On Thursday, she dropped Fergus at playgroup for his morning session as usual, exchanged pleasantries about the sunny weather with a couple of the other mums, then stopped on the way home at the deli, to pick up two cappuccinos for her and Craig as a surprise treat. At some point in the future – maybe even in the autumn when Fergus started school – they were hoping to rent some decent office space in which to work (Frankie dreamed of a light-filled attic studio with huge windows). Until then, though, they’d have to carry on making do at opposite ends of their kitchen table, taking it in turns to look after Fergus, make lunch, chase up unpaid invoices and bung on a load of laundry in between.

‘Your own cottage industry, how charming!’ various friends had commented over the years, as if the two of them lived and worked in a beautiful stone farmhouse, with chickens scratching around in a yard outside and a dog thumping its plumy tail on a flagstone floor. One journalist had even interviewed them for a feature on ‘Love in the Workplace’ and, on reading the finished article, Frankie had to admit she’d made their working set-up sound cosily idyllic. In reality, they were squeezed into Craig’s fourth-floor ex-council flat on the seamier side of Ladbroke Grove, with a view of the Westway from the window. But it was home.

Once back at their block, Frankie climbed the stairs, wondering if she should have bought iced coolers rather than steamy hot drinks. There was about one day a year when their flat felt like the perfect temperature, but the rest of the time it was either airless and sweltering, like today, or absolutely freezing, when they’d be forced to work wearing coats and woolly hats like a couple of students.

‘Bloody hell,’ she moaned, letting herself back in, feeling unpleasantly clammy. ‘It’s roasting out there.’ And then she stopped because she could hear voices, and she frowned, trying to make out who they were. Craig was fiercely protective of his work time, guarding the scant Fergus-free hours they had as a chance to crack on single-mindedly with a column. Sometimes he wouldn’t even answer the phone to a friend, so determined was he not to be tempted by offers of skiving or distraction.