My scratches were stinging, and I instinctively felt for them and then stopped, so as not to bring attention to them. ‘Sorry if I seem a bit cranky,’ I said. ‘Daisy hasn’t had a very good morning. She’s a bit on edge. She’s not coping very well with Christmas. It’s too much change.’

‘I guess we all feel like that sometimes.’

Elspeth was looking at me sympathetically, but also as if she was speculating about something, as if I wasn’t quite behaving the way she might have anticipated. She hesitated, and I half expected her to say she should go, but instead she carried on standing there with the heater in her arms. Her cheeks, which were an enviably healthy pink, became a little redder, as if she was contemplating saying something profoundly uncomfortable.

‘Paula… I hope you won’t mind me asking this, and I know it’s a really sensitive subject… but have you heard anything from your ex?’

‘Mark? No, I don’t think he’s about to come down the chimney any time soon. Why?’

Elspeth grimaced. ‘Ah. I thought you might not know.’

‘Know what?’

‘Do you remember what we talked about in the café that time? About the baby?’

‘What, about the baby? You mean when I shocked everybody with a torrent of foul, abusive language? Yeah, I remember.’

A few months before, I’d been with Elspeth when I vented my fury over Ingrid’s letter, and the whole of Lily’s Tea Room had heard me. We’d gone there at Elspeth’s suggestion after school drop-off, and we’d got chatting about our families and it had turned out that Roger, Elspeth’s husband, was responsible for maintenance for the building where Ingrid lived, and had endured a couple of run-ins with her.

It was obvious from the way Elspeth told me this that Roger found Ingrid a complete pain to deal with, and that was what encouraged me to come out with the whole story. I’d told Elspeth that Ingrid had been one of the first people to spot that Daisy had problems, and had reacted as if it was a terrible tragedy, which was what Mark seemed to think too. And then she had always taken Mark’s side, no matter how appallingly he’d behaved, even when he’d washed his hands of us.

Finally, I’d told Elspeth how Mark had gone back to the woman who had been waiting in the wings all along, and who’d already, unknown to me, already had a child by him… and was now married to him and having another baby, as Ingrid had so helpfully told me.

Elspeth had reacted to all of this with a mixture of shock and indignation and concern, and it was a comfort to feel that someone was on my side, for once.

But this was different. She looked serious and apprehensive, and I wasn’t at all sure I was ready to hear what she was about to tell me.

She said, ‘I’m sorry, Paula. It’s sad news. The baby passed away. It was a boy, and he only lived for a few days. He had a birth defect, and he had to have an operation and didn’t make it through. Roger heard about it because of Ingrid. Apparently afterwards she smashed up some stuff in her flat, and he had to repair the plaster.’