By Wednesday, I feel we’ve established something of a routine already. Thankfully, Michel deals with Luca when he wakes at 6.30am, while Julia showers and dashes around the flat knocking back coffee and shoving papers into her bag. She doesn’t seem to eat breakfast and I wonder if she has anything at the office. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Maggie would say when she’d turn up in my room with scrambled eggs on a tray as though I was some kind of invalid. I suppose I was – mentally injured, if not physically.

Julia’s out the door by the time I’m showered and contemplating breakfast. Léa, Luca and I sit munching bircher muesli as Michel gets dressed and then joins us at the table. Luca’s already chattering away, wanting to know what we’re doing that day, but Michel’s taciturn before he’s poured himself a coffee. This morning his hair’s still wet from the shower and there’s a tiny spot of blood on his jawline where he nicked the skin with his razor. I want to reach out and wipe it away, but of course, I don’t. And then he’s gone too, and I’m left with the kids, cast into the role of stay-at-home mum. I feel a strange mix of happiness and anguish. I used to think I’d be one of those for real. I think I’d have loved it.

The whole day stretches out in front of us to be filled with whatever activities we so desire, and I feel like a kid too, eager for Switzerland to entertain me. We’ve been to the castle, but there’s still the zoo and the outdoor pool in Pully and the water park at Le Bouveret and the botanical gardens in Lausanne, and maybe I can even persuade the kids to go to the museum about Charlie Chaplin in Vevey. I’ve looked it all up in my guidebook and compiled a large to-do list. Not that this is about me, of course, but I’m sure there’s educational value in all these things.

But this afternoon we have a prior engagement – tennis lessons for the pair of them in Lausanne, an eight-week course arranged by Julia to give me a couple of hours off each Wednesday afternoon. I deliver the kids to the sports centre just about on time, though it’s a tricky operation involving hunting down Léa’s lost sports shorts, calming Luca out of his latest tantrum, and negotiating a traffic jam on the motorway. I could stay and watch, I suppose, but I tell myself off for even thinking about it. This break from childcare is an opportunity I should seize. Now’s the time. If I don’t start now, I never will.

My stomach flips at the prospect.