‘It could be my comeback,’ she kept saying, pacing nervously in the kitchen. ‘It could make me.’

The trouble was, I had seen the script when she made me run lines with her, and the nurse, Nancy, was twenty-eight, described as ‘effortlessly beautiful in scrubs and no make-up’. On that show, no make-up actually meant loads of make-up, plus false eyelashes to show over your scrub mask. Still, I had watched it back home with Jenna, side by side on the old sagging sofa eating low-fat popcorn, and I was impressed. Someone I knew might be on television! The only time that had happened before was when Mrs Jackson next door saw someone get run over by a lorry on the ring road and went on the local news to talk about it.

Even Madison was swept up in it.

‘Do Nancy for me, Mommy!’ she’d say, and Abby would compose her face, widen her eyes, say something like, ‘Dammit, Dr Inglewood, I know you’re in charge here, but you’re making a mistake, and I’ll lose my job before I let this patient die!’ And Madison and I would clap. Abby was happy, for once, and the tension in the house seemed to ease, as if the walls had moved out several feet and more air had been pumped in. David even ate dinner with us a few nights, and sat by the pool on Saturday, watching Madison splash about in the shallows. I had Carson on my lap, playing with his toes to make him laugh. I loved that sound, an all-consuming gurgle that rose up from his little stomach.

‘Not going in?’ David said to me, peering over his sunglasses.

I was embarrassed by my milk-bottle-white British legs, my chipped home-done toenail varnish. No way was I polished enough for LA.

‘Oh. No, I’m not much of a swimmer.’

‘Nice to cool down, though.’ His eyes moved over my legs in the print skirt I was wearing, and I got up, pretending to show Carson the pool. As he babbled, excited by the light on the water, David winced. ‘Can you quiet him down, Casey? I’m working.’

Then Abby came out and wanted to go over her lines yet again. She practised them twenty times a day. She scowled at me over her big sunglasses. ‘Casey, I need you. We don’t pay you to lounge about by the pool.’

‘I’m watching the kids,’ I said, stung. I shouldn’t have answered back. She clacked over in her heels – ridiculous to wear round the house – and took the baby from me.