ILLUSTRATION BY KATE SUTTON
When I was 11 or 12, I had a friend with an extremely glamorous mother. I was at school at a lycée in London and most people’s mums were boringly French-looking, but this friend was English and her mother was marvellous, with messy hair and smudged eyeliner that looked as if she slept in it. She chain-smoked and wafted about their flat in extraordinary dresses, and she didn’t cook at all. She never said, “Shouldn’t you be at school?” when we appeared — she just smiled and made us Angel Delight.
This was wondrous enough but then one day she produced a new snack called a Pot Noodle. Well. We nearly died of taste sensation. (Retrospectively, I would worry about my friend’s nutritional intake but
