After the two of them had raced upstairs to get on with packing, as she had urged, Esther had stood in the hall while her heart slowed, closing out the warring voices through the door beside her, breathing freely for what felt like the first time in years. The good sense of seeking out the toilet finally made her move. It was still set at the back of the house, just as she remembered, but now accessed through an orderly cloakroom. Several coats, appropriate for assorted weather, hung side by side on pegs, among them a black padded anorak, which she recognised with a start as Dylan’s. Two huge pairs of muddied wellingtons, one green, one black, stood side by side underneath, parked on fresh squares of newspaper. The room gleamed, from its terracotta-tiled floor, to the white handbasin in the corner, and the plump, fresh towel hanging from its brass rail. Behind the door, a large, green brolly, glistening from recent use, flopped out of a wooden umbrella stand, beside an eagle-headed walking stick that Esther remembered from before, its features now worn smooth from use.

Fixing tea made no sense, she knew. The plan – their sole, agreed aim – was to scoop up Dylan and get the hell out, heading back to Esther’s for a full family debrief, before she and the children returned to their Amersham Christmas, and Lucas to his Cambridge one, with Heidi, Esther assumed. They had even bought food supplies for the return journey.

All the same, Esther found herself going straight from the cloakroom into the kitchen, where she filled the blackened old kettle and set it on the hob. Out of mild curiosity, she then eased the lid off the checked green, slightly dented cake tin sitting next to a poinsettia in the middle of the old oblong oak table. Expecting something shop-bought and half stale, she was surprised to find herself looking at what was clearly a home-made Christmas cake. It smelt rich and sweet, and was decorated with two worse-for-wear plastic reindeer, wedged up to their stomachs in thick choppy icing, and a disproportionately large blue wooden angel, who had pitched forwards onto her face, smudging an otherwise immaculately composed scarlet and lime Merry Christmas!!! headline. Esther gently set the figure upright, ramming it deeper into the icing ocean for safety, before putting the lid back on. The exclamation marks stayed with her. Whoever had put them there must have been feeling exuberant. Or ironic.