Everyone was clapping, and David was hustling her towards the front.

‘There you go!’ Jacqueline handed them a bag which was surprisingly heavy. ‘Congratulations! So many steps! Well done! And now, the winners! Who are … Emily and Lionel!’

Tara swerved to avoid Emily barrelling up to the front with Lionel trailing behind her, in a fitting tribute to their walking pattern over the past weeks.

‘What did we win?’ she asked David, once they were back in their seats and Jacqueline was running through the Any Other Business.

David lifted out two bottles of Hero’s Midsummer Gin. ‘One each!’

‘Oh … good,’ said Tara, and across the room Hero waved, and then offered a little namaste accompanied by a smile Tara couldn’t quite work out.

‘We are still going to have the occasional spin around the park?’ he said, a little hesitantly. ‘I mean, I’ve just got these new trainers.’

‘Why not?’ She tried to sound casual. ‘I wouldn’t want to deprive the joggers making stories up about us.’

‘Good,’ said David.

Tara phoned Toby just before bedtime to ask if he could rearrange his trip, to make it to Longhampton a few days earlier than planned.

‘It’s Molly’s birthday on the seventh and Dad totally forgot. Her mum won’t be here either, so the poor kid’s celebrating her eleventh birthday with me and him. I’m going to have to find her an amazing cake or she’ll be discussing this with her therapist for years to come.’

There was a pause on the line.

‘Toby?’

‘Is that really your job? Birthday parties?’

‘Well, no, but who else is going to do it?’

‘Her mum?’

‘Her mum’s worse than Dad. Apparently she hasn’t even called since Molly’s been here. Molly’s still young enough to care about birthdays – she engineered a whole conversation about astrology just to make a point of telling me when hers was, so I suspect she knew both her parents were going to forget, or mess up somehow.’ Tara thought about Molly’s face, the tentative glances from under her lashes, checking Tara’s reaction, checking her point had got across.

‘I just want her to feel special,’ she said. ‘That she matters to someone.’

There was another long pause on the end of the line.

‘This is so you, you know, Tara,’ said Toby, and she could picture his face as he said it. Amused, but slightly annoying.

‘What is so me?’

‘You can’t resist looking after people. Even when you’re simultaneously furious about being made to do it. Amazing how you can do both things at once. Has your therapist ever worked on that?’

Not in so many words, thought Tara.

‘This is about being kind,’ she retorted. ‘It’s about remembering what it felt like to be ten years old, and pinballed around between fuckwit adults, and stepping in and doing something to make someone feel better.’