Jess shakes a drink-bottle to make sure it’s full. Then holds up a nylon bag by the string handle. ‘Kit I just washed?’

Izzy nods again.

Jess slides off the stool, wets a finger and dabs at a toothpaste stain on her daughter’s cardigan. Only then does Izzy break a silence that has survived since she was last in the kitchen to push a spoon at her soggy cereal, half an hour before. ‘Penny picking me up from school?’

‘Me this week, love.’

On receipt of the information, Izzy’s eyes brighten. But not by much. ‘No more nights for Mummy?’

Jess tugs up her sleeve to check the time. ‘Not if I can help it.’ She looks back at her daughter and frowns at what she reads in Izzy’s eyes. They glisten with tears. ‘Hey. What’s all this?’

Prompted by a query into her misery, Izzy looks at the floor and starts to cry.

Jess embraces her daughter. Eyes screwed shut from the intense concern that squeezes everything inside her chest, she kisses her daughter and lets her lips linger upon the child’s warm forehead.

‘I feel poorly,’ Izzy manages through her sobs.

‘Them kids up your school again?’

‘Can I stay with Mummy today?’

‘My love. You know you can’t. Any more trouble from them, I’m coming to see the head teacher again. Sick of it.’ When Izzy’s sobs subside to sniffles, Jess breaks the clinch and dabs at her daughter’s eyes. ‘My little love. Things gonna get better for us. Soon. I promise. And guess what?’

Izzy is too desolate to raise a smidgen of interest.

‘Got a surprise for you Thursday. We’re going somewhere special.’ Her mother’s voice carries a bright, artificial ring.

‘Where?’

‘Surprise. Like I said.’

‘Where though?’

‘Wait till Thursday. But maybe you won’t be going to that school much longer.’

Izzy stops sniffing. On receipt of such impossible news, that is too cruel to fully entertain, her eyes lock upon her mother’s face and search for insincerity, for tricks, or those infuriating postscripts about being patient.

‘Till then, stay away from them kids. Walk away. Ignore them. Hide if you have to. Only thing that works with bullies is to keep well out their way. Little bas–’ Jess reaches for Izzy again and indulges the small form with a final hug that fuses the child to her chest. ‘But we gotta go now if you want to make Early Bird Club.’

‘Love you, Mummy.’

‘Love you more than anything in this world, Izz. Even more than ice-cream.’

Wet eyes sparkling, Izzy laughs and snuffles up the last of her tears.

‘C’mon. Let’s get cracking.’

Scrabbling up keys and swiping a phone from a counter and looping all three of her daughter’s bags along one forearm, before snagging their coats from a little rack in the reception, Jess herds her daughter out of the flat.