Without another word, she sat up suddenly and hugged me, close and fierce, clinging on tight like she used to when she was a little girl. She used to love hugs, especially when she was upset. But now, as a sixteen-year-old, she was so blasé and stand-offish that it took me by surprise when she hugged me. It was one of those things she wouldn’t do any more in front of her friends, wouldn’t do in public. A few years ago – I wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened – she had suddenly become embarrassed by me, the closeness we had had seeming to fall away as she grew taller and more beautiful with every day. Sometimes, when she looked at me, I thought I saw open contempt in her eyes.

But not now, not in this moment. This hug was real. The real Lucy.

We sat like that for a minute, me stroking her hair and shushing her, my heart brimming. Her hot tears on my shoulder. I mentally berated myself for being so caught up in my own self-pity, in the revelations about my marriage, that I’d not picked up Lucy’s signals sooner. I thought she would say more, tell me what was bothering her, but she simply hugged me in silence. She would tell me when she was ready; forcing the issue would make her clam up even more. I knew enough to know that.

So quietly it was almost a whisper, she said, ‘It’s just Alex, that’s all.’

Alex?

There was a girl in her friendship group called Alex who would be inseparable best friends with Lucy one day: sharing anything and everything with her – and would then blank her completely for a week straight. Had they fallen out again? She’d not mentioned it to me, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

‘What about Alex? Has she been leaving you out of things again?’

‘No,’ she said, resting her cheek on my shoulder. ‘Not that.’

‘Just rise above it, sweetheart. Don’t get drawn in.’

‘Hmm . . .’

Before I could ask her anything else, she lay back down, switching her phone off and pushing it under the pillow.

‘Night, Mum.’

I kissed her on the forehead and crept out of her bedroom. Downstairs, the huge open living room was eerily quiet apart from the ever-present hum of the air conditioning, the full moon casting long shadows across the tiled floor. The room had an ethereal glow in the moonlight, the grand piano lit across its dark surface. I fetched myself a glass of water from the kitchen and was about to go back up when I stopped. There was another sound: the crickets in the garden. Someone had left the sliding glass doors to the balcony slightly open.