It was all so fast. A whirlwind romance was probably great if you were in it, but if you were on the sidelines, being spun round and round without the power to stop everything and step off – well, you were much more likely to feel queasy than to enjoy the ride.

Soon after the trip to see Romeo and Juliet, something that was both inevitable and unpredictable happened: Dad got in touch.

There were other people at school who had parents who were separated or divorced, and they all seemed to have these set-ups where they saw the parent they didn’t live with every weekend. When I’d first realised that was usually how it worked, I had been absolutely astonished. Then I’d felt cheated. Then I’d figured out that spending more time with Dad wouldn’t actually have made anything any better. Anyway, if he didn’t want to see us, I didn’t want to see him.

There was a small chance that seeing Dad more often would have changed our relationship with him – made it more regular, part of the routine world of cornflakes in the morning and homework in the evening and a fixed, sensible bedtime. But Dad wasn’t fixed or regular or routine or sensible. He lived for the moment and the moment blew him around all over the place, and when he came to see us our lives became unpredictable too.

I resented him for that and secretly loved him for it too, because what child doesn’t want to see the usual order of things undermined? He was dangerous, though. He couldn’t be trusted; he was unreliable. He’d say he’d come at six and rock up at nine; he’d forget birthdays and compensate by sending huge, extravagant gifts that weren’t quite right – dolls for Ellie that might have been suitable for a much younger child, clothes for me that were expensive but not the kind of thing I’d ever wear. He was dangerous because if you just let yourself love him, if you ever forgot to brace yourself for disappointment, you’d be crushed.

Compared to Mark, though, he was a known quantity. So when Mum rapped on our bedroom door and said he’d been in touch, I was pleased. More than that, I was relieved.

I don’t know what I was hoping for, really. Maybe I had some vague idea that Dad was going to help me get my bearings on Mark. Like he might be able to reassure me: Oh, don’t worry, it’s bound to fizzle out. Or well, I always knew this was going to happen, Ava, but don’t worry, I’ll always be a part of your lives, and I’m going to be a changed man from now on and come see you both every weekend, like all those other divorced fathers.

Maybe what I really wanted was some push-back. Who is this creep? I don’t like the sound of him at all. Don’t you worry, Ava, I’m going to see him off.