With a last goodbye, she set off, driving home extra-carefully with Bunny in mind; keeping well under the speed limit, checking her mirrors with exaggerated deliberation. You never knew when an accident might happen – when a freak skid would send you flying, when a loving husband would walk out of your life. However hard you tried to keep your world safe, there was just this unknown random element that could topple you without warning. As she parked up and let the kids into the house, it struck her that the really crucial thing was to make the most of what you had while it was still there – and not to allow bad feeling to fester between loved ones.

And so, just as soon as she’d put the oven on and slid two supermarket pizzas inside (look, she was going to start cooking from scratch properly again soon, all right? Definitely next week), she dialled her mum’s number for what felt like the hundredth time since Saturday. If Alison was getting sick of her calls, then so be it, but Robyn felt more determined than ever to put things right between them. Not really expecting her mum to pick up, she had a speech prepared for the voicemail regardless, about how important family was, and how much she valued Alison, as well as apologizing again for what she’d said. Which meant that she was taken by surprise when, after three rings, she heard her mother’s voice in her ear. ‘Hi, love.’

‘Mum, hi!’ Robyn said, all of her planned eloquence immediately deserting her. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ Alison replied. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m okay,’ she said, ‘but, Mum, listen, I was ringing to say that I really don’t want to fall out with you, and I’m truly sorry. The advice you gave me the other day was spot-on and you were only being kind, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’

‘I don’t want to fall out, either,’ Alison told her. ‘But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. What you said to me . . . I found the comments hard to take. They got to me. But perhaps that was because there was an element of truth in them. And perhaps I needed to hear it.’ A small sigh came down the line. ‘Sometimes you just have to take the medicine, don’t you, however nasty it tastes.’

‘I shouldn’t have upset you, though,’ Robyn replied wretchedly. ‘I could have said those things in a far nicer way, rather than beating you over the head with them.’