‘I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW HOW IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FOR OUR FAMILY IF WE HADN’T HAD THE DISCOS’
with the disco ball and a half-deflated helium balloon in place over the sofa. She confirms that it’s more or less always like this, perhaps minus the tinsel curtain. Colour and fun are everywhere in the house, from the framed retro artworks filling every wall, to the pinball machine in pride of place. At the other end of the kitchen, a diner-style menu-board for the kids bears the words, ‘Be polite or no service.’
Leaving the children with the nanny, Sophie and I head out to chat on a bench in the park. She’s wearing an embroidered navy dress and a red fluffy cardigan, with red lipstick that has mostly worn off; at 41, she’s truly beautiful, with very pale green eyes. Despite what we’ve seen from her on Instagram, it hasn’t been an easy time. For one thing, there was the fall from her bike in June that left her in hospital with a gory head wound. When I mention it, though, she brushes it off with, ‘I cannot dine out on that any more.’ Then she adds, ‘I mean, I don’t recommend cycling off a towpath – it did hurt.’
But an accident that might have been a big deal in a quieter year seems rather trivial to Sophie in 2020. When we meet, her stepfather John – married to her mother, the novelist and former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis – has stage-four lung cancer. He died a few days after our chat. ‘He didn’t really leave the house for anything other than medical reasons since January, and I think that brought home the worry of what was going on,’ she explains. ‘I knew that this was something that was happening in millions of households. I do worry about all my parents – I say “all” because I’ve got step-parents as well – but I think really it was focused on John, because he’s so vulnerable. It’s such a weird, torturous thing isn’t it for human beings, if you say that hanging out with someone you love is the one thing that might actually endanger them? How can you wrap your head around that?’
She hasn’t been thrilled with the British government’s messaging around the virus.
‘“Stay at home” is clear and concise and all