An image flashed into Jess’s head: standing in the school corridor, forming a circle with her three best friends, opening their brown A4 envelopes in unison, and pulling out the single sheet of white paper containing the results of their A-levels. Jess hearing her friends squeal with delight and relief as she watched her own future change before her eyes: not the straight As she needed for her place to read English at Cambridge but an A, a B, and a C—as though even her grades were showing her just how rudimentary her learning was—that might just scrape her through Clearing to somewhere half decent if she was lucky. She remembered feeling—as if she were back there now, standing in that corridor lined with photographs of the sixth formers’ disco—that all her ambitions were swimming away from her toward a distant horizon she could never hope to reach. Ambitions to get to Cambridge, secure a role on the student newspaper, learn the journalistic ropes. Ambitions to forge connections, work hard, give herself the best chance possible of achieving her dream to edit a national newspaper one day. Jess had only just turned eighteen but she had understood, even then, that a place at Cambridge was a ticket not just to a first-rate education but to a first-rate contacts book that would service the rest of her career. A ticket she had torn up by failing to get the grades she needed.

“It’s only fourteen months, Mia, that’s all. Just get the A-level grades you need for Cambridge and you’ll be set up for the rest of your life.”

“Fine, Mum. I’ll finish my English essay tonight. But I was thinking . . . I know I’m already doing art A-level but I honestly do find it really relaxing, and I’ve found this brilliant Saturday morning art class at the Royal College. It’s only a couple of hours a week and they’ve still got a few places left for the summer term. I was thinking of putting my name down.”

Jess heard a loud sigh and then realized it was hers. “Mia, haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying? You can’t possibly take on something else when you’re so overloaded. You’re already doing an extra A-level and it sounds as though you’re struggling to manage that. You’ll have plenty of time for hobbies when you get to university.”

There was the sound of a cupboard door opening and closing, water running into a glass, three long gulps. “But this course looks really good. And I can’t study every second of the day. When I spoke to Dad about it he thought it was a great idea. He said I needed an antidote to exams, that it would do me good to relax a bit.”

Jess felt her jaw lock, her back teeth grinding as if in a pre-emptive strike against saying something she might regret. She could hear Iain’s voice in her head, his infuriating nonchalance unpicking all the maternal work she had done over the past seventeen years. It had been the same ever since he’d left: him charging in on a white horse to play the parental savior whenever Mia felt irked about something. Taking Mia for fun days out a couple of times a month, flitting in to whisk her away for the occasional weekend during the long summer holiday without any consideration for how Jess would manage the remaining weeks while she was at work, leaving her to create a military-style schedule of friends, babysitters and, most often, her mum to fill the breach. He behaved more like an irresponsible avuncular family friend than a father. And yet, in spite of all that, to Mia he could do no wrong: she would return from days out with him questioning why Jess wasn’t as easygoing and fun as he was. Sometimes Jess couldn’t help wishing that Iain had abandoned them completely rather than offering this occasional malign interference, that he’d disappeared to the other side of the world and had never been heard of or seen again.