Ninny, her secretary, had confided that Hanna was dealing with a patient in the midst of a psychotic break – but that if it was about the kids, she could get hold of her for Bell. Reluctantly, Bell had declined. It wasn’t about the kids, and she didn’t think her message – bewildering though it was – could compete with the needs of someone in such acute mental distress. Not to mention, it might all turn out to be a mistake anyway. Perhaps Dr Sorensen had in fact been trying to get hold of another Hanna Mogert, a Hanna to whom this scenario would make perfect sense.

Max had called in a short while ago to talk to the kids before going on to his client’s dinner; but although the message had sat poised at her throat, ready to be shared and diluted and expelled, explained and clarified and laughed upon, Bell had stayed silent. It might just be that he was the very last person she should tell.

Holding a coffee cup between cold hands, she glanced anxiously at the kitchen clock for the thousandth time. But it didn’t matter how often she checked it, she couldn’t seem to make those little hands move around more quickly. Five twenty-five. Linus was in the playroom downstairs, dejectedly watching TV, having lost the eights not to Nils but to quiet little Brigitte Carlsson.

His teacher talk was in just over half an hour, and with no word from Hanna at all, Bell was resigned to the fate of her evening plans. She had already texted Ivan asking for a rain check, but taking the girls out after dinner to sit quietly whilst she listened to Linus’s school report was not going to be fun. She would need to find something to occupy them – Elise was a terrible fidget, and Tilde was always prone to getting overtired after supper.

Her hand trailed over the sludgy grey-green handrail as she skipped downstairs, past the crowded gallery of black-and-white family photographs which had been carefully framed, but always seemed to have one or two askew. She stopped and straightened a small one of Hanna and Linus taken when he was a toddler: they were sitting on a sandy beach, their matching blonde hair streaming in the wind as their cheeks pressed together, eyes slitted against the bright sun. It was a snapshot of joy, and all of the other pictures told the same story – that this was a happy family.

Was it?

She frowned, continuing down into the basement. The washing machine in the utility to the left was drumming away quietly, tossing and turning and soaping and rinsing the children’s clothes from their muddy play in the park yesterday. The door left ajar into the small WC gave a glimpse of the patterned Moroccan clay tiles Hanna had fallen in love with on a trip to Marrakesh with Max.

She peered around the playroom door. It had high-level windows that allowed natural daylight to, if not flood the room, certainly trickle into it; all-white walls and a pale larch floor helped too. To her relief, it was still tidy. More days of her life than she wanted to count had been devoted to taming this one space, but for the moment at least, the paint brushes and pencils were still in their pots on the lime-green Ikea craft table; jigsaws and books were stacked in colourful neatness along the wall-to-wall bookcase; there were no tiny Sylvanian Family characters hiding in the bright swirls of the rug, waiting for a bare foot to tread on them.