The next morning Valentina Catto sent a text message that read: All fine. Somehow, the curtness of the text was more unsettling than the phone call, but Abi said nothing of how she felt to the others, not even to Mark. When he commented: ‘A bit weird, isn’t it?’ his face sceptical and serious, she brushed it aside saying: ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. Last-minute jitters, that’s all!’ She was accustomed to answering his concerns with breezy dismissals.

When she suggested that he accompany them to the airport, Mark declined.

‘I need to sort out Melissa’s stuff,’ he explained.

‘Liar,’ she retorted. ‘You just don’t want to face the other parents.’ Words said half-jokingly, but she watched to see how they landed, observed the nerve being touched.

The uneasiness stayed inside her as she drove to the airport, the windshield wipers of the Grand Cherokee animated as the rain splattered down. Beth was in the passenger seat checking her phone for updates.

‘They’ve landed,’ she announced.

Abi glanced across at her daughter. The girl was pale with tiredness, marks of anxiety there in the tight bud of her pursed lips, but it was clear that she had taken some care with her appearance. The old Ramones T-shirt she wore was a favourite, and Abi noticed the touch of lip gloss and the citrussy scent of CK One.

‘Listen,’ Abi said as she pulled the car into a space. ‘Valentina mentioned that you’d told Corinne about Melissa.’

‘Yeah. So?’

‘I was just surprised.’

‘It’s not exactly a state secret, is it?’

‘Of course not.’

Beth was staring out the window, but Abi could feel attentiveness filtering into her silence.

‘I was just wondering what exactly you’d told her, that’s all,’ Abi went on carefully, as she turned off the engine and looked at her daughter. Beth’s jaw tightened, and then she let out a brief frustrated breath.

‘Don’t worry, Mum. I didn’t say anything to cast us in a bad light. God forbid I should shatter the illusion of our perfect family.’

She slammed the door and Abi was left alone for a moment.

Was that what it was? An illusion?

The night’s phone conversation revisited her, and she remembered once more the hesitation in the woman’s voice, the unspoken sense that this girl had her own problems, her own difficulties.

Abi had been so focused on not disappointing Beth, persuading this woman to send her daughter, that it hadn’t occurred to her there might be risks involved. Intuition, Valentina had said. Abi had the sudden thought that they’d made a terrible mistake.