She’s made out that a project like this is a breeze. All you need is a vision and a knack for a bargain. With considerable effort, she’s managed to maintain the illusion that this is a fun-filled space in which she entertains her many friends. A space that’s simultaneously cosy, cool and romantic. The whole point had been to build a home in which she could live out ‘her best life’, as she’s hashtagged so many times.

God. If only people knew the truth.

Letting herself into the silent house makes her heart physically hurt and it occurs to her that what makes a home isn’t a building or a designer kitchen; it’s more intangible than that. Home is the atmosphere inside the walls. There isn’t a hashtag for the kind of atmosphere she feels right now. At least not one she could possibly share. She’s used to constantly plumping, preening and picturing the various nooks and crannies of her home, but, for the first time, she feels a sense of shame.

She remembers now how judgemental she used to be about the kids in Jamie’s class who came from a ‘broken home’ and how she’d encouraged him not to be friends with them, like they were unlucky or tainted in some way. Parents who’d divorced. Parents who were alcoholics. Everyone who’d distastefully outed their problems in public, lumped together in her judgemental view.

But it’s easy to break a home, it turns out. It’s taken until today for her to see how a home can appear to be so solid, but it’s made up of the invisible strands of goodwill and honesty by its occupants. Kindness is the thing that holds it together. Kindness is its glue. Without that, it breaks.

Trent hasn’t cleared up in her absence. There’s washing-up in the sink. Out of habit, she steps towards the dishwasher and opens it, but then remembers the last time she was standing right here … and why … and she goes instead to the study, grabbing a few empty bags from the hall cupboard on the way.

Her old iPhone is in the drawer of her desk. She takes it, along with some carefully filed paperwork about her phone contract, her passport and car insurance. She notices the brown edges of her prayer plant and goes to fill up the designer watering can in the loo. She comes back and drenches the poor plant, wondering whether she should take it with her. It’s not until that very moment that she understands that she’s not staying.

Full of grim resolve, she takes the stairs two at a time up to Jamie’s room. She re-decorated it when he left. It had been a disgrace, with its bongs and blimp-holed duvet cover, but maybe she should have kept it for him as it was. Isn’t that what proper parents do? Keep a shrine to their absent child? Like in the movies.

She tried to picture him in the room where he must be living now. She hopes it’s a nice one, but she doubts it. Since she’s been in Brighton, she’s learnt some sobering facts about what might have happened to Jamie and it’s starting to look bleak. She knows he’s not living somewhere permanent. It would have been wishful thinking, but he hasn’t taken out a mortgage, or registered on the electoral role. He’s not paying council tax, as far as she’s been able to find out. She has no way of knowing whether he’s even still in Brighton at all. She picks up the framed photo of him and then puts his school photo into one of the bags too.