Forget all that, though. This year’s holiday was going to be great. Without the day-to-day hassles of work, school and domestic chores grinding her down, she would be a new Em, albeit one in several different variations. She’d be the easy-going, non-nagging mum for Izzie and Jack. She’d be the fun-loving girlfriend without a care in the world for George. For Seren, she’d be kind and considerate and infinitely patient. For Charlotte, she’d be the gracious hostess, relaxed and at home in her beautiful surroundings. Ha! See, maybe this would be okay after all. In fact, in many ways it was probably better for Charlotte to see her here in the gorgeous cottage, rather than in her scruffy, messy Cheltenham home, which almost always had somebody’s sports socks or work tights drying on a radiator, and rude messages chalked up on the kitchen blackboard.

‘They’re here,’ Jack called just then, from where he was perched on the windowsill of the living room.

Em had had to contend with various scathing complaints from the teens about Briar Cottage’s dodgy Wi-Fi and the even worse phone signal since they had arrived twenty minutes ago, but apparently her son had now discovered the best place in the house in which to keep up with his social life, which was a relief to everyone. What was more, the spot seemed to double as a lookout post.

‘Hooray,’ she replied, unloading her last carrier bag in the kitchen. You never knew, with these holiday cottages, if they were going to welcome you with a bottle of wine in the fridge and assorted tasty goodies, or if they would be the stingy type of place that didn’t so much as leave you a single toilet roll. She well remembered the horror of having slogged all the way up to the Lake District one summer to a house in the middle of nowhere, to be greeted in the latter way, and had almost burst into tears at the realization she’d have to get back into the hot sweatbox of a car once more, before being able to make herself a much-needed cup of tea with milk.

Since then she’d always travelled as if preparing for siege conditions, squeezing bags of bread, fruit and tinned beans into the boot of the car, packing toilet rolls and pasta packets around the children as if rearranging Tetris pieces. Wouldn’t you know it, this was the more generous kind of holiday cottage, and she had been gratified to discover paper bags containing a loaf of fresh bread and some sultana scones awaiting them on the table, along with milk, butter, eggs, jam and a decent-looking Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge. There, see! she’d thought, with a slightly pathetic stab of triumph. She might have been drunk when she’d booked this holiday, but her instincts had guided her to a good place at least.