Eventually he’d given in and gifted one to me for my thirty-sixth birthday, and he had reaped the rewards ever since.

‘And did Daddy clean the house as well?’ I asked as we reached the car park.

‘No.’ She looked at me like I was stupid. ‘Some woman came around last night.’

My scalp prickled. Some woman? At night?

Maybe he’d lied about not having an affair. Maybe he’d already met someone else and was simply biding time until he could move her in. I should be scrutinising everything, dusting my house for clues of another woman. Why the hell did I think I could trust Adrian to keep to our no-lovers-in-the-house rule?

‘So, have you met this woman before?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant as I opened the passenger door.

‘No, she was from some cleaning company, I think. Daddy gave her money when she was finished.’

While the cash part sounded legitimate and I felt smug that Adrian hadn’t managed to turn our home into a showroom by himself, I didn’t know any house cleaners who worked at night and I hated him for turning me into a paranoid nutcase.

I walked around the vehicle, climbed inside, clicked my seatbelt into place and turned my key in the ignition. ‘And what’s your babysitter like?’

‘Topaz? She’s not a babysitter, she just drives me home from school. She’s cool.’

‘And have there been any other visitors to the house?’

Payton frowned. ‘What kind of visitors?’

And that’s when I realised the trap I was falling into. My instinct was to fire question after question at her about the past week—was Daddy happier or sadder than usual? Did he talk about me at all?—but I wasn’t going to be that parent. I could still remember clearly my own mother bombarding me with similar questions every time I came back from a weekend at my father’s. I also remembered exactly how those questions made me feel.

‘Never mind.’ Feeling guilty about interrogating her I decided to treat her with a milkshake after all.

‘How was your day?’ I asked as we drove towards our favourite cafe.

That should have been the question I’d asked her in the first place.

She took a moment to answer. ‘It was okay. Prosecco was sick and the boys wouldn’t let me play soccer with them at lunchtime.’

‘Bummer. What did you do instead?’

‘Joined in the stupid skipping games all the other girls play.’

I stifled a smile. ‘And what about in class? Did you learn anything interesting?’

‘Not really,’ she said, playing with the straps of her school bag.

I fired a few more questions, but she answered mostly with only one or two words.

‘Are you not feeling well?’ I reached out to feel Payton’s forehead as we stopped at the traffic lights.

She stared wistfully out the window. ‘I’m okay.’

When we got to the cafe, I waited for her to pep up—usually we couldn’t get her to stop talking—but she simply stared into her caramel milkshake as she slurped noisily through a paper straw. I resisted the urge to again ask her if she was okay. How could any of us be okay when our world had been turned upside down?