Kate waited patiently, as she had learnt to do. Her daughter’s cheeks were stained with tears.

Fiona eventually took off her headphones. Kate sat gingerly on the end of the bed, as if stepping on eggshells. ‘You okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Is it something to do with Dad?’

Fiona’s phone buzzed with a message. She flipped it over, but not before Kate had seen it was from Fiona’s boyfriend, Jay. Her daughter wiped another tear from her eye. ‘Everything all right?’ Kate asked.

The dam burst as Fiona convulsed with tears. Kate moved closer and wrapped her daughter in her arms, as she had so often when she was a little girl. It took some time before the truth spilt out. ‘It was meant for his old girlfriend. He denied it, but I know it.’

‘What was?’

‘He sent me a WhatsApp message. She’s at a party on Saturday – some lame friend. How about we meet at your place, just like old times? Kiss, kiss, bloody kiss. But it’s obviously me who’s at the party. I’d only told him ten minutes before.’

Kate’s first thought was to wonder if Jay had done it deliberately as a way of fobbing Fiona off, but perhaps she’d just spent too long mixing with the likes of Ian. She tried her best to reassure her daughter and gradually the tears subsided. Fiona pulled back, leant against her headboard. ‘I’m over him, anyway.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s the oldest cliché in the world, but you’re only sixteen. There are many fish in the sea.’

Fiona was staring thoughtfully at her hands. ‘For you, too?’

‘Where’s that coming from?’

‘Why did he have to do it?’ Fiona looked up at her and, for the first time, Kate saw anger in her daughter’s face. ‘Why did he do it to us?’

‘Dad?’

‘Of course Dad.’

‘Is that why you didn’t come down to say goodbye?’

Fiona didn’t give her an answer. ‘How can you contemplate going back to him?’

Kate tried to think hard through the fog of alcohol. Her daughter’s mood swings were so frequent and violent, she knew better than to trust this as a settled view. But it was a big change nonetheless. ‘Sometimes we need to forgive people. I just don’t know yet whether I’m capable of it.’

‘Or if it’s actually what you want?’

‘That, too.’ She leant forward and kissed her daughter’s forehead. ‘It’s something we both need to sleep on. I’m sure things will be clearer in the morning.’

Kate went to her own room, brushed her teeth and slipped gratefully into bed. Her final thought was that it seemed highly unlikely she would be proved right. What chance was there that anything would seem clearer in the morning?

Kate awoke with a belting hangover. She got up, showered, dressed again and ministered to the children’s needs before packing them off to school. She’d said to Rose she was returning to ‘work’ that day and would call her if she needed support on the home front. But before she could turn her attention to the concerns of Shirley Grove’s inquiry, she had the small matter of an appointment with her psychiatrist, Dr Wiseman, to attend to. Vastly improved as her mental state generally was, she recognized the need to continue to tap into his apparently infinite wisdom.