Before I had a chance to remind her who the parent was in this scenario, she’d hung up on me. I stood there, holding the phone dumbly, watching Nick go beetroot red as yet another person refused to let him off the hook.

So much for letting myself exhale.

Sophie marched past me when she arrived, heading straight through to the kitchen. Nick was still barking into the phone, and she cast him a look of such uncharacteristic contempt that my blood ran cold. She was barely looking at me at all. She turned the lock on the French windows and stepped out into the garden. All I could do was scuttle after her.

‘A “hello” might be nice,’ I said. ‘An enquiry after what your father’s dealing with.’

Sophie’s face was so screwed up with rage that she was almost unrecognizable. An angry Gollum in a navy winter coat.

‘I don’t owe you anything,’ she hissed. ‘None of us do.’

I tried to quell the dread that was welling up inside me. Sophie was as malleable as plasticine. I’d made her that way.

‘Darling, what are you talking about?’ I said, keeping my voice deliberately warm. I breached contact, touching her arm through her sleeve. ‘We all know that Rachel’s unwell right now. It’s destabilizing for every single one of us in this family. That’s why we need to take such good care of each other.’

Sophie slowly backed away from me, like a rescue dog trapped in a cage.

‘I don’t think Rachel’s the mad one anymore,’ she said, her face devoid of love, and my heart plummeted. ‘I know what you did, Mum, and I know you’re going to go through the whole rigmarole of denying it – flattering me and then trying to scare me – but it’s too late. She found out the truth. Esther told her.’

I crumpled backwards, my body hitting a bare pine lounger that we hadn’t bothered to pack away at the end of summer.

‘What did she say to you?’ I whispered.

‘That Dad and Esther did have an affair…’ Her hands angrily sliced the air. ‘If you can even call it that, considering she was virtually a fucking child! That you found out from Rachel, like she’s always said, and you did know it was true. And then that Esther was…’ she choked on the words. ‘You know what happened – we both do.’