We mustn’t let her get in a state again.

How’s Josie?

He sent back: Just home from biz trip to Stockholm but will telephone her tomorrow to see if I can take Josie to visit. Will contact you after. Josie seemed fine when we FaceTimed after school. He added: Is Maria OK?

The missed calls were from Vivvi too so he disregarded them, glad there was no apparent emergency behind the blizzard of notifications.

The WhatsApp messages were from Tilly, his nanny. The first said, Won’t be able to take Josie to school Monday or Wednesday but will be able to pick her up as usual.

The second contained an afterthought: Sorry. He was about to ask why she couldn’t stick to her agreed hours but he lost patience and simply told her what the financial effect would be.

She replied instantly. Thanks a lot. It was no doubt meant to be ironic but though she’d helped with Maria as well as Josie after school for the second week of Maria’s stay, it had been with a put-upon air, even when he’d been working from home and had shared the load. Their once-OK relationship was deteriorating by the day.

Wide awake now, he checked his work emails, glaring at his inbox in frustration because he’d got up to date at Arlanda airport but people worked from home on Fridays and wrote emails last thing about contract changes or tender requests to make it look as if they worked right up to the end of play.

In one email, Anders asked for a meeting early Monday about a concept rebranding and said the client wanted new promo material for all its thirteen leisure centres in four weeks. SLS must grab this opportunity with both hands meaning Nico will have to shoehorn this into his crazy schedule even though he has annual leave booked in the affected period.

He snapped shut his laptop and flopped back onto his pillows.