‘So this could be your chance. You know what they say – when life gives you lemons, and all that. The kiddies are old enough now not to mind, aren’t they? You could contact your old department, I’m sure they’d welcome you back with open arms. Lemonade all round!’ Alison had perked right up, with the brilliance of her idea, and was leaning forward, eyes alight with excitement. Oh, but she had been the proudest mum in the world when Robyn had passed her degree (‘The first in our family!’), and then her Masters (‘I don’t know where she gets her brains from’), and then worked as a postgrad at the university, before rising through the departmental ranks.

How Robyn had loved working there, though! She’d felt interested and challenged every single day; almost able to hear the synapses in her brain fizzing and buzzing from the stimulation. She relished being surrounded by highly intelligent people, everyone keen to learn, foraging for discoveries and information. And of course she’d met John there on a rainy night too, at an open lecture on the ‘Unknown Universe’, when Fate persuaded them both through the door in the first place, and then sat them next to each other. (‘And about time, and all!’ Alison had cried in relief, when Robyn told her she was seeing a new bloke. ‘I was starting to think I’d have to dust off a space for you on the Old Maids’ shelf soon, next to me.’)

All of this felt like such a long time ago now, of course. When Sam had been born, Robyn had taken maternity leave, fully intending to return to her job, but he’d been a sickly baby, plagued by eczema, and when it had come to the crunch, she hadn’t felt able to leave him. Then Daisy had arrived; a clingy little thing who roared with sorrow and outrage if anyone but Robyn dared try to hold her. It had been eleven years since Robyn had considered herself any kind of career woman, in short.

Had she left it too long now to return? she wondered. She did her best to keep up with New Scientist magazine when time permitted, but was surely out of the loop in terms of the minutiae of the latest developments in her field. Besides, she had lost confidence in her own abilities. Once upon a time she had been able to stand in front of hundreds of students in lecture halls and talk to them enthusiastically about genetic engineering and molecular biology. Nowadays the thought made her feel kind of terrified. She could actually feel her top lip starting to sweat with nerves as she pictured herself there again.

‘Mum, no, it’s fine. I’ll keep you posted, I’m sure everything will work out,’ she said after a moment.