Her beautiful daughter, with two other girls – girls she vaguely recognised from school events – and a woman she hadn’t seen before. One of her friends’ mother? Her eyes moved between Sadie and the girls, both looking so much older than her daughter, so much more self-assured, their long hair swishing as they moved across the pedestrian crossing, leaning in to each other, laughing at a private joke.

From this distance, unable to call out, watching her through the blacked-out glass, Gabriela could see Sadie’s unease, how she stood slightly away from her friends, not quite in with the joke.

Gabriela was oblivious now to the sound of Ivan’s voice in the seat next to her. Ivan, who had watched her first-born moving across the road in front of him and not known a thing.

Sitting up straight, craning towards the vision of her daughter disappearing on the other side of the road, being absorbed into the crowds, her nails dug into the seat so that when she pulled them away a minute later, they had left scratch-marks in the leather.

‘Gabriela, are you OK?’

When his voice came into focus, she realised she was leaning on the dashboard, her eyes unblinking. When she looked up and spotted her reflection in the mirror, her skin looked grey, her mouth contorted in a way that Ivan could not have ignored.

‘What’s going on, are you sick?’

‘Yes,’ she gasped.

‘Do you want me to pull over?’

‘No,’ she shouted, imagining her daughter, just feet away from them. Her voice was suddenly high-pitched and urgent. From the back seat she heard Layla, waking suddenly, breaking into a cry.

‘Keep going, Ivan, please, let’s just get there. Please don’t stop!’

‘Gabriela?’

Ivan’s voice was soft and muted on the other side of the door.

In the darkness of the hotel bathroom, the terrazzo tiles were cool against her back as she leaned against the wall of the walk-in shower.

Before she could push the thought away, Gabriela saw Sadie, the same age that Layla is now, in the bath at home, splashing her palms flat against the water and screaming with laughter. In the memory, she watched from the doorway, having just come in from work, Sadie and Tom oblivious to her presence.

She stood there watching for a moment and then she, too, laughed, at the sheer joyfulness of her daughter’s expression. Yet when Sadie looked up and saw her there, her face fell apart. Pushing herself to standing, sending water cascading over the side of the bath, she started to whimper for her mother, calling for her to pick her up. But there was no towel and so Gabriela moved out of the room to get one, and by the time she came back Sadie wouldn’t look Gabriela in the eye, let alone let her hold her.