Her father had always been busy with affairs of state, working with Sir Winston Churchill both before and during the war. And she – like me – had been an only child. Not properly loved, not properly wanted, and sent away to boarding school at just seven years of age. She understood, to some extent, the actions of her parents. They were from that class of people for whom boarding school was customary. But part of her could never forgive, could never forget. It was in her rush to escape the elite boarding school that she had met my father, in his smart World War II naval uniform, and then onwards to what she saw as a disastrous marriage. She didn’t want me fraternising with the people who had caused all this misery.

Fair enough. So, I went to England, nineteen years old, armed with the name of my father’s sister: Auntie Audrey, a school teacher in Bristol. I met her daughters, my three cousins, the first relatives I’d ever encountered. After a few days, my aunt asked whether I was planning a trip to see my mother’s family, and I said, ‘No, Auntie,’ before rapidly repeating the tragic tale: my mother’s neglectful upper-class family, the posh boarding school, handsome navy captain, loveless marriage, turkey-baster, sperm, me.

‘So, Auntie, as you can see, it’s not really possible for me to go and see them.’

Through all this a smile was forming on my aunt’s face.

‘A posh boarding school, you say?’

‘Yes, Auntie.’

‘Father worked with Sir Winston?’

‘Yes, Auntie.’

‘Would you like to see a picture of your grandparents? And your mother’s sisters?’

Sisters? I thought to myself. There were no sisters. She was an only child.

All I said, however, was, ‘Yes, I’d love to see the pictures.’

My aunt went upstairs. I could hear her rummaging around in her bedroom, opening drawers and cupboards. She came down holding a tiny black-and-white photograph. ‘Here’s a photo of your mother’s family,’ she said, handing it over.

I stared at the small image, transfixed but confused. There were five people in the photo – my mother, her two sisters and their parents. I could recognise my mother. And the others looked like her: they were clearly a family. They were also clearly northern working-class. Actually, they were northern working class as rendered by Monty Python. The father virtually had a hanky on his head.

‘They look lovely,’ I said.

‘They were lovely,’ replied my aunt. ‘Your mother was ashamed of them. She wanted to be something better. She didn’t even invite them to the wedding. They came anyway and stood outside in the rain, throwing confetti.’

My mother, my aunt explained, grew up in a cramped two-up, two-down terrace house in Lancashire, left school at fourteen and was working as a hairdresser’s apprentice when she met my father, who was only a smidge further up the social hierarchy. Her dad – my grandfather – had laboured in a cotton mill; her sisters ran a boarding house. The stories about working for Sir Winston, life in the boarding school, the posh accent, even her status as an only child: all of it was invention.

I know the obvious thing to say is that this left me gutted. That I sat there sobbing, reflecting on the fact that all my life I’d been fed a lie. Or that, in response to this revelation, I reassessed my relationship to social class, deciding to celebrate my true proletarian British background by henceforth dressing in a cloth cap and shoving a ferret down my trousers.

The reality was that I hardly noticed what my aunt was saying.