‘Lex. Come on. Talk to me if you need to. I’m family, remember?’

‘It’s just Will stuff. Keeping things hidden is hard. This mission is hard. Not getting enough sleep is hard.’ I shrugged. ‘Everything is hard. But don’t worry, I’ll get through it. And it helps knowing you’re here if I need you.’

‘Always,’ said Jake softly.

I looked around the meeting room. ‘Where’s Robin?’

‘He’s late. When he gets here I’ll give him a lecture about the responsibilities of timekeeping when he’s got his own unit.’ It seemed Jake was also coming around to the idea of us finally granting Robin his freedom from our watch.

*

I walked into the Fulham branch of Potty for Pottery holding Gigi’s hand. At one end of the expansive café was a large soft play area, complete with ball pit, slides and mini trampoline. The cacophony of cries, screams and laughs were interspersed with the crinkle and thud of little bottoms hitting plastic matting. I looked around at the children flinging themselves down the slides. Alternating mothers shouting, ‘Archie/Matilda/Otto, do you need a wee?’

I already missed the quiet solitude of the Platform.

Gigi had torn off into the ball pit.

I looked around. No one else from our WAF group was here yet. I surveyed the room. Whoever Peppa was meeting could be here now.

There were a group of seven or so mothers at a large table by the café counter. All had prams parked next to them. Half had babies clamped to their breasts. They were the perfect advert for the sign that hung on the wall behind them: Potty for Pottery WELCOMES breastfeeding AND bottle-feeding mothers. AND fathers. The sign was doing its best to be as politically correct as possible.

It was busy, with most of the larger tables taken by groups of parents catching up for a Saturday brunch as their offspring catapulted themselves round the soft play.

I walked between tables and heard snippets of conversation between the mothers.

‘Marnie is a wonderful sleeper. We are very blessed.’

‘Araminta doesn’t sleep at all. But it’s because her mind is so active she finds it hard to shut down. It’s one of the real downsides to her being so intellectually gifted.’

Competitive parenting didn’t take time off, even on weekends.

A line of women stood alongside the soft play area, a few chatting to each other, most shouting instructions at children who were being threatened with time-outs, the thinking step, the naughty corner and a clip round the bleeding ear – the mum who kept shouting that threat was being stared at more than the misbehaving toddlers.