Looking after Daisy was so exhausting, and so demanding, that I didn’t spare much thought for Mark. But when I did, I loathed him. My feelings hadn’t faded at all. I still longed to prove myself to him somehow… to show him his daughter in a way that would make him sit up and take notice and be sorry. But at the same time, it seemed very unlikely that I would ever be able to. It was just a fantasy. Chances were I would never see him again.

But then I heard something about him that made me think again about my daydreams of making him repent.

It didn’t cure me entirely. I was still angry. After all, I couldn’t be angry with Daisy, and all that emotion had to go somewhere. But still, it forced me to set my feelings aside. The desire for justice for my daughter remained, but it was dormant. Even I, with all my capacity for rage, couldn’t long for vengeance on someone who had suffered so much, and who’d gone through a loss that I shied away from imagining.

On the day I found out about Felix Daisy had just blown up at me outside the supermarket in Kettlebridge.

Sometimes I could get away with popping into the shop with her, and sometimes I really couldn’t, and it was impossible to predict with any reliability whether it was going to be a good day to make the attempt or not. I did as much of my shopping online as possible, but sometimes things ran out, and on that particular day I’d had to pay a cheque into the bank – also potentially tricky, though the self-service machine was a lifesaver – and then I’d tried for the supermarket as well. It was stupidly busy – the next day was Christmas Eve – and Daisy kicked off even before we got inside. The only way to calm her down was to give up, take her back to the car and get out of there.

Back home, I got Daisy settled with her iPad and dabbed antiseptic cream onto the scratches on my neck. My heart rate had just about returned to normal when the doorbell rang. I stomped off to answer it, prepared to be exasperated, and had to quickly adjust and put on my nice-person face when I saw who it was at the door.

It was my friend Elspeth, whose daughter Lydia had been at pre-school with Daisy and had ended up in the same class as her at primary school. The girls weren’t exactly friends – Daisy didn’t have any friends – but it was as close as Daisy got. Lydia tolerated Daisy, though she also seemed puzzled by her, and spoke to her slowly and patiently, as if she was a much younger child.

Back in the pre-school days, I had once turned up to collect Daisy to find her curled up on the carpet, sound asleep, while a group of little girls played tea-parties with plastic cups around her. One of them had covered her with a dolls’ blanket; Amy had told me that it was Lydia. Elspeth was kind too: she invited us round for playdates even though Lydia couldn’t really play with Daisy, and had obviously been warned not to expect to.