She should go home, she knew that. She should go home and just knuckle down to the job of being Mum, like every other woman managed to do so well. Do the sensible thing. There was still time, if she turned around now and headed back, to rip up the presumably garbled note she’d left and collect the boys from Brenda’s; Mack never needed to know about this alarming interlude.

She hesitated, her hands on the steering wheel, tears wet on her face. Home or away? she thought, stricken by doubt. Onwards or back?

Her dad’s face flashed into her mind, and then her brother Danny’s, but she ruled them both out in the next moment, because Cornwall was calling to her loudest of all, like the seductive song of a mermaid. The past engulfed her and there was no turning back. The boys would be fine without her; they would probably be better off in fact. And so she started the engine again, released the handbrake and carried on westward-bound, trying not to think about anything much at all.

It was only when she’d got as far as Exeter that a new thought struck her. It’s happened. I tried so hard to be the perfect mother this time, to do everything right, but instead I’m as bad as my own mum. In fact I’m worse.

Say what you like about Sylvia Asbury – and plenty of people had done, on the small housing estate where the family lived – but she had managed a while longer than Olivia at least. She’d notched up ten whole years of motherhood in fact, before washing her hands of the job. There had been no warning, no build-up to her departure – she had simply disappeared into thin air.

On the day it happened, Olivia had been annoyed at first, having to wait and wait outside school with her younger brother, as all the other mums arrived and took their children home. It wasn’t as if Sylvia had ever been particularly reliable – she was often late, for one reason or another, but on this particular day she simply didn’t come at all. They had stood there together, she and Danny, where they always waited near the netball hoop, and the playground emptied out until it was just the two of them left, the November chill sliding insidiously through their thin coats. It was a horrible feeling, being forgotten; to this day, Olivia still felt anxious having to wait for anyone, never quite able to shake off that worry of having been overlooked, left behind.