Driving was the worst. Madison’s school was luckily not far away, and not on a freeway, but still down a wide and fast road with six lanes. Once I had dressed and fed both children – often without having fed myself – I would put them in the car and then edge out on to the main road. On a bad day this could take five minutes, horns blaring at me the whole time, and me desperately reciting to myself drive on the right, drive on the right, and Madison would sigh every time I nervously braked. I drove so slowly that everyone beeped at me, and I wasn’t totally sure how to read the lights. You could turn left on red here, David had told me, but I didn’t entirely believe him. I dropped Madison off in the parking lot – sometimes she wouldn’t get out of the car, and once I had to drag her, since I was late for Carson’s paediatrician appointment, under the disapproving eyes of various mothers. It was a ‘no contact’ drop-off so I rarely saw any of the parents, who were mostly women in huge sunglasses behind the tinted windows of Jeeps. Many kids were dropped off by younger women, probably nannies, and I’d thought I might make some friends that way, but we weren’t allowed to linger or else a guard in a tabard came out to move us along. The guard carried a gun. At a primary school – except they called it elementary. Every time I used a British word Madison gave me a disgusted look and corrected me.

After this I usually went to the supermarket – grocery store – navigating the aisles, shocked at the expense of everything and the thousand varieties of sweets, biscuits, mayonnaise. Everything you could want, but little in the way of actual ingredients. I was having to learn fast how to cook, otherwise we didn’t eat. Then I took Carson home. Abby had usually gone out to wherever she went all day: the gym, the mall, a coffee shop where it was rumoured casting directors got their caffeine fix. Entering the house and realising she wasn’t there gave me the most enormous feeling of relief.