‘Jake, don’t!’ Kira’s shout is like a whip crack that cuts through the air and I knock into the table in the hallway, sending a plant crashing to the ground.

‘Mum!’ Jake turns round and Kira twists away, hugging the dressing gown around her neck.

‘I’m sorry.’ I crouch down to pick up the pot. It was plastic and hasn’t broken but there’s soil all over the carpet. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude – I was just …’ I feel my face flush red. ‘Sorry, I—’

‘It’s okay, Mum.’ Jake glances at Kira, then shakes his head. ‘It’s cool. I’m off to work anyway.’

He reaches for his tool belt and straps it around his waist, then retrieves the dustpan and brush from under the sink and sweeps up the soil at my feet.

‘You okay?’ he says as he straightens up.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Cool. I’ll see you later then, Mum.’ He doesn’t so much as glance at Kira as he crosses the kitchen. ‘Oh –’ he stops as he reaches the back door and looks back at me – ‘I’m on a late-night job and I won’t be back until eight at the earliest. Don’t bother making me any tea. I’ll grab a burger or something.’

As the back door clicks behind him Kira makes her escape.

‘Sorry,’ she mutters under her breath as she squeezes past me and thunders up the stairs, two at a time. ‘I’m really sorry, Claire.’

I pick my way through the garage, sidling sideways past Jake’s weight bench, stepping over the patch of lawnmower oil that Mark still hasn’t cleared up, and approach the shelves. They’re piled high with gardening and DIY paraphernalia: tins of assorted screws, half-empty pots of paint, crusted paintbrushes, rusty shears, trowels, netting and plastic plant pots.

I shift things around as I search. I find the drill and several ratchet and wrench sets the kids gave Mark for his birthday one year, but not the black plastic box containing the electric screwdriver that Liz wants to borrow.

There are several cardboard boxes crammed with clothes on the floor. We’ve been meaning to take them to the charity shop since we decluttered the house a year ago but no one’s got round to doing it yet.