I was genuinely perplexed. After the last few days, my mind had slowed down to a crawl. It wasn’t until I saw Olivia’s quick up-glance, furtive and guilty, that I realized something was going on.

“Liv,” I said. “Why is she crying?”

“Not now. Shh, darling, shh, it’s all right—”

“Nooo! It’s not all right!”

The kid had a point. “Yes, now. Why the fuck is she crying?”

Holly lifted her wet red face from Olivia’s shoulder. “Uncle Kevin!” she screamed. “He showed me Super Mario Brothers and he was going to bring me and Auntie Jackie to the panto!”

She tried to keep talking, but it got swamped by another tsunami of crying. I sat down hard on a bar stool. Olivia kept her eyes away from mine and rocked Holly back and forth, stroking her head. I could have done with someone to give me the same treatment, preferably someone with very large bosoms and a massive cloud of enveloping hair.

Eventually Holly wore herself out and moved into the shuddery-gasp stage, and Liv steered her gently upstairs to bed. Her eyes were already closing. While they were up there I found a nice bottle of Chianti in the wine rack—Olivia doesn’t stock beer, now that I’m gone—and cracked it open. Then I sat on the bar stool with my eyes shut, leaning my head back against the kitchen wall and listening to Olivia making soothing noises above me, and tried to work out whether I had ever been this angry before.

“So,” I said pleasantly, when Olivia came back downstairs. She had taken the opportunity to put on her yummy-mummy armor, crisp jeans and caramel cashmere and a self-righteous expression. “I think I’m owed an explanation, don’t you?”

She glanced at my glass, eyebrows going up delicately. “And a drink, apparently.”

“Oh, no, no. Several drinks. I’m only getting started.”

“I assume you don’t think you can sleep here if you get too drunk to drive.”

“Liv,” I said, “normally I would be more than happy to fight you up and down as many sidetracks as you choose, but tonight, I think I should warn you, I’m going to be sticking fairly closely to the point. How the sweet shining fuck does Holly know Kevin?”

Olivia started pulling back her hair, winding an elastic around it in crisp deft flicks. She had obviously decided to play this cool, calm and collected. “I decided Jackie could introduce them.”

“Oh, believe me, I’ll be having a chat with Jackie. I can see how you might just be naïve enough to think this was a cute idea, but Jackie’s got no excuse. Just Kevin, or the whole bloody Addams Family? Tell me it was just Kevin, Liv. Please.”