This is on the cover, unsurprisingly. The heading, ‘I may be only your mother, but’ is the stuff of several Persephone novels (Hostages to Fortune, Family Roundabout, Princes in the Land and more) and is both funny and painful; it includes such ouch phrases as ‘I’m not a hotel-keeper”, ‘it wouldn’t hurt you to be a bit more kind’ and ‘I’ve been to school too’. Every single phrase has been thought at some point by every single mother in the world but (ideally) never said. Or only in total extremis. (Notice the details: the girls clothes, the expression on her face of half amazement, half horror, the mother’s carefully curled hair, and the ancestral portrait behind her.)