She ushers me towards Simon and the dining table, away from the kitchen. CNN is running a story about an eleven-year-old shooting his Indiana State Police trooper father in the buttocks after his video games were confiscated. I’ve barely sat down before Jonalyn is beside me with a mug of coffee, a bowl of muesli and a plate of red seedless grapes, neatly cut star fruit and banana.

‘That’s why you should always take them their Schubert,’ Simon says, pointing at the TV, blended kale caught between his teeth. ‘At least in the land of the Second Amendment.’

Lacy appears on the stairs as we’re finishing breakfast. She leans on the railing and groans. She’s still in her pyjamas, pink shorts with tiny white hearts sprayed across them and a grey T-shirt top with ‘POP the Bubbly’ on it in an effervescent pink font.

‘I get you coffee,’ Jonalyn says.

‘You’re a lifesaver,’ Lacy tells her, still with the tone of the groan. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and clears her throat. ‘Hey, I talked to Cee. All’s good in California. Not sure there’ll be much sleep there tonight with Disneyland tomorrow. But good other than that.’

Cedar and his grandparents are in a motel in Anaheim, the same place Wade and Colleen have stayed on previous visits. Burger joint on one side, burritos on the other, the magical land of Disney a walkable distance down the road. Lacy set her alarm for 10 a.m. to make sure she spoke to Cedar at 7 p.m. Pacific, before he went to bed.

She pulls out a chair and sits down at the table, her back to CNN.

‘I don’t know how you were a pilot,’ she says to Simon, ‘doing this to your body all the time. Jetlag, I mean.’

Simon’s mouth is shut, his tongue working at dislodging the kale. He makes an mmmm noise and nods. He swallows.

‘It never gets easy,’ he says, before his tongue quickly checks his now kale-free teeth. ‘Easier maybe, but not easy. There’s a reason senior pilots often go for shorter flights, or longitudinal flights.’ He indicates north-south flight with his hand, a chopping motion, up-down. ‘The 10.30 rule worked for me. If I got to somewhere and was in my hotel room by 10.30 a.m., I went to bed for a couple of hours. After 10.30 and I’d stay up all day, tough it out. But mostly I stuck to flying China time plus or minus two, once I was senior enough. Australian passengers quite like a Cathay pilot with an Australian accent, so . . .’ He shrugs. ‘The Anchorage flight’s particularly bad, if that’s any consolation.’