7.35pm. It shouldn’t be, but sometimes it feels like the best part of my day.

I love you, Violet.

I open the browser, my tongue ticking impatiently as the temperamental Wi-Fi kicks into life. My laptop is practically a museum piece these days. Two clicks and I’m in. I feel my body relax as I wait for the page to load, taking a satisfying glug of white wine, feeling it scratch its way down my throat. I can’t afford the good stuff anymore. I can’t afford the cheap stuff either, really.

As I prepare to see them again, to laugh and cry and live through their dramas, to escape my loneliness for just twelve minutes—or fifteen, if I’m lucky—there’s a wail from Archie’s room. I feel my fingers tensing around the stem of the wine glass, the pressure almost enough to shatter it. Just me, it’s all down to me. I stand up, place the glass as calmly as I can next to Tinky Winky, who’s lying on the coffee table regarding me solemnly with his stupid blank face, and pinch my wrist.

By the time I get to Archie’s door, he’s quietened down. Just whimpers now, the worst of the nightmare over. I creep into his room, stand by his bed and stroke his hair away from his forehead. He looks so beautiful when he’s sleeping it hurts. Sometimes I think there’s no space in my heart for my own upset at losing James, it’s too full with the agony of Archie’s situation. No one deserves to grow up without a father.

“Shh monkey,” I whisper, kissing him on the head. “Just a bad dream. Mummy’s here.”

One eye twitches, squeezing open and meeting mine. He gives a murmur of relief, and shuts it again. I wait a few more minutes, watching him as he falls into a deep sleep, and remember how I felt my heart would break every night as I tucked him in, with nothing to greet me once I left him but a living room that was both empty and full of memories, and a microwave meal for one.

And then I discovered Violet. A blonde angel. The perfect mother, with the perfect family—yet even she admitted to struggling with parenthood, making the wrong decisions. Ballsing it up, as she puts it. Watching her makes me feel I’m not doing too badly after all. Is it too melodramatic to say she saved me?

I tiptoe out of Archie’s room and back into the living room. My laptop is humming on the coffee table. Round two. Here we go. I walk towards it, press the space bar and the screen lights up again. But something isn’t right. A dead link. I’ve clearly made a mistake. Because on the screen, underneath the red and black header, there’s just an empty blue box, filled with words that make no sense.

This channel does not exist.

I refresh the page. I double check the address, the handle, whatever you call the damn thing. But nothing. YouTube must be down, broken, something.