Initially, Ness’s misery had been intense. But she soon pulled herself together, sensible girl that she was. After we’d both finished work she and the kids spent most of their evenings round at our house doing homework, she would make work phone calls at our kitchen table as I cooked. We’d share a bottle of red. If Karl was around he would sometimes make us something fancy. He was mean with a wok. Sometimes we’d watch a film. Both families – minus Leah, of course – would huddle around the TV on a Saturday night to get our fill of modern-day bedlam. This set-up soon became normal. During this time my sweet father had to have a pacemaker fitted and I noticed he was having a few memory problems himself, so I flitted between houses and doctors, worrying now about the care that I would inevitably need to get in place for my parents.

My mother would turn up at the house whenever she felt like it and ask Ness how Leah and the children were. Every time Ness would patiently re-explain the break-up of her marriage until she couldn’t be bothered any more and said they were all just fine. I missed Leah far more than I expected; her brooding negativity had become surprisingly comforting. Eventually she came back to the house to pick up all her furniture and possessions, leaving gaping holes on the walls and in the rooms in her wake. Ness and I sat and looked at the blankness for a while. Then we drove to Ikea and chose cheap and cheerful pieces to replace them with. On a whim she bought herself a cheery little cuckoo clock with a bird that flung itself out on the hour and screeched cheep cheep. It made her smile, she said. Smiling was good, I agreed.

I have to confess: occasionally I wished she would just give us a little space. I don’t think a day went by without her and the kids appearing in our house. Just sometimes I wanted to spend the evening alone with Karl or be able to have other people around without Ness there as well. I’d begun to feel just a bit suffocated. And perhaps I was starting to get on her nerves too; I remember her getting quite short with me. On one occasion, the three of us were walking to the pub one evening and she said I really hate my hair – which was a strange thing for her to say, primarily because it was so girly, and secondly because I knew she liked her hair; she thought she had fabulous hair. She had a particular way of twiddling it that I had begun to find just a teensy bit annoying. It was self-consciously flirtatious – I’d seen her turn on the charm with various people at school, men and women, flick flick twist twist, and they were putty in her hands.