When I arrived at the gym, MM was waiting for me – not because I was the last member to arrive for a class, but so that he could take me aside for a personal matter. He wrapped his left arm round my middle and led me from the studio to a private ‘trainers-only’ room. Here MM took out a ruler and started to measure my fingers.

‘I noticed last week that you have tiny hands’, he explained. ‘I think that this may be the reason why you are useless at lifting weights’.

Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mother in an adjoining room. She was running about in a tightly fitted burgundy dress, with half the decorative gold buttons on the bodice popped open. When I asked what she was doing at a gym, she gestured at the boardroom table behind her and replied that she was looking at furniture.