Esther rang her bike bell to shift the pedestrians ambling across the wide paved road. Mid-June, and, as so often in Cambridge, some sort of ceremony had been taking place in Senate House, shining regally in the gated quadrangle on the opposite side of the street. Tourists were pressed up against the tangle of bicycles along the railings, fighting for sight-lines as a multicoloured crocodile of dignitaries processed down the steps from the portico entrance, their fancy hats, hoods, and gowns rippling in the light breeze.

Good, bad, or bonkers? Eighteen years in, and still Esther could never quite decide about the university pomp and paraphernalia of her adopted home town. In her buoyant mood that morning it seemed endearing and took her straight back to the flock of haughty, speed-walking flamingos that had made her and Lucas giggle during their TV dinner the night before, plates of shepherd’s pie, peas, and carrots balanced on their laps. Both children had just set off on trips abroad – Lily to New York with Matteo, and Dylan to a family in Salamanca to improve his Spanish before the sixth form.

If anything, it was trepidation that Esther had felt during the afternoon drive back from Luton airport, having done the Dylan send-off alone because Lucas, typically, had some last end-of-term meeting that couldn’t be missed. Two weeks without either child buzzing around was unprecedented, and it had occurred to her that Dylan especially, even when he was being problematic, provided a distraction from the niggling white noise of her and Lucas’s separateness. They had become like spinning plates, Esther decided desperately, swinging into the supermarket because she had forgotten to get anything out of the freezer for supper; connecting through the children rather than each other, avoiding all the well-trodden areas of conflict, precisely because they were so well trodden. The drawbacks of Cambridge, how Lucas was, how she was, how Dylan was… with just the two of them, there would be nowhere to hide.

She had got as far as boiling and draining the potatoes for the pie when Lucas, sporting a smile that was almost shy, sauntered into the kitchen.