I pour boiling water from the kettle onto the peas, scalding the ice off them. I can feel the movement in the joints of my arm. Desperately, I try not to think of bones, the skeleton that lurks just under my skin.

‘And what about your day, Mummy?’ Charlie asks.

I manage to set the hot kettle back down before I have to reply. Charlie is eight years old. He is my son, just a child. I do my best to buy myself time, fiddling with the settings on the hob while I swallow hard, again and again, swallowing away everything I have seen this morning, shoving away those images that keep parading through my brain, forcing them out of our lives.

‘Mummy’s day was just grand,’ I eventually tell him.

On the hob, the water in the pan is already simmering. I turn down the heat – no danger now of it boiling over – and go out into the hallway, where Charlie can’t see me. I lean against the wall and take deep breaths. I tell myself to get a grip. As an excuse for being out here, I pick up Charlie’s school bag from where he’s dropped it by the door, the same as he does each time we get home, and take it back through to the kitchen to unpack. Ordinary, normal routines. They steady me.

In among his pencil case and the remains of his lunch, is a bright pink envelope, already open.

‘What’s this?’ I ask as I pull it out.

Charlie looks up from the iPad. His ears look red from my earlier touch. ‘A birthday,’ he says. ‘Molly in my class is having a party next month.’

I pull out the folded paper, bordered with balloons, and it’s true. ‘Molly invites Charlie,’ it says.

‘You’re invited,’ I tell him, and he nods. ‘Yep.’

I check the invite again. No one else has invited us anywhere for months. Molly. I haven’t heard the name before. ‘Is she new?’ I say. ‘New to your school?’

Charlie nods, and I think, Well, that explains it.

Even so, I stick the invite up with the SpongeBob magnet on the fridge, next to that letter with its blue and white NHS logo.

When the fish fingers are ready, we sit down together, me opposite him. He grins at me and, automatically, I smile back. I love Charlie. I love him so much, I never want anything to hurt him. Later, I tuck him into bed, set his glow light spinning and kiss his soft, smooth forehead. He is okay, of course he is okay, I can see that now. Look at how peacefully he sleeps. I’ve been making problems up in my mind.