I sat down on the sofa and stared at her for a long time. She didn’t seem to mind. Then I pulled myself together and went into the kitchen and set about the business of figuring out what we were going to eat.

For once, looking after Daisy didn’t seem like a chore. It seemed like a lifeline, and I knew I was going to need it. I’d use it again and again and again, and eventually the day would come when what Mark had said wouldn’t hurt me any more.

After Mark had been gone for a month I wrote to Ingrid saying that she was welcome to remain part of Daisy’s life, regardless of Mark’s decision not to have any contact.

There was no reply.

I didn’t hear from her until two years later, by which time the divorce was done and dusted and I had come to think of myself and Daisy as belonging to a family of two. Mum had recently emigrated to live on her Australian boyfriend’s sheep ranch and I missed her more than I would have expected, though we talked about as often as we ever had. She retained her ability to offer up opinions I really didn’t want to hear, even when chatting via FaceTime from a distance of more than nine thousand miles.

By then, I’d learned to cope with being the only adult in the house. I was lonely, but you can get used to loneliness and I wasn’t isolated. The mum friends I’d made in the town hadn’t shunned me, and I gave as much time as I could spare to supporting Daisy’s school. We’d raised funds for a sensory room for children with special needs – a little haven with fairy lights and a bubble lamp where they could go to relax. Daisy and I had even been pictured in the local newspaper, and I’d wondered what Mark would have said if he could have seen us. Then I had remembered the scorn with which he’d rejected us when he was leaving, and was inspired to hate him all over again.

Naturally, my hatred for Mark was something I kept to myself. I wouldn’t have admitted to anybody how often I thought about him, or how vengeful I felt. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for thinking about Ingrid, but I wasn’t exactly fond of her either. The sight of her small, neat, crabby handwriting staring up at me from the doormat was all it took to reawaken my old resentment.

Daisy and I had just walked back from school. I scooped up the post, put the bills aside for later and took Ingrid’s letter with me as I followed Daisy from the kitchen to the living room. She settled on her favourite spot on the sofa and started playing with an app on her iPad that made sparkling noises as she scribbled on the screen with her finger. With the sound of a magic wand playing over and over again in the background, I opened Ingrid’s letter.