‘Names were never my husband’s strong point. He registered the birth.’ Pax had a sweet laugh, but her eyes betrayed her, that flash of honesty women recognised in each other. Bad things had happened.

‘I’ll put Kester as his given name, then,’ Bridge whizzed on kindly, her sensors on high alert. ‘What’s his date of birth?’

It was two years and a day earlier than Bridge’s chunky monkey Flavia’s, her beautiful girl whose father had wanted to call her Jakub even after the three-month scan revealed that their firstborn was unlikely to ever score for Arsenal’s premiership male team. Aleš’s obvious disappointment that she wasn’t a son still maddened Bridge, one of her husband’s shortcomings that she stewed over in the early hours, woken by his snoring and unable to get back to sleep.

‘Address?’

‘That’s rather complicated. Kes’s father and I only separated last week so we’ve not entirely sorted the living arrangements out yet.’ Pax’s eyes gleamed – was that tears or elation? – and Bridge had to bite back a ‘fecking hell’. It made complete sense. The lay-by phone calls; being at the stud so often; the change of school; the electricity coming off her that was strangely uplifting, almost redemptive.

‘Changing his school is terribly bad timing, I know, but…’

‘We’ve a Walsh family saying: “There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing. And the clock’s ticking”,’ Bridge had carefully edited out two feckings.

‘I like that.’ Pax made a valiant attempt at a bright smile. ‘Thank you.’

Fearing her professionalism was already so highly compromised that her Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Office Manager of the Year 2015 would be stripped from her bedroom mantelpiece, she resisted the urge to draw her chair closer in sisterly support and ask how they were all coping, ears wagging.

Typing in two different addresses for Kester’s parents, Bridge sensed that today’s bureaucratic form-filling in a small village school office was Pax Forsyth’s Magna Carta. For all her careful, politic answers, hers was plainly a war-torn motherhood. And with every answer, she seemed to grow brighter, bolder, to claim ownership of a boy she’d only seen through the refracted lens of an unhappy marriage, her son’s five years on an open file: religion, ethnicity, disabilities, behavioural issues. Bridge, who had handled personal data throughout her career, felt like she was gathering something far more intimate than facts: pieces of a relationship that was being liberated. Pax’s independence was so new, it was as though she had to remind herself every few minutes that she was in control of her life, her ever-lifting mood catching as they covered meal preference (‘he’ll eat whatever the school serves and finish off everyone else’s’) and image permission (‘you can try, but it’ll be blurred because he won’t stand still’).

‘Mode of transport to school: private car, car share, taxi, bicycle, bus, walking?’

‘Is there a plane and tank option?’ she laughed. ‘Kes travels everywhere in an imaginary one or the other. Put walk, although we’ll have a screaming match about it.’