Oh God, and wasn’t this exactly how it had been with Dom too – stressful navigating, as he ended up becoming crosser and crosser at her flakiness and lapses of concentration? Did she want a man at the steering wheel groaning at her incompetence all over again, and making her feel useless? No. She bloody well did not. ‘I’ll drive on the way back, by the way,’ she said lightly, feeling the need to assert her own ability. Pigeonholes were for pigeons.

‘Say no, if you value your life, George,’ Jack said immediately from the back seat.

‘I want Daddy to drive!’ Seren chipped in piously.

Em opened her mouth to protest – after all the effing football matches she’d driven Jack to and from as well – but George was too quick for her. ‘I’d love you to drive back,’ he said, with a sideways wink. ‘That is very kind. What am I doing at this roundabout by the way?’

Once again Em had to stab frantically at her phone. ‘Whoops. Sorry. Er – straight ahead! Is that the second exit? Yes – second exit,’ she babbled. ‘I hope that’s not a smirk at me, mate,’ she added, seeing Jack’s grinning face in her sunshade mirror.

‘As if!’ he cried, the innocent.

‘He’s texting his girlfriend actually,’ Seren replied smugly on his behalf. ‘I saw.’

‘What? Who?’ cried Em, while Jack swung away in irritation, saying, ‘No, you didn’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Yes, I do. And you put kisses. He put kisses on his message, I saw!’

‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Em, wondering if the girl in question was Maggie’s daughter. She’d put the thumbscrews on him later, try to find out. In the meantime Seren really needed to learn that nobody liked a grass. ‘Look, we’re nearly there, let’s just—’

‘Am I following signs to the docks here or . . . ?’ asked George, somewhat impatiently.

‘Er.’ How had this happened again? ‘I’m not sure, sorry. Let’s guess at . . . yes?’

‘You do know the boats only go every two hours, don’t you? I mean – if we miss this one . . .’

‘We’re not going to miss this one. I’m on it, don’t worry. See that parking sign? We’re turning off there. No – the one on the left. That one!’

To think that she would look back later on at this car journey with something bordering on nostalgia: a time when all she had to worry about was kids bickering, and the prospect of missing a boat trip, because of her crap navigation skills. Because what she didn’t realize was that the day was about to get so much worse. Her entire holiday was about to collapse like a house of cards around her, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to prevent it falling.