The night air against her cheeks came as a relief as she walked briskly towards the car, the same practical Estate they’d had since Tom traded in the Renault 5 for something more reliable, a few years earlier.

How long had it been since she and Sadie had last spent any time alone together? She longed for her suddenly, a visceral need for her daughter that yanked at her chest as she made her way down Highgate Road, the lamps reflecting against the ice on the road.

It was a Sunday evening and so she pulled up on the corner of Arlington Road, just along from the cinema. From here, she could see them gathered outside the cinema, directly opposite the Jazz Cafe, the very spot where Tom and she had met, in another lifetime, so disconnected from their current reality that the thought barely moved her.

For a moment, she watched them, her daughter and her friends, so far removed from the toddlers she had known vaguely from the local playgroups and parks where other mothers had looked on adoringly at their children while Gabriela distracted herself from the tedium of it all with imaginary emails. And yet now Sadie was seven, and all she wanted was to stop time, to hold her daughter in her arms and feel the need for her exuding from her daughter’s tiny body. Though of course by now it was too late.

‘Gabriela!’

Harriet’s expression was one of surprise as Gabriela moved towards the cinema where a small group of children were gathered outside and squatted in front of Sadie, pulling her into a hug that she quietly resisted, before doing up her coat.

‘Am I late?’ Gabriela asked in response, trying to put out of mind the suspicions she had had about Harriet and Tom, suspicions she had fabricated, no doubt, to make herself feel less guilty about her feelings for Ivan. Harriet shook her head, pushing her hair self-consciously behind her ears, her smile too bright.

‘Not at all. You’re perfectly on time. Sadie has been an angel, haven’t you, Sadie?’

Sadie nodded shyly, looking away.

‘Happy birthday,’ Gabriela called out to Millie, who was standing a metre away, whispering with another girl from their school whose name she couldn’t remember.

‘Well, thanks so much for having her,’ Gabriela said, wishing the light emanating from inside the cinema wasn’t quite so strong. ‘I’m double-parked so we’d better go. Bye, girls.’

‘Millie, Sadie’s going now – say goodbye,’ Harriet called out into the silence.

‘Bye, Sadie,’ the girls said in unison as they walked away.

‘Bye,’ Sadie said under her breath, moving slightly ahead of her mother towards the car.