I held out my hand for the ice-cream and soft-drink concoction. ‘You can have some fruit and cheese and crackers if you’re hungry.’

‘I don’t want stupid fruit. Daddy’s so much nicer than you,’ Payton cried, all but throwing the glass at me as she ran off. Her bedroom door slammed a few moments later and I stood there wondering what the hell had happened to my sunny-natured girl.

She’d always been a little precocious, but she’d never been so blatantly awful to me. If she or Saxon had even come close to such disrespect, Adrian had always pulled them up—‘Don’t speak to your mother like that!’

I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to ward off more tears. I couldn’t blame Payton for acting up—as much as it broke my heart, her behaviour was normal for a child who felt unsettled by her home situation. Why couldn’t Adrian see what his selfish actions had done?

At this thought, my despair once again gave way to anger—these days my emotions were constantly jumping back and forth between the two states—and I returned to my message. I hadn’t been home two minutes and already I had two major complaints to lodge with my husband. But as I stabbed my fingers on the phone screen, I wondered if pointing out Adrian’s shortcomings was really the best way to win him back.

No man liked a nag.

Swallowing my frustration, I deleted the message, finished unpacking the groceries and then took Charlie outside for a run around the garden. Once Sax was home, I’d get him to take the dog for a proper walk, but I didn’t want to leave Little Miss Disrespectful home alone. After throwing a ball so Charlie could fetch it about twenty times, the back door opened and Payton emerged, no longer wearing her school uniform but a Tottenham T-shirt, shorts and her soccer boots.

‘I’m just gunna kick the ball around for a bit before I do my spelling homework, okay?’ She looked contrite and I knew this was as good an apology as I was going to get.

‘Good idea. Do you want me to kick around with you for a bit?’

Her eyes lit up. ‘Really?’ Any kind of physical exertion was generally Adrian’s domain, but I wanted to make the effort.

‘Yep. Just let me go and change into my sneakers.’

Half an hour later, by the time I looked through the kitchen window to see Saxon raiding the pantry, I’d worked up quite a sweat. ‘I’m just going to talk to your brother,’ I told Payton. ‘How about you get your spelling done soon and then you can help me make a chocolate pudding’—her favourite—‘for dessert.’ I might not approve of sugary after-school snacks, but I wasn’t an ogre—I didn’t mind a treat after a healthy dinner!

Saxon had already disappeared, presumably to his bedroom, by the time I got to the kitchen. A bottle of orange juice left on the bench and his lunchbox dumped by the sink were the only pieces of evidence that he’d ever been there at all. Sax generally left his door open unless he was playing music too loudly, but today I found it closed. Not wanting to invade his privacy, I knocked.