Had Dad ever given her flowers? If he had, would there have been so many? I could picture him showing up late with a bunch of wilting carnations from the service station. But this… this kind of grand gesture… He would never have done it.

Mum fished a pair of scissors out of the drawer and started snipping the ends off the stems of the roses. Then she said, ‘Someday I think Mark might want to meet you. Both of you. He’s already heard a lot about you.’

Ava said, ‘You’ve been talking to him about us?’

‘Of course. You’re a pretty big part of my life.’

‘Well, that’s fast,’ Ava said flatly. ‘You cut this guy’s hair, and then you went out for lunch and now he’s sending you roses and he wants to meet your kids?’

Mum dropped the rose she’d just cut down onto the draining-board, a bit more vigorously than necessary.

‘I know it seems fast,’ she said. ‘But I think you’ll feel different about it when you meet him.’

Ava persisted. ‘When you cut his hair, did you go to his house?’

Mum hesitated. ‘No,’ she said.

Almost all of her clients were women and their children; she had a rule that she didn’t take on men as clients unless she knew them, or had a personal introduction. And she would never go to the house of a man she didn’t know.

‘Then where did you cut it?’ Ava persisted.

‘There’s no need to interrogate me,’ Mum said stiffly. ‘If you must know, it was some time ago. When I was still working at a salon.’

Ava and I looked at each other. Mum carried on trimming the roses. Ava said, ‘But Mum, you haven’t worked in a salon since Ellie was born.’

Mum ran a couple of inches of water into the vase, tore open the sachet of flower feed that had come with the roses and poured half of it in.

‘No,’ she said.

‘And Ellie is eleven.’

Mum picked up a handful of roses and stuffed them into the vase. ‘Yes.’

‘So you must have cut this guy’s hair at least eleven years ago.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Mum filled the jug with water. ‘Well,’ Ava said sceptically, ‘that must have been quite a haircut.’

Mum shrugged. ‘We hit it off. Sometimes people open up when you’re cutting their hair. You might be surprised by the things they come out with when you’re standing over them with a pair of scissors.’

Ava shuddered. ‘Most people are just dying to talk about themselves. Any excuse. You’re a captive audience. Are you sure he isn’t married?’

‘He’s definitely not married. Any more questions?’

‘Is he rich?’

Mum took her time answering this. She stripped a couple of leaves of one of the rose stems and said, ‘Yes. Compared to us, anyway. He’s not got a yacht or anything, but he’s comfortably off. He’s a good man, Ava. You just need to give him a chance.’

‘You seem to have decided that already,’ Ava said and went off and shut our bedroom door loudly behind her. Not quite a slam, but near enough to show that she wasn’t at all happy.