Now, she wonders, if the TV was quieter, whether behind Dominic’s closed door she might hear the sound of paper scratched by pen.

She will not knock. Her father taught her early on that knocking was not allowed, certainly not when he was working, his tiny study a place of reverence; but she would know he was there by the unceasing caress of that scratching sound. Lost in a haze of smoke and thought, she listens harder now for Dominic, until a few moments later, Terry’s voice cuts in.

“Oy oy Dom,” he shouts. “Fancy a kick around?”

Within seconds, the bedroom door flies open, homework and scratching pens abandoned, and Dominic returns to the living room with a ball under his arm. It is a prized possession, a match ball from a Chelsea game, won in a raffle. “Is Mum coming?” he asks.

Nobody has said anything, but Simone has still not left the flat. The bruise by her mouth is fading but its placement atop her lip, and its particular shade of green-black, now renders it as unfortunate facial hair. She looks like her father. Dominic casts his eyes anxiously towards her. He feels guilty she thinks – for his pre-teen moods, for not looking after her, for not protecting her this time with a saucepan. She knows that she should tell him it wasn’t his fault, that it’s not his job to look after her. But it feels so good to be looked after by somebody.

“I’ll come,” she nods, and now a new expression flashes across Dominic’s face – pleasure, relief, indifference? He is a strange one, her son; so hard to read.

Terry carries Jasmine on his shoulders and holds Simone’s hand. Dominic dribbles the ball just ahead of them, looking back every now and then to smile, or maybe to check that she is smiling. If it wasn’t for their clothes – which are neither chic nor authentically vintage enough – they could very nearly blend in with other Primrose families. There, descending the steps from a pink-fronted house is a pre-schooler and her father, holding a frisbee. On the other side of the road skips a nine or ten-year-old bedecked in full ballet regalia, the mother laden with bags behind her. Passing them in the other direction, holding the hands of twin sons, is a comedian Simone recognises from TV. Terry nudges her as he notices this too, and she nods with just the right amount of excitement and derision. Just before the park, they stop at the convenience store and Terry goes in for a pack of beers.

“For my lady,” he pronounces as they settle onto a patch of green on the far slope of the hill.

She sits on the grass, hiking up her cargo trousers to reveal skinny white calves. Jasmine is in a summer dress and her skin shines luminous in the sunlight, a culmination of her parents’ pasty complexions. It occurs to Simone that she has neglected sunscreen, but it’s almost four-thirty and the walk back to the house is too long to return for it. Dominic’s alright in a t-shirt and shorts, and his deeper complexion.