‘Yep, we’ve met a couple of times. I was going to ask them, till you showed up.’ The paramedics were clambering into the front seats.

‘Go,’ she commanded, ‘and don’t worry about Chico, we’ll all keep a lookout.’

Marcus leapt back over the fence and within seconds was shooting after the vehicle on his motorbike.

In the quiet of her hallway, Esther leant back against the door and took a few deep breaths. It had been a long day. To be in her own home suddenly felt like the height of luxury; as did being alive, for that matter, given what her poor neighbour had to be going through. Milk duty could wait just a little, she decided, starting the fight with her back zip as she headed upstairs. She shook the dress off as she entered her bedroom, kicking it into a pink puddle in the middle of the carpet and pulling on jeans and a T-shirt instead. Through her bedroom window, the sunshine had receded to a milky evening light, lending a glamorous silver tinge to the jungled green chaos of her garden. After France she would get to grips with it, Esther vowed, craning her neck for a better view of the quietened festivities taking place next door, and making out the tail end of a line of people, including several exuberant children, clutching plates and queueing from the direction of the patio. Whatever was being served up smelt very good, she had to admit, despairing at her appetite, surging again despite her gorging on Chris’s sickly chocolates.

Five Minutes’ Peace. The name of an early favourite bedtime story of the children’s drifted to mind as she sank into her armchair a few minutes later, taking her phone and a mug of tea with her, boosted liberally with sugar as well as milk because self-denial had its limits. The story’s bright witty pictures of the elephant mummy sinking into a bath with a piece of cake, leaving the mayhem of her family life to its own devices, had made her toddling Dylan and Lily giggle every time.