Problem was, I couldn’t get Ava to go easy on him just by telling her to change her behaviour. She’d never been one for just doing what she was told. She had to understand why, or she’d resist all the way.

I’d always been in awe of my oldest daughter: she was so smart, so strong-willed. So unlike me. I had learned long ago to avoid confrontations with her. It just didn’t help. I shouldn’t have spoken sharply with her in the ladies’ after she’d snapped at Mark; she was as stubborn as anything, and I’d only got her back up.

It was just so frustrating, and it only made it worse that I understood how she felt. Because as far as she was concerned, why should she welcome this new man who’d suddenly walked into my life, and hers and Ellie’s by extension? And she’d always been protective of Ellie: yes, she was prickly with her, but the moment she thought someone else was doing Ellie down, that was it.

I had to speak to her. I’d have to watch what I said… but there had to be some way to make this easier for her.

But I was busy the next day – six appointments, scattered all around our part of the outskirts of London, with the usual mix of clients: kids, older ladies, new mums, working mums. And as usual, being with other people, talking, working, keeping busy, helped put it all out of my mind.

One thing no woman ever has enough of is time. So I’d always been in demand, right from when I started freelancing, back when Ava had just started school and Ellie was a baby, and I used to cart her round to the appointments with me. People knew they could slot me in for a cut and colour between one thing they had to do and the next.

Also, they trusted me – they knew they’d come out looking pretty much the same as before, just a bit neater and possibly less grey. And I had a reputation for being good with kids. I enjoyed the work, always had – it was really satisfying, all of it, the combing and cutting and drying, painting the colour onto the foils, the chatting, and afterwards, seeing them look pleased with what I’d done.

Just lately, though, it was giving me a few more aches and pains, which was an occupational hazard: all that stooping and twisting. I’d started to wonder what it would be like to still be doing this when I was fifty. Or sixty. And it had occurred to me that there might come a day when I might not be able to do it any more, and I had no idea what I would do then.

But then Mark had turned up, and suddenly figuring out a plan B didn’t seem quite so urgent any more.

Because there he was, so different to Sean, so keen, and so perfect.

No dating algorithm would have matched us – he ticked all kinds of boxes I didn’t tick, being well-educated, professional, a home-owner, and a higher-rate taxpayer, something I’d never managed to become however many hours I worked. But we had something even more important than all that in common. We both wanted a second chance, and we both had exactly the same ideas about what that might involve.