She knows that endeavour – the dodging of disaster. Though when she was a child her fight was to be seen more rather than less, her parents somehow blind and deaf, despite their esteemed qualifications to the contrary. Was she blind now to Dominic? She tried not to be. In fact, that’s how the afternoon had first got out of hand, her trying to see him more clearly. He’d come home from school and thrown his bag on the floor and plonked himself straight in front of the television.

“Don’t you have homework?” she’d asked.

Terry was already sat watching some kind of fringe-movements documentary that he’d saved and urged her to watch too. He’d relaxed into an easy unwinding since the bowl-smashing tension of the morning, and now with a beer in hand, he’d welcomed Dominic by passing it to him for a swig. They did this sometimes. Terry only ever allowed Dom a little, and only when he was in good humour, but sometimes this sharing of manliness led to a game of football, or a pleasant hour spent together in front of the TV, and so Simone didn’t ordinarily mind it. Since the move to the new flat, however, she’d been mulling the possibility of restructuring things for Dominic, reinstating just a few of the rules that her own youth had been assembled upon, and she’d cast aside. It was after all her fault and not Dominic’s that his youngest years had been so chaotic. So much was her fault. And still is. She knows this, and in case she forgets, Terry reminds her. But there was still time to put things right.

“Yeh,” Dominic answered. “So?”

At this, Terry sniggered, and protected by his approval, Dominic kicked off his trainers and settled further into the sofa.

Simone stood in front of him. “Homework first,” she insisted.

“Fuck off,” said Dominic. He said this with blithe nonchalance, not aggression. It wasn’t an unusual way for them to talk to each other, mother and son. They often cursed in jest, and she’d considered more than once over the years how inane the idea of sanitising language for children, when life itself was so dirty, especially for children. But now, in the face of her newly grown parenting ambitions, Dominic’s words felt deflating.

“Don’t you swear at me,” she countered.

At this, Terry looked up from the television. Dominic did too, his face painted into confusion. Terry was less confused.

“What are you on?” he asked her. “He’ll do it later if he wants.”

“It’s not optional,” said Simone. “It’s homework. He’s gotta stop thinking it’s a question of ‘if he wants’.”

“And where have all your fancy grades got you?” laughed Terry. “Jog on,” he told her.

Perhaps, if she’d left it there, that would have been the end of it. She could have taken Jasmine off for a walk, or put the chips in the oven, or gone to the bedroom on her own for a smoke. But instead, she answered him.