‘These bedrooms belong to me and Tom, and Clive and Derry have what used to be the children’s.’ She turned and smiled politely. ‘Yours is downstairs, and we’ve moved Gaia and Coco’s bedrooms there, too.’

She took us back downstairs and along a narrow hallway behind the kitchen, where a recent extension created a modern living room with a bookcase, sofa and armchairs, then a small office, and a long playroom kitted out with tables, whiteboards, play mats, sand tubs and endless cabinets and cupboards filled with every toy under the sun.

‘This is your room,’ she said, opening the door to the last bedroom at the corner of the house. It was smaller than the other bedrooms, but I loved it. A single iron-posted bed with a cosy red quilt ran alongside a window overlooking the woods. A modest wardrobe at the foot of it, a chest of drawers, a bedside table, and a lamp. A door adjacent to the bed led to a bathroom with a shower cubicle, sink, and toilet.

‘Perfect,’ I told her, and she looked relieved. I sat down on the bed, testing out the mattress. Good and firm. Perhaps I’d have a nap, then do a spot of writing. The view from my window was exactly what I needed to get going.

‘Good,’ Maren said, clasping her hands. She glanced at her watch. ‘Would you like half an hour to freshen up?’

She seemed to pick up on the fact that I was utterly clueless as to what she meant.

‘The baby’s nap ends in thirty-five minutes,’ she said. ‘She’ll need a half-hour of flash cards, then reading time, dinner time, and songs for bed. And Gaia, too, obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ I said, and she smiled, satisfied that I knew what I was doing. Which of course I didn’t.

‘Oh, before I forget,’ she said, sliding a folded piece of paper from an invisible pocket in her skirt. ‘This might be helpful.’

I unfolded it. A spreadsheet mapping out each day from 6 a.m. until 7.30 p.m., with activities such as ‘slime time’, ‘messy play’, and ‘hidden music’ all signalling exactly how I was to spend each hour. Slime time? Mercifully Sundays were blanked out as a ‘Daddy and Daughters Day!’ though I noted the asterisk at the bottom of the page: *occasionally you will be required to work on these days.

‘That’s just Coco’s schedule,’ Maren said, lest I grew too comfortable with the thought of only working eighty hours a week.

‘Obviously,’ I said, wearing my finest rictus grin.

‘As you know, Gaia is homeschooled,’ she said. ‘Her schooling coordinates with Coco’s naps, totalling three hours a day, with the exception of her Norwegian lessons.’

‘Norwegian lessons?’ I said nervously. Becoming fluent enough to teach Norwegian in a few hours might be a stretch, even for someone as desperate as I was.

‘I teach Gaia Norwegian,’ Maren said. ‘The rest of the schooling lies with you. Tom favours the Montessori method. I was led to believe that wouldn’t be a problem?’