Not just Jonny’s life, but everything.

And tonight the tricks I’d learnt on the grief course completely evaded me; the tricks I was meant to use when my longing became so intense, I thought it might consume me.

I’d known as I’d walked in that I didn’t belong in an expensive kitchen designed within an inch of its life, my own conversation dulled by nerves – and yet, also knowing I shouldn’t be overwhelmed by money or status.

Yet I realised I completely was – and despised myself for it.

‘Hey,’ said a voice from my bedroom door.

The most welcome sight, tinged with parental angst that he actually ought to be sound asleep by now. Wasn’t getting enough sleep; wasn’t eating well enough when I didn’t force-feed him broccoli.

‘What’s up, matey?’ I sat up.

‘Getting some water,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Can’t sleep.’

‘Yeah, well.’ I patted the bed beside me. ‘You and me both, bub. And that’s what gaming all night’ll do for you.’

‘You been gaming again, Mum? Honestly! Worse than me,’ he protested but we caught eyes, his grin such a flash of rueful acknowledgement of his sins we both laughed.

His grin such a sudden flash of his father. Yearning enfolded me.

I patted the bed beside me again. ‘Too big for a cuddle?’

‘What do you think?’ He leant against the door frame, little boy grown too big for his own skin at the moment. Big feet, voice cracking between two octaves. A speckle of spots around that pretty jaw.

‘Too big for hot milk and honey?’

‘Um – let me think.’ He grinned again, and I swung my legs out of bed. ‘Like, never.’

The children. They held me up and out of despair. They were all I really had left – and, thankfully, on a good day, all I needed. I thought of Ali upside down on a trapeze in Berlin and prayed she was safe, upside down or not.

I poured the last of the milk into the saucepan as Zach checked his phone.

‘So that Jackson girl’s starting at your school next term,’ I said as I found the honey in the cupboard, hidden behind the kidney beans, where he wouldn’t bother to look.

‘What Jackson girl?’ Zach kept scrolling.

The twist of gold dissolved into the white below. ‘Willow, I think her name is,’ I told the top of his head. ‘Put your phone down, Zachy. It’s too late to be on it now.’

‘One sec…’

‘Zach! Where I just went for supper. You need to be nice to her. You can introduce her to Ceci too.’

Zach and Cecilia were good mates, although largely because of Melissa and me. I wasn’t sure how much they hung out at school – not that often, I suspected – but at the weekends we often met up together, and they always seemed to have a laugh. It was Cecilia who had told Melissa about Jonny: that’s why she’d first left her offerings on the doormat.