Although she still kept in touch with their Greenwich set, they didn’t meet up that often anymore. Her fears that they would drift apart once they’d moved out of the area had come true. It just wasn’t easy or convenient to meet up anymore, it took more of an effort to plan. And with busy lives and young children, that often fell by the wayside. She didn’t blame them. In any case, the children had made new friends nearby and wanted to play with them at weekends now.

Watching Ellie and Freddy with the kids next door was like a tonic to her lonely memories of being an only child with no one her age to play with. She remembered Jack saying to her once, years ago, ‘I can’t wait for you to see what it’s like to be part of a large family.’ Now she knew.

They had been living in Pemberton Road for over a year but to Angie it was only just starting to feel like home. She knew that a big part of that was their new friendship with the Brennan family. She hadn’t confided in anyone but she had found the past few months a challenge. While the others seemed to have adapted to their new lives, she was in limbo, stuck between her old existence and her new one and not entirely sure where it left her. She had been the one who insisted they move but ever since they had, she’d yearned for their old life back in Greenwich, before it had all gone wrong. When they’d been happy.

Things between her and Jack were good at the moment, though. He’d made a real effort over the past year to prove that he’d changed for good. For her part she was trying harder to be more considerate and less critical. On the surface everything was great, so why did she still have this niggling, unshakeable feeling that something wasn’t quite right?

When she and Jack had got married, she’d felt like she was living in a fairy tale. They were still in their twenties then, working long hours and socialising with friends during the week but at the weekend they preferred to hole up in their new flat in Clapham and play house. It was the novelty of it all back then. They turned down invitations to parties and dinners, cooking a Sunday roast for two instead and going for long, lazy walks together. Saturday nights went from dancing until the early hours in some dingy club to curling up on the sofa with a film. At the same time, she was climbing the ranks in the law firm where she worked and earning a reputation as one to watch. During those blissful first few months of marriage, she had everything that she had ever wanted and she couldn’t imagine ever feeling unhappy again.

She could pinpoint the exact moment when her bubble finally burst. It was a Friday evening and they had planned to go home after work and get a takeaway. She’d had to work a little later than expected and she had rushed home eager to get back to Jack. As she raced up the stairs, she imagined him waiting for her, with a cold beer. But when she entered the flat, it was dark.