This was her world now, though. ‘No need to worry about rushing back to work,’ Mack assured her whenever she broached the subject, to the point where his success and wealth had begun to feel like a prison door slamming shut on her. He thought he was being kind, doing her a favour, but in truth she was gripped by the queasy conviction that she was just not cut out for full-time motherhood. Oh, of course she loved the small rampaging tyrants who had totally annexed her life, she adored every inch of their grubby, wriggling bodies, right up to their flaxen-haired heads, but if she was honest with herself, she loved them most when they were asleep. At the end of the day, when they were lost to dream worlds, side by side in their junior beds, long eyelashes fluttering on perfect peachy cheeks, she felt her love for them unfurling, albeit in a creaky, reluctant sort of way sometimes, if they’d had a particularly punishing day. It returned every night, a well that never quite ran dry.

Yet, anyway. That was what worried her.

‘Ow! That hurt! Mummy!’

‘Get OFF! Mummy!’

She was jerked back to the present by indignant yells from the next room. She should probably go and do something about it, she supposed dully. Mack, meanwhile, would be halfway across town by now, the radio burbling cricket scores from his car speakers; he would have switched off thoughts of Olivia and the boys, and would be looking forward to his session with the lads. Left here to fend for herself, his wife was drowning, her head sinking beneath the surface, uncertain if she could make it back to shore again.

‘Mummy! He hit me!’

‘He hit me first! MUMMY!’

The boys deserved better than her, she thought. They deserved a proper, capable, fun mother, who wanted to build forts with them and bake biscuits and play football for hours on end in the garden. A laughing, energetic woman who didn’t keep dissolving into hopeless tears. Who didn’t feel half-dead with exhaustion.

‘MUMMY! Come and tell him!’

And yet here she was, lumbering to her feet like a weary old mule, knowing that her work for the day had only just begun. Knowing, too, that if this was her penance, then it was the very least she could do. ‘Coming,’ she said miserably. ‘Just coming.’

Izzie’s long caramel-coloured hair streamed out behind her as she freewheeled down a hill with Jack and Amelia on the way towards Falmouth. This was her Summer of Yes, the summer that was supposed to be changing everything – and yet here she was, forced into chaperoning her annoying brother and the girl he fancied. It was not going to earn her any points on the group chat leaderboard, that was for sure.