She wrote e-mails to Jem: ‘Something’s wrong but I’m not sure what it is … Sometimes I feel this strange panic that my life’s going in the wrong direction and I don’t have control over it – ridiculous, I know …’ Delete, delete, delete.

Later, of course, she could see it all clearly, and despised herself for being so wilfully blind, for choosing to continue as if they were just going through a slightly rainy patch, not through a storm that changes the landscape. That time they went away for a weekend to the Peak District to visit an old school friend. At the last minute, Adrian couldn’t come. He said the rehearsals had been suddenly rescheduled. He was sorry, he said aggressively and self-righteously, but what could he do. Irene drove the girls there on a Friday evening, in driving rain. Lorries sprayed water over the windscreen and headlights dazzled her. She squinted through tired eyes and drove slowly. Beside her, Sasha listened to a talking tape on headphones and behind her Clem and Aggie squabbled and asked when they’d arrive. They bought sandwiches and chocolate bars in a garage and the girls ate them and then, one by one, fell asleep, clutching crusts, mouths smeared with chocolate. She lifted them straight into their waiting beds, pulling off their shoes and jumpers, easing jeans down over their floppy bodies, and then sat up late drinking cheap wine with a throbbing head. She rang Adrian but there was just the answering machine.

‘Adrian?’ she said into it, for she was sure he’d be back from rehearsals by now. ‘Adrian, it’s me. Are you there?’ And Adrian, lying in their bed, heard her voice calling up to him from the hall, but he couldn’t answer. He was holding Frankie in his arms as if she were the most precious thing: it hurt him to touch her yet destroyed him to take his hands from her flesh. He put his mouth on the pulse in her throat and her hair fell across him, protecting him from the world. He rolled onto her where she lay, on Irene’s side of the bed.

That night, there was a violent storm and all the children ended up with Irene. She lay awake, one arm around Sasha, the other around Aggie, while at her feet Clem lay curled like a cat. She saw through the closed curtains the flashes that lit up the sky and listened to the crackling thunder overhead. She remembered how, when she was a girl, she had lain in her mother’s bed counting seconds between lightning and thunder, and she murmured to the children that everything was all right, just fine, wasn’t it cosy, lying in a warm room while rain clattered and the skies boomed, and when they knew they were safe. Utterly safe.