My parents had only been in the house for 12 months and already it was looking shabby. I almost tripped over the split lino as I ran upstairs to check who was sleeping where.

If we weren’t careful, we would soon have an accommodation crisis. In the first bedroom I found HJ and her three daughters squeezed into two single beds. Next door were EH’s friends Mark and Lucy in one double bed, and a single girl in another next to theirs. The latter agreed to move to a single bed in the attic so that the double could be allocated to a couple.

There would now be space for my university pal DM (now DE), if only she would come along. I’d seen her in passing earlier in the day, but she had chosen to ignore me.

Meanwhile I hoped that TPR was coping with buying all the alcohol for the party later in the evening.