Maggie’s constancy, her intrinsic optimism, her quiet support was what I needed. But her pragmatic side wouldn’t let me wallow for long.

‘It’s been long enough and this can’t go on, it’s destroying you,’ she said. ‘Go and find out what you need to know.’

She’d got on the internet one evening, searched for teaching jobs in Switzerland, and by the time I’d cooked us dinner she’d found me three to apply for. She’d tucked into the lasagne and looked at me. ‘Well?’

Could I go? I didn’t know, but I knew I had to do something. A huge question mark had hung over me for nearly two years, infecting every aspect of my life, destroying my marriage and damaging my career, until there I was, licking my wounds at Maggie’s – and I wouldn’t find the answers I needed there. But then there was Dad, my kind, loving father, who’d begged me to leave it be, and I couldn’t bear to hurt him any more than he had been already.

‘He doesn’t want me to do this. He thinks I’m… I don’t know, overreacting or something.’

‘No, he doesn’t. He’s simply pretending it hasn’t happened because he doesn’t know how to deal with it,’ Maggie said. ‘He’ll be okay. I’ll talk to him.’

‘And Mum?’ I’d asked more quietly. That was at the heart of it. Would she have wanted me to go there, to try and find out what happened?

‘Darling girl, what about you?’ Maggie had said. ‘If you’re going to sort yourself out, you need to deal with what’s churning around in your head. And I think your mum would want you to do whatever it took to be okay again.’

Tears pricked the back of my eyes. ‘You think so?’

‘She just wanted you to be happy, darling – and so does your dad, even though he’s not very good at saying so out loud.’ She smiled, her face creasing into the crow’s feet begot from years of laughter and joyful times, many of them with her best friend, whom I knew she missed almost as much as I did.

Julia and Michel arrive together at around eight o’clock. Maria’s gone. The kids are dry and sitting in front of an animation in English that I’d loaded onto my iPad back home, the paddling pool now free of chocolate ice cream. I’m sitting on the terrace reading my guidebook.

I look up when the door opens and nerves flicker in my chest. It’s weird being employed in a household. Like I have to wear my work face at all times. No sitting in your pyjamas picking your cuticles in front of the telly. No reading all evening and ignoring the people you live with. Patrick hated both of those habits.