‘Tell me about it later,’ Craig said from behind her and she nodded. ‘Listen, I . . .’ He hesitated, and she turned back to look at him. ‘Now that you’re back, would you mind if I catch up on some work? Just for an hour or so? Then I’ll make us something to eat. Is that okay?’

‘That’s fine,’ said Frankie, because she was too tired to do anything else and, actually, the thought of playing trains, making bridges and stations, pantomiming dismay at Fergus’s eager, ghoulish engine crashes . . . it all sounded kind of soothing. Anything to distract her. Besides, this was how it went, when you had two self-employed people and one small hullaballoo of a child; you had to seize an hour here, twenty minutes there, to get anything done.

Craig was a journalist. Frankie had actually read about him and Fergus before she met either of them, in Craig’s ‘Dad About the House’ column in a Sunday newspaper. By turns light-hearted and deeply moving, the column was started by Craig as a means of detailing the highs and lows of being a single dad, and one who was facing a series of challenges at that. Fergus had not had the easiest of starts to life. He’d been born with a cleft lip and been plagued with ear infections for the first few months, as well as difficulties feeding, and he’d been in and out of hospital for surgery and follow-up appointments. Understandably, this had all come as shattering and unexpected news to Craig and his then-partner Julia, and she’d become depressed, blaming herself for Fergus’s problems, not feeling as if she could bond with her child. Despite Craig’s best attempts to keep things going, she’d vanished when Fergus was barely six weeks old, leaving a note to say that she couldn’t manage and was bailing out.