There wasn’t much Tara could do other than take the cool hand; being out-mannered by a ten-year-old wasn’t a good look.

‘Hello,’ she managed, and Molly gave her a brave smile that made Tara feel worse.

Keith looked between them, scanning their reactions, then, when there were no tears, he clapped his hands together. ‘Excellent! Now, I don’t know about you ladies but I am absolutely dying for a drink. What’s it to be? Cup of tea? Double espresso? Diet Coke? Scotch and soda?’

‘Cup of tea,’ said Molly. ‘It’s too late for espressos!’

It sounded like a running joke. Silly Daddy.

‘Cup of tea it is,’ he agreed. ‘Tara? Cup of tea for you?’

He’d set off walking towards the studio, and Molly and the dog were following obediently.

Tara watched them, frozen to the spot.

After a few steps, Keith turned back, and said, ‘Tara?’ in a way that made her feet move, despite the protest from her brain.

Inside the cool downstairs room of the studio, Keith sent Molly to the kitchen to ‘give Lloydie something to drink’.

His eyes followed the little girl as she skipped off, the dog at her heels; Tara watched him watching her, and felt as if she was falling through a trap door, and hated herself.

‘Oh man,’ murmured Keith under his breath, as if he’d forgotten Tara was there.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked, in a stiff voice that sounded like her mother’s stiff voice. ‘If you wouldn’t mind telling me?’

Keith ran a hand through his hair. ‘Sorry to spring that on you. Not the plan, as you might imagine. Molly’s my daughter, she’s ten. Sarah, her mum – well, that is a bit more complicated …’

Surprise, surprise, observed a waspish voice in Tara’s head.

‘… but we do our best to co-parent her between us. Sarah works as a make-up artist, mainly films and telly. I try to see Molly when I can – she comes to me for holidays and a weekend here and there. Time out, as it were. For both of them! She and Sarah are very alike, both very independent women …’

Tara stared at her father mutely. The emptiness in her chest was deepening with every new detail, scooping her out inside. She tingled with a strange, childish resentment that she’d have found shameful, had she been able to step away from it, but it was clinging furiously to her legs, very much like a furious, jealous ten-year-old, in fact.