‘No rush. Perhaps let’s not,’ says Adam, when she asks him about it. ‘She’s my Maisie now. That’ll never change now.’

Maisie is at school the day Grandma Janette dies.

Becky finds her, lying on the carpet of the living room.

Everyone grieves, a layer of their Russian doll family removed.

Bill does not come to the funeral.

Adam’s parents do, of course. They organize most of it.

Becky thinks she is to blame for breaking up her parents’ marriage, for her mother having to take on double shifts to pay the mortgage, for keeping her up through long nights of baby-screaming and later bed-wetting. For everything that caused her heart to give out.

Becky cries and cries and hugs Maisie tighter, with all her love: this precious child who has come into their lives at such a cost.

When Maisie has just a few more years of primary school left, Adam sits Becky down to talk about the future.

‘I’ve got money now,’ he says. ‘Not endless money, but enough so if you want to retrain or something you can. I can pay for some childcare. And there’s my mum and dad.’

‘I can’t have you pay for my whole life, Adam. It feels really wrong.’

‘That’s the point. I want you to find something you really love to do so you can feel less reliant on me. I don’t want you to feel like you need me around. I want you to want me around. It’s honestly not about the money.’

‘I just … Whatever you say about it, I find it hard to get past how much you’ve done for us when you didn’t need to do any of it. Wouldn’t life be easier for you if you didn’t have to spend time visiting us?’

‘I don’t have to do anything. Maisie’s the best thing in my life, Becky. She’s not an obligation. She’s not an inconvenience. I absolutely love her, more than anything in the world.’

She is so relieved to hear him say it.

She knows it’s true, but she likes to hear him say it from time to time. It keeps her feeling safe.

Soon, Maisie and Becky move from her old family home into a new place, a maisonette near good schools, and closer to where Adam lives in Shoreditch. Becky takes adult education courses and applies for internships with heartfelt letters written to those people whose work she admires. She’s still young, only twenty-four herself. Somehow, between them all, they make it work.