She rubbed his head affectionally. ‘I guess not. I’ll go and see if he wants something later on.’ She sat down with the rest of her family, laughed and talked with them, but the frown lines between her eyes didn’t fully disappear and Wren was firmly on her mind.

Once the dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, Vanessa decided that enough time had passed for her try to speak to Wren again. Unfortunately, he had other plans; she could hear the music, the bass thumping from the hallway. Clearly he didn’t want to be disturbed. She left him to it and went to put Ty to bed. She tucked him in and gave him a good-night kiss. ‘You know Mommy loves you, right?’

She tickled him and he giggled. Ty was so easy to understand, not unlike how Wren used to be.

Vanessa crawled into bed beside Billy, their bedroom at the other end of the house to the boys’. Vanessa loved her little three-bedroom house, it had become their home

‘I think there’s something wrong with him, Billy.’

Billy sighed deeply. ‘Love, you need to take it down a notch. Is he acting out? Sure. Is he fighting with his friends? Yup. But that’s a normal part of being a teenager, don’t you think? You have to give him some growing room to work through these issues on his own. He’s not always going to have his parents around.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ she laughed. Billy smiled and gently started stroking her long hair. He kissed her on the forehead, her cheeks, down her neck and then finally, her lips. It felt so good to be touched by him. She hadn’t known that their relationship could be like this, otherwise, she joked to him, she would have married him much sooner.

They made love that night, slow, in-sync lovemaking. Billy awoke in her something that she’d never experienced before. He knew her inside and out, light and dark, and accepted every part of her.

‘I love you, Ness. Always have.’

‘Love you too. Besides my boys, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, to us. Before we became a family, I never thought I’d find this. I came with two children and a fucked-up ex-husband. Who’d want to take on that?’

‘I did, still do. Besides, neither of the kids has given us any trouble and Mark is in the distant past.’

At the mention of Mark, a shadow dropped over her. She rolled away onto her back.

‘I’ve upset you.’ Billy knew her so well.

‘No, I just don’t like talking about Mark, you know. Talk about him too much and he’ll appear, bothering us again. I can’t handle going through all that bullshit.’

‘Has Maggie heard from him?’ he asked, still continuing to dwell on the subject.