I spent the morning cleaning, tidying, making sandwiches in triangle shapes, cutting up dozens of carrot and cucumber batons that would not be eaten. It was important simply to have them displayed, to show that you were aware of the need to give children vegetables. I worked at a professional pace, my hands moving according to their own logic, slicing, arranging, decorating, blurred by speed, by the patterns they seemed to know instinctively, familiar shapes made in ease. I kept looking up – to see if anyone else would notice how fast I was, how accurate – but nobody did.

We had decided to have the party at home, to save money, but I had completely forgotten all the work this entailed, the large and growing gap between our house in its daily state and a house considered fit for public view. There would be twenty children there, including our own, a much higher number than I was expecting. Most people were not going away, it seemed; I had tried to sound happy when responding to every acceptance. Wonderful, I’d texted several times. Paddy will be thrilled.

Jake couldn’t understand why I was going to so much effort: as with the Christmas party, he seemed reluctant to have it at all, seemed to want to keep our family a sealed unit, an airtight container.

You’ll tell Paddy it’s off then, will you? I’d challenged him, but he’d only shrugged.

I’m sure he’ll love it. He had said this in a friendly way, as though my party-­planning were a benign affliction, something that did good in the end. Ever since that afternoon in the upstairs hallway – our cheeks touching, my clothes pulled back – Jake seemed softened, placated: he no longer sighed loudly when he passed me, acted as if I was an obstruction in his way. On the morning itself, he helped, blowing up balloons, hanging a banner across the kitchen, hiding prizes for a treasure hunt.

A children’s party, like a death, is never real until it is happening. It cannot truly be planned, or imagined. It is always unexpected. When the boys – they were all boys, despite my best efforts – burst in that day, I could see that, whatever my preparations, the party was going to be an ordeal. Or perhaps, I began to realize, it was because of my efforts, my stubborn insistence on adherence to the pirate theme, with all its associated weapons, the eye-­patches that impeded each child’s sight.

We opened the doors to the garden, watched them all tumble into the brightness – it was sunny now, unseasonably warm, and Paddy had thanked me for it – sword fighting on the grass, clambering onto the trampoline.