Art school? It’s hardly the thing to get angry over. But, if you think that, you obviously haven’t met my dad.

‘If you do feel educated and academically motivated in anyway, please let us know so that we can knock it out of you post haste.’

Like Scorpius, they also seemed to have mastered the skin-tight jeans and underfed look, although none of them had quite the impressive fringe that he did.

‘I splinched my fringe,’ he said miserably. ‘I always do that. I don’t even know how I got my licence…’

‘It’s alright, I’ll be fine living with these two. They could do with someone who knows how to make a proper cup of tea.’

It was the best impersonation of a kicked puppy left out in the rain I’d seen him do in all the time I’d known him. And, I tell you, it broke my heart a little bit. Just a tad.

I couldn’t have been more of a fool if I’d invented a chocolate teapot, announced I was going to sail the Atlantic ocean in a wicker basket and tripped over my own feet in one fell swoop.

My life was definitely going the shape of the orchard.

The joke in the family often went that Rose had inherited the worst parts of her parents.

Nobody likes a killjoy, and she was the biggest killer of joys I’d ever known.

It was a bit of a fly in the ointment. More like an Acromantula in the ointment.