Kathleen had turned her nose up at my food, said she didn’t feel like she’d eaten a proper dinner unless it had potatoes in it. She’d set about preparing something for herself, and for Joe too, saying he had always been a plain eater and it was more important than ever that he ate well now.

She’d been lucky not to get a pot of spaghetti sauce tipped over her. I bit my lip. I wanted to tell her he was lucky to be getting anything. They all were. I definitely had better or nicer things that I could have been doing than looking after Joe McKee and feeding the five thousand.

I should have been spending time with my daughter – time I wouldn’t get back once I was back in the workforce, helping to keep the inner workings of the local technical college ticking over. This should be time spent sitting on the floor with her, playing with her, marvelling at her tiny, perfectly formed fingers. Kissing her feet. Singing to her. Learning how to be a mother without having a mother to teach me.

It was no wonder I was on my last nerve by the time dinner was over. Angry and put out and tired. And my head still hurt. At least, I thought, at least Stella was courteous enough to stack the dishwasher while Alex took Lily for a walk to settle her. That left Kathleen, Ciara and I to discuss the way forward, which was not a comfortable conversation to have and one I could easily have done without after the day I’d had.

Still, we knew it was necessary, so I made us all a cup of tea and we sat around the kitchen table. We were just about to plan a rota of sorts, when Joe’s damned bell rang again.

‘I’ll go if you want,’ Stella said, popping her head around the kitchen door.

‘That would be lovely,’ I’d said, grateful to give my tired legs a break from running up and down the stairs.

She’d smiled, more in Ciara’s direction than anything else, then had set off up the stairs, only to come back down again less than a minute later.

‘He wants you, Heidi,’ she said, her face a little flushed.

Both Ciara and Kathleen shifted uncomfortably in their seats. As if they were put out by it all. As if they wanted him to have asked for them instead. Neither of them knew that I’d be more than happy to let either of them take my place. Permanently.

I nodded, sighed and got to my feet, then trudged up the stairs.

Joe was sitting up in bed. His glasses perched at the end of his nose. He put down the pen he was holding and closed over the book he had been writing in, in slow, deliberate moves. He looked up, regarding me over the top of his glasses as if I were some sort of scientific specimen. Goose bumps, very much the unpleasant kind, prickled on my skin.