As we’d played together in the yard, the hot sun beating down on us, their laughter ringing in my ears, I could almost remember what it had been like years before, when the sound of my own children’s laughter rang through this old farmhouse in the Seventies and Eighties.

Maybe that was part of the reason the house was falling apart around us now. Just like me, it had been sustained by laughter and love, but there was little of that left in either of us these days.

I’d pushed away those thoughts and concentrated on what I could do and that was to make the rest of the day as pleasant as possible for Max and Ava.

They’d astounded me with their ability to eat so much ice cream and even when I’d warned them they’d end up with a tummy ache, they’d insisted on one more scoop. I didn’t have it in me to refuse them, so they’d each got one more, very generous, serving.

By the time their daddy came to pick them up, they were sitting on the sofa in my living room and we were looking through old family photographs. They loved that. Loved seeing their mother when she was a little girl. Seeing me with bad hair and worse glasses. Seeing pictures of their granddad, their uncle; people who were no longer a part of their lives but always a part of their family. Seeing us all in different, easier times.

Ava looked so much like her mother had as a young girl. Sometimes it would catch me unawares. It would almost feel as if Laura were back with me.

‘Look, Daddy!’ Ava called as he’d walked in. ‘Have you seen this picture of Mammy before? When she was my age. She’s reading one of the books from her room that I’ve read.’

‘That’s lovely, pet,’ he’d said, giving little more than a cursory glance at it before urging the kids to pick up their things and get ready to go home.

As he’d sat waiting for them, I couldn’t help but notice he still looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, as if there was something he was trying to tell me but couldn’t.

‘Is everything okay?’ I’d asked.

He’d sighed. ‘Just a long day,’ he’d said. ‘Maybe it’s just with it coming to the end of term, I’m almost as worn out as the children. A holiday’ll do us the world of good.’

‘It will,’ I’d said. ‘And no one deserves it more.’

He’d lifted the photo album from where Ava had left it on the table and started to flick through it, smiling every time he saw Laura.