Phoebe glared at her and Lily felt something shift between them, something she wouldn’t have been able to articulate even if she’d dared to try.

“I’m sorry you think I got it so wrong. I thought I was doing the best for everyone, for you and for me. I wanted to be a strong role model for you. I wanted you to know that you had choices, that anything was possible.”

“I know that, I get it. But when you’re little you don’t want a role model. You just want a mum.”

There was a hairline fracture in Phoebe’s voice that made Lily want to reach out, enfold her daughter in her arms, let her know that everything was going to be OK. But something stopped her. Because it was only in preparing to hug Phoebe that Lily realized she couldn’t remember the last time she had.

Her phone bleeped in her hand. She looked down, saw an email from her boss flash up, felt herself hesitate.

“Oh yes, Mum, you’d better look at that. Let me guess—work? You couldn’t possibly keep them waiting while you actually have a conversation with your daughter, could you?”

Lily flushed, felt her fingers itch with temptation, and then shoved the phone into her pocket. “I don’t know what to say, Phoebe. I did the best that I could. I’m sorry if it wasn’t enough.”

“Do not say you’re sorry. I’m sick of hearing it. You seem to think it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card but it’s not and I’ve had enough of it. I’ve had enough of pretending everything’s perfect when it’s not. I’ve had it with the pretense and the lies and the sham of it all. You go off to America, have a good trip, and when you come home you can act like none of this ever happened, just like you always do.”

Phoebe’s invective fired at Lily like bullets from a machine gun. Lily wanted to say something, to find whatever words would mend a relationship she hadn’t realized was so broken. But it was as though things she had thought were solid had begun to melt, and she was watching them leak away from her.

She felt her phone vibrate again in her pocket—once and then a second time—and the thought of those messages from work demanding an immediate response, even as they were in the process of discarding her, caused her fingers to find the phone’s power button and press down hard to turn it off.

Phoebe was still staring at her, waiting for a reply. I’m sorry, Lily wanted to say. I’m sorry I got it all so wrong. I’ve given all my time to a job that doesn’t even want me anymore and now there’s no way I can turn back the clock and do things differently.

A thought slid into her head: maybe it wasn’t too late to do things differently. Maybe she should embrace the redundancy, spend some quality time with Phoebe. Perhaps they could both spend the summer in New York with Daniel. And maybe, when she got back, she could look for a job that might give her more purpose, more meaning. Perhaps it might not be too late to rectify her mistakes after all.