private detectives.’

‘Private detectives!’ Helen’s already glowing face lit up even further. ‘I wouldn’t mind being a private detective.’

‘Right, we’ll be off so!’ Dad said, fear in his voice. I don’t think he could take another career change from Helen just yet.

Back on the street, as we passed Mike and Charmaine’s, Mike stood up and had a good, decidedly unspiritual gawk at us through his window. Then, as Helen and Anna filed up Emily’s short path, the dirty, torn sheet that passed for a curtain in the Goatee Boys’ front window twitched. Convulsively.

Emily, God love her, was still labouring away at Chip the Dog, and she was exhausted.

‘Hello Mrs Walsh. Gosh, you’ve a great colour.’

Mum hesitated, then preened. ‘I take the sun well.’

We all filed into the front room, where Justin and Desiree were sitting; they’d come by to help Emily with some of the doggier parts of her screenplay.

‘How’s Desiree’s anorexia?’ I asked, sucking in my face to indicate great thinness.

‘Way better,’ Justin said happily, then added, ‘since she started on Prozac’

Right. For a minute there I thought normality had come to pay a visit. Clearly I was wrong.

Wine was uncorked and introductions were effected.

‘What do you do?’ Dad asked Justin. Dad could only relax with people once he knew what job they did. He was at his happiest in the company of local-government officials.

‘I’m an actor, but –’

‘That’s right!’ Mum said appraisingly. ‘I’ve seen you.’

‘You have?’ Clearly this had never happened to Justin before.

‘I have. In Space Hogs, wasn’t it? They sent you down to that planet and the scaly plant thing ate you.’

‘Er, yes. Yes!’ Justin’s dinner-plate face lit up. ‘That was me.’

‘You gave an excellent performance, but to be honest I thought it was idiotic beaming you and the other space corporal down like that. Wouldn’t anyone with an ounce of sense know that you wouldn’t last five minutes with that scaly plant thing?’