And then I couldn’t take it any more – the confusion on Ellie’s face, and the way Mum was looking at me, almost pleadingly, wanting something from me that I didn’t understand and wasn’t sure I could give. So I did what I always did when the emotional temperature of our little family of three got too hot for me to handle: I went into the bedroom I shared with Ellie and closed the door.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay there listening to Ellie’s quiet breathing and thinking about Mum and Mark, and about what might happen if they really were serious about each other.

Mum being with someone would change things. However nice he was.

I’d always assumed that I would be the one who who’d rescue us. I had it all planned out. I would go to university and get a decent job and make some money, give Mum some security in her old age and help Ellie to get by in an adult world that wasn’t always kind to daydreamy, nightmare-prone girls. And now it seemed like Mark was going to be the one to do the rescuing.

After a while I went into the kitchen, so as not to wake Ellie, and started reading Macbeth again. I hadn’t said so to Mark, but I thought it was brilliant, probably the best thing I’d ever read. People always went on about marriage like it was something good, but Macbeth told you something different. It showed you that being together could bring out the worst in people, as well as the best.

I just hoped Mark wasn’t going to have that effect on Mum. She’d survived Dad, but it had been a struggle. Mark might look a whole lot better on paper, but if he turned out to be awful in some way that wasn’t currently obvious, I wasn’t at all sure that she’d be able to survive him.

Three

Jenny

Ava thought I was angry with her after the tea at that hotel in Kingston, but I wasn’t – I was upset. Upset for myself, a little, but mainly for Mark. He’d hadn’t expected all that much, to be fair, but he’d tried his best, and it meant so much for him. I’d tried to warn him… I’d told him that Ellie would be sweet and Ava might be all right but could be, well, unpredictable. But he hadn’t listened. He didn’t want to believe me; he’d hoped for so much more.

And Ava had a point. She could have made it more sensitively… but Mark hadn’t been paying Ellie proper attention. He couldn’t start off with them by playing favourites, even unintentionally. But how was he to know about the delicate balancing act of having two children – how you had to find it in yourself to give as much as you could to each of them, even if you felt like you were running on empty? Because otherwise, it wasn’t you they’d end up hating. It was each other.