Matthew used to be in PR. Telling a story, spinning a story, knowing when to take the heat off one character and put it on another: such a transferrable skillset for the film industry.

‘I’ll call him right away,’ Siobhan says quietly.

Becky’s house is on the way to City Airport so she plans a quick trip home to collect her things. She arrives to the sweet, steamy scent of pancakes on the skillet. It is the food that Maisie and Adam make together every time he comes to stay, their most enduring ritual. They mix it up in terms of the recipe – made extra fluffy with egg whites, coconut and banana added, criss-crossed with candied bacon – but always they have pancakes.

Adam’s chocolate-coloured leather weekend bag has been dumped at the top of the stairs next to a pair of unlaced Campers, worn in and bashed up to the perfect fit and level of comfort. She can hear Maisie and Adam talking in the kitchen, giggling their way through the rambling conversations they specialize in. Adam and Maisie are masters of mimicry together: if Adam is Kermit, Maisie will reach for her best Miss Piggy. Neither of them would ever say it, but clearly they don’t like it if Becky tries to join in. So that’s become the tacit rule when they’re all together. Becky speaks with just the one voice; Adam and Maisie are multitudes.

She doesn’t have long to get her things and catch her flight, but she still takes a moment to enjoy the sound they make together, then peeks in to see that Maisie is back in her pyjamas, school done with. Right now she is moving photographs around the surface of their fridge, like pieces of a jigsaw. Every few weeks she takes new photos, prints and sticks them here, leaving only a loyal few old-timers by the handle. A faded colour one of her being bathed as a baby in the kitchen sink at the Hounslow house, just before the two of them moved with Becky’s mum. Another favoured photo is of the three of them together, Becky and Adam standing at either end of a low mossy log while ten-year-old Maisie steps along using a stick for balance, her great high-wire act.

Adam tips batter from a metal bowl into the frying pan.

‘Is there one for me?’

Adam’s face lights up when he sees Becky, and that’s a lovely thing. Not for the first time the thought rushes in: how might it be to be smiled at that way every night? To come home, kick off your shoes, and for there already to be conversation in the kitchen and somebody else taking care of dinner?

‘These are genuine buttermilk pancakes,’ he says. ‘How many d’you want?’