On Christmas Day, Coco took her first steps. ‘Ma-ma Ya-ya!’ she shouted – she had started to alternate between ‘Ma-ma’ and ‘Ya-ya’ despite my constant correction (‘It’s Soh … fee!’) – holding her arms out to me and planting one little leg after the other. I held out my arms to her and she took six wobbly steps. I clapped my hands and turned to see Tom holding his head in his hands on the sofa. He was weeping at the sight of Coco walking, his shoulders legit going up and down. When she did it again he recovered his composure and got down on all fours, padding after her around the room until she collapsed into fits of giggles. After a few moments she squirmed out of his arms to practise walking some more, and he turned to me with a beaming smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as if I’d engineered the timing of her first steps just for him.

Later, when the girls had gone to bed, I noticed Tom was drunk. He staggered up to me, wine glass in hand, and said, ‘You’re a great nanny, Sophie,’ with more warmth in his voice than I could remember encountering the whole time I’d worked for him. Although his words were very slurred, so perhaps all the warmth was just the wine. Still, he said: ‘Perhaps when we get back to London you can continue nannying for us. I mean, of course you might already have something lined up …’

‘No, no!’ I said hastily. ‘I would love that.’

Another radiant, completely trashed smile. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

He tried to pour me a glass of wine and I hesitated – alcohol has always affected me more than the next person, and I’d seen it transform relatively sensible adults into fist-throwing Neanderthals more times than I cared to remember.

‘I’ll stick to water,’ I told him.

He shrugged. ‘’K.’

I filled a glass, and we toasted.

‘To … surviving,’ he said.

‘To thriving,’ I said.

   26   

I SAW HER SWIMMING

Now

Gaia is dreaming about the last time she saw her mumma. It’s a memory-fantasy mash-up, because there are characters from her favourite Netflix shows, and Coco is there, too, shouting ‘Ya-ya,’ and Maren keeps bursting out of a cupboard shouting Norwegian verbs that she has to repeat. Kjenner! Leser! Løper!

In the dream she sees Mumma sitting on the edge of her bed, nodding off after reading a story. Poor Mumma, Gaia thinks. She’s always so tired these days, and Gaia is tired too, but she’s glad she has company, as she hates this house. It has a bad feeling inside it, and although she’s tried to tell Mumma this she suspects Mumma already knows. Maybe they’ll go home soon. Daddy’s new house got destroyed so that means they’ll be going home soon.