She walked for more than an hour, with half a mind on the children, looping back towards the direction of home before she reached Kenwood, sneaking past the tennis courts and looking in, reassured to see Sadie and Callum in the throes of a game.

By the time she got home it was nearly eleven thirty. Filling the kettle, she sat for several minutes at the kitchen table with nothing but the familiar white noise of Radio 4 wrestling with the sound of the boiling water.

Standing briefly to make coffee, she pulled out the laptop from her bag and settled at the kitchen table, before logging onto a job site. After a few clicks, she reached the words ‘Past employment’, and instantly slammed the screen shut. Standing, she walked to the counter, held onto the worktop and screamed. The sound of her own voice soothed her and when she turned, for a moment she could see her father seated on his reclining chair facing the garden.

Quite clearly, she could recall him sitting for hours on end after they had moved in without saying a word. The thought squeezed at her chest, constricting her breath, and she realised how much she missed those days, however painful they might have felt back then. The simplicity of that contact, the complicity of the silences, the lack of expectation on either side.

The sound of knuckles rapping against the square of frosted glass at the end of the hall cut through the silence, and she took a sharp intake of breath. Applying the chain, she opened the door a fraction and saw the postman’s face looking expectantly back at her.

‘Oh, thank you,’ she said hastily, opening the door properly and taking the pile of post from his outstretched hands.

Feeling her breath return to normal, she leaned back against the glass. Marching back to the table, she picked up her keys and headed out into the sun, surprised by the overwhelming brightness as it hit her.

She walked and walked until it was time to collect the children. As she approached, Sadie and Callum were immersed in a cool-down activity and for a few minutes she stood and watched them from a distance, a twinge in her heart at seeing them in a way that a parent rarely does; that brief insight into the person they are, without the family unit to prop them up. Callum smiled coyly, shrugging his shoulders as he returned the ball to one of the older boys. Sadie suddenly looked so much older, so self-contained, as she absent-mindedly plucked the strings of her racket between shots.

‘Where did you go?’ Sadie asked as they walked home, stopping for an ice lolly in the newsagent’s on Swain’s Lane.

‘Work,’ her mother said, her voice fracturing, but only for a split second.

Sadie was quiet and when Gabriela turned to her she was looking at her already, her expression unreadable.

‘Why?’ she asked, smiling quizzically.