Olivia closed her eyes briefly as the words started to crowd in around her head like angry faces. Then she typed a reply, only marginally longer than the first one she’d sent: I’m fine. Sorry. She pressed Send, then switched the phone off again fast before Mack could ring her, before she had to think about the boys asking, ‘Where’s Mummy?’ in puzzlement. Her heart pounded and she felt the toast churn greasily in her stomach as their confused little faces swam up anyway. Oh God, what had she gone and done? What was wrong with her?

Her head in her hands, she found herself breathing raggedly as if she’d been running or in a fight. Now she was imagining the mums at the Stay and Play sessions she sometimes took the boys to; the judgement in their expressions as they discussed her disappearance. ‘She did what? Just left them and drove off? What kind of mother does that?’ Mouths would be pursed, eyebrows lowered. ‘Always thought there was something a bit odd about her. Didn’t you? Something not right.’

Stop. Stop it! She put her arms around herself for a moment, as if she might break into pieces. Was this how her mother had felt? Had she sat alone tormenting herself with similar guilt and recriminations? Olivia wished she could somehow speak to her, woman-to-woman, and say, Okay, I get it now. I’m in that place too. It was not a good place, though. She felt terrible about everything.

She made another coffee and tried to push away her thoughts again, turn the white noise back up in order to block out the world. Deep breaths. The boys were safe with Mack. She had told him she was okay, which might stop him worrying so much and sending out the search parties. And, she reminded herself, this was the first real time she’d had to herself in three and a half years. Surely she was allowed a day or two to take a breather?

Face forward, her dad had been fond of saying when times were tough. Face forward and find the light. She had the whole day at her disposal. The sun was shining. So what should she do first?

A short while later Olivia was on the road, with the uncanny feeling that she had slipped down a wormhole and gone back twenty years in the blink of an eye. It was all so familiar, yet changed. She knew these streets so well that their maps were imprinted on her mind. She still dreamed about being here sometimes. And now she was back in person again for the first time in years.