‘That’s nothing. Personally, I’m hoping for thirty more years at least. And I’m worried about that son of yours,’ she went on in the same quick-fire way. ‘As is your father. It wasn’t a subject for lunch, but where is the child, and what does he think he’s playing at? That’s what I want to know.’

‘It’s what we all want to know, Mum,’ Esther murmured, lightly kissing the side of her head – unbothered by the usual flinch of surprise – and seizing her mother’s smart green parka off the coat rack before heading out to the garden.

The darkness wasn’t as thick as it looked from inside the house. Esther paused on the edge of the lawn, tipping her head to the sky and breathing in a big gulp of the cold air. The weather was clear for the first time in days, and the stars such big pinheads of light that even she could spot a couple of the constellations. The Plough. Orion’s Belt. The same sky was glittering over Dylan, she comforted herself, hugging the coat more closely as she wandered on. Postcards, even computer-generated ones, at least meant he was alive, she told herself, doggedly, for the umpteenth time.

‘Not a word to your mother,’ her father grunted as she appeared round the corner of the hedge designed to shield this, less sightly, section of garden from the house. He was poking expertly at a small bonfire with a long sturdy stick, the stub of a cigar bobbing between his lips.

‘I have a hunch she might be onto your smoking anyway, Dad,’ Esther pointed out wryly, pondering all her parents’ weird little asides and counter-briefings against each other. If managing such knots of misinformation and miscommunication was what a long marriage was really about, then she was sure she and Lucas would never have had the stamina for it anyway.

‘I’m rubbish at gardening,’ she volunteered cheerfully, picking up a stray leafy stick at her feet and lobbing it into the fire, where it hissed and spat, making the flames smoke. ‘I’ve given in and got some help now. A landscape design graduate with the right equipment and big ideas for planting.’

‘Not until spring, I hope.’

‘Not until spring, no…’ Esther faltered, not yet capable of bringing the new year into focus. ‘You’ve spoiled Mum today. As usual.’ She took his arm. ‘She’s so lucky to have you.’

He tossed the cigar stump into the bonfire. ‘You’re wrong there. I’m the lucky one.’

‘Really?’ Esther smiled to herself. ‘Er… Dad, I think we can all agree you have a fair bit to put up with.’