Mr Estranged Husband sends photos of the boys, with captions, most days.

The captions are funny, the children look tired but happy; too much time spent having fun. They are tanned, they eat well.

My mother called today, and asked after the boys. I have never told her about the split; partly because we do not get on at all, and partly because I really do not want to dissect the dead for her benefit.

'Where are they?' she asks.

'They are in Cyprus, with their father', I reply. Defiantly.

It's been a year. I am bored with mincing my words.

'Ah.'

My mother is one of the worst parents I have ever known; hysterical, selfish, prone to guilt-tripping, and not a little stupid.

But she is not THAT stupid.

When I was small I wished that each and every one of my little friends' mothers were my own. I looked at them, with their nice, decent, middle-class clothes, I watched the effort they made to look good, to keep the house tidy.

I envied them. I longed to be adopted.

Nowadays, when my mother proclaims a love for my children that she cannot possibly feel, not knowing them at all, or when she professes the same love for me, when she made my childhood utter misery, I pull the blanket of indifference over my head.

And secretly rejoice at knowing that, no matter how guilty I feel, I am still a better mother than her.

Sometimes I forgive. Sometimes it is harder. But I always tell my boys that no matter how annoying she is (despite living a thousand miles away), if she didn't exist, neither would I, and neither would they.

A sobering thought.