Em herself knew the score, of course. Despite the anger and loathing she’d felt towards Dom since their marriage broke down, there were still school parents’ evenings and concerts to attend together, still weekends and holidays and Christmases to negotiate, in terms of the children and who had them, and you just had to be grown-up and civil about it all, even if that meant rictus grins and swearing under your breath each time. Even if, deep down, you would rather never see that cheating, lying, Christmas-wrecking pig again. George and Charlotte appeared to have avoided quite such bad blood, though. In fact they seemed positively amicable with one another. What decent, caring people they both were, Em tried to convince herself admiringly, although it did seem at times as if Charlotte was on the phone to George every ten minutes with some new query or update regarding their daughter. This had happened! That had happened! Had George remembered this? Would he be able to do that?

Em was making a supreme effort not to comment or get involved, but Christ, it was really starting to get on her wick.

As for George’s daughter Seren, she was seven years old and Em wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. Prior to their meeting, she had felt – not super-confident exactly, but on safe ground at least. She knew kids. She was good with kids, everyone said so. ‘Hello. Lovely to meet you! Those are very cool trainers,’ she had said warmly the first time they’d been introduced.

Seren’s expression had been downright withering in response. ‘I’m not a baby, you know, you don’t have to talk to me like that,’ the scornful retort had come. ‘Anyway, Mummy says that it’s patronizing and sexist when people talk about my clothes. Would you say that if I was a boy?’

Em had blinked, thrown off-guard by this irate young feminist. ‘I might have done,’ she’d replied weakly, to which Seren had merely snorted.

That was just the start of it. Seren had a very direct stare – the type that seemed to measure a person and find you wanting every time. Her favourite topic of conversation was how wonderful, clever and talented Charlotte was, and she made it abundantly clear that she found Em lacking, in comparison. Em was not used to dealing with such disdain. She worked in marketing and was surrounded by enthusiastic, smiling people who could put a positive spin on anything. Was it melodramatic of her to say that she found Seren quite unnerving?