‘Do you mind me being here?’

‘No, of course not.’ I hand him more toast. He might have lost weight while he’s been away, but he certainly hasn’t lost his appetite. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

He smiles then. ‘Any Marmite?’

I grimace. ‘I don’t know how you eat that stuff.’

‘I don’t know how you can’t,’ he replies.

I smile at our well-rehearsed exchange. I go to the cupboard and pull out a large unopened jar.

‘First thing I went out and bought, when you said you were coming.’ I put it down on the table in front of him.

Will pounces on it, quickly unscrewing the lid and smearing large dollops on his toast. ‘Lovely to see you too,’ he says, grinning through a large mouthful.

‘Don’t eat with your mouth open,’ I tell him off. But of course I’m thrilled to see him too.

When you tell people you’re getting divorced, the first thing they say after ‘I’m sorry’ is to ask, ‘Do you have kids?’ And when you say no, they tell you you’re lucky. Because of course getting divorced when you have children adds a whole other level of complication and heartbreak.

Yet what people didn’t realize is that I didn’t feel lucky. Rather, I felt unlucky – not because David and I hadn’t had children together, as I’d been happy with our decision, but because of Will. Families are built in many different ways; I might not have given birth to Will or be his ‘real mum’, as certain relatives liked to point out, but the love I felt for him was certainly real. When my marriage broke up, I was scared it meant I wasn’t going to see Will any more. That by not being David’s wife, I wasn’t his stepmum any more. That legally, in fact, I wasn’t anything at all.

And because I wasn’t part of his family any longer, did that mean I wouldn’t be part of Will’s life any more, either? Last summer, after David left, I missed Will’s graduation; I hadn’t been invited. Too awkward, apparently. Of course I understood, but deep down I was terrified I was going to miss the rest of his future. This smart, funny, sensitive little boy, whom I’d cooked pesto pasta for on repeat, read Harry Potter with under the glow of his dinosaur lamp and cheered on from the frozen sidelines of a football pitch, was all grown-up now; he didn’t need me any more to patch up his grazed knees or his crushed heart after Sienna Jackson turned him down for the prom. Losing David was one thing, but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my stepson as well.

No one gives you a manual on how to be a step-parent, but I’d found it both wonderful and challenging. I never liked the title ‘stepmother’, with its wicked connotations, but as my and Will’s bond grew, I stopped caring about labels. I worked hard at carefully navigating my way through the every-other-weekends and holidays, slowly and sensitively building up our relationship so that it existed independently of his father. The divorce threw that relationship into petrifying jeopardy.