‘What’s it to you if I do?’

‘You’ve a lovely figure. I don’t see why you’re trying to cover it up – especially in the water—’

‘God, just leave me alone, would you?’

Beth lowered her head, furious and embarrassed, and Corinne, sitting alongside her on the bank, dipped her feet in the shallows and grinned up at Abi. She was wearing a black bikini, spaghetti straps tied in two fussy little bows over the nubbed bones of her shoulders. She was skinny and tanned, shoulder blades sharp like webbed wings, droplets shimmering on her feet and calves as she lifted them in and out of the water.

‘Just go, Mum,’ Beth snarled.

‘It’s not easy, is it?’ Val said, when Abi came to join her on the rug. She felt the woman’s sympathetic smile.

‘It’s because of her scar,’ Abi explained, feeling the need to account for her daughter’s behaviour. ‘That’s why she wears the T-shirt. She’s very self-conscious.’

‘That is understandable.’

‘I keep telling her that she shouldn’t be embarrassed about it, but still.’

‘She had scoliosis, Corinne says.’

‘Yes. She was always a little hunched forward. I was forever telling the poor child to stand up straight, to put her shoulders back. But by the time she turned ten, we realized it was serious. That she would need an operation before she was thirteen.’

‘It must have been frightening for her – poor child.’

‘Yes, it was.’ Then, Abi added: ‘I wasn’t there for it – the operation. I had wanted to be, but … Well, things went wrong.’

The week before the operation, Abi had flown to San Francisco for a series of work engagements. Tired and stressed, she’d started coughing in one of her meetings and couldn’t stop. Her colleagues, alarmed, had sought medical attention for her. An X-ray at the hospital revealed she had pneumonia, and while it could be treated with antibiotics from the comfort of her hotel, it meant that she could not fly. And so, Abi was stranded in California for six extra days and Beth had her operation without her mother present.

‘It felt like another instance of letting her down,’ Abi admitted now.

‘But that was outside of your control,’ Valentina reasoned. ‘You were sick. It was not your fault.’

‘Yes.’

But it was also true that Beth had drawn closer to Mark afterwards. They were alike – thoughtful, quiet, introverted – attributes that in Mark she found sphynx-like and attractive. But in Beth, these same qualities were often infuriating. She felt like her child was deliberately blocking Abi access to her life, like sheltering her schoolwork with the curve of her arm.