And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. Junot Díaz once said: “There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. But at the same time, in the stories I read and wrote as a child, the characters were all mostly white.

Recently, I was asked at a panel discussion to tell the chair about a time I thought I was white – a preposterous question. I rarely saw myself represented in these books – not that I knew that was an issue at the time. I loved books where kids were wronged and learned to fight back, books featuring cops on the edge, demon headmasters, mice with swords defending monasteries. I was a voracious reader, of Star Trek tie-in novels, thrillers, comics. The other thing we did as a family (minus Dad) was go to the library together. And here I was, a funny kind of Englishman who had emerged from two histories – yes, I failed Norman Tebbit’s cricket test in 1990 by supporting India to a crushing defeat against England, but I felt British, a Londoner and Desi all at the same time … an “almost”. That immigrant’s feeling of being temporary resonated with her. I remember my mum expressing a similar desire, to die in India (though she had never lived there), because it was the country of her heritage and near her sisters. Now, with British children and a life in the UK, she feels that dream has died.

Shirley talks about how “none of us expected to die here”, explaining that she and Desmond came to the UK for financial reasons, but the plan was always to go home to Guyana to die. In one episode, Desmond is in hospital and Porkpie and Shirley are talking.

It was the archetypal immigrant story: come here, make money, go home and live large. We all watched Desmond’s on TV, because the immigrant story of a Guyanese family living above a barbershop in south London reflected my mum and dad’s story – moving from Aden and Kenya to England – more than anyother programme. My parents worked seven days a week on a small business, both too tired to do anything other than feed my sister and me, insist that we did our homework, and remind us of our responsibilities: speak good English, study hard and be polite and grateful. My family did not do things together regularly.

The buddha of suburbia novel