Had Olivia ever even heard him tell the boys off before? Usually it was her who had to be the killjoy enforcer, while Mack got to play the fun guy all the time. She pressed the phone closer to her ear, suddenly desperate to hear the familiar sounds of home, acutely able to visualize the boys grappling on the carpet, all squirming limbs and shouts until Mack’s intervention.

‘Sorry,’ he was saying, ‘but it kind of illustrates my point. It’s bloody hard work being a stay-at-home parent, isn’t it? Knackering. I have never been so tired in my life.’

She swallowed, unable to say anything for a moment. Yes. Yes. Yes, to all of that. He had stepped into her shoes and realized just how thin the soles were, how tightly the toes pinched. But at least he had done that much, she thought. Some men she knew would have farmed their children off to the nearest amenable woman, rather than muck in and experience the coal-face for themselves. ‘It’s not easy,’ she agreed.

‘No wonder you wanted a break,’ he said with feeling. ‘Hold on, I’m just going somewhere a bit quieter,’ he added, and she could hear a door closing and muffled bumping sounds, presumably as he went upstairs. ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘Where do we go from here? Do you want to come home? Because if you do, I promise we’ll do things differently. I’ll help more with the boys. We could start them at pre-school – or get a childminder, if you wanted to go back to work. Or . . .’

Her head swam with so many questions and options; she felt overwhelmed with all the decisions that lay ahead. ‘Um . . .’

‘Otherwise, if you’re not ready to come back right away, then that’s fine too,’ he said into the silence, perhaps sensing her apprehension. ‘We could always meet you somewhere in the middle. Geographically, I mean, as well as in the abstract sense.’

A Peugeot estate had pulled in just in front of her and a man emerged from the driver’s seat to let a child out from the back: a wriggling, hopping child who was escorted round behind the car, where a woman appeared with a yellow potty in hand. There was a sticker from a zoo on the back windscreen of the car and two other small heads visible inside. Every family journey had a few emergency stops along the way, she found herself thinking. That was just part of the deal.

‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly wanting the comfort of a child on her knee again, the smell of her boys’ necks. Remembering how adorable they were when they woke up with their flushed faces and hair standing up in tufts. ‘Yes, let’s meet in the middle.’