Who’d have thought that my daughter would acquaint herself with such exotic ingredients? On this bright summer’s afternoon she is rustling up the Turkish stuffed tomatoes she first made at Maeve’s a few months ago. She has become mad about cooking and taken to demonstrating dishes to me in her one-woman cookery ‘show’ here in our kitchen. We have ventured far and wide, food-wise, with Thai, Caribbean and even Russian dishes featuring on Izzy Cooks! One time she rustled up a spicy Indonesian salad – ‘It’s called gado-gado!’ she announced – which involved covering most of our kitchen with smashed-up peanuts but was, admittedly, so delicious I didn’t really mind the mess. These culinary delights have almost made up for the fact that I haven’t managed to get it together to book a summer holiday for us this year.

Sunshine is managing to beam in through the grubby window. Izzy’s hair is tied back neatly beneath the chef’s hat we made from white cardboard, and she’s wearing the polka dot apron Penny whizzed up for her on her sewing machine. As there’s no production team here, sourcing ingredients has been keeping me busy. Left to my own devices, I’m what might be described as a ‘basic cook’. I’d never imagined that Medjool dates and preserved lemons would ever put in an appearance in this house, or that the phrase ‘We’re out of polenta!’ would fall from my seven-year-old’s mouth. This new project is ruining me financially and the clearing up afterwards is colossal. But at least Izzy’s having fun, making these mad, exotic feasts.

While Izzy Cooks! is a fairly new project, lots of things haven’t changed since her father moved out. Obviously, Izzy was shocked and upset when we told her (‘Mum and I will still be really good friends,’ Andy explained, twisting his hands together as he sat hunched on the sofa). There were plenty of tears and for a while, she took to coming into my room at night and snuggling into bed with me. But she seems to have accepted how things are. And now, well into the summer holidays – school broke up at the end of June – she is generally back to her sunny, happy self, as if everything is normal.

Which it is, in the ways that matter. Her parents and brother still love her. The tooth fairy hasn’t stopped leaving a pound under her pillow. She sees her dad regularly (although he’s said he’s ‘not quite ready’ for her to visit his new flat across town, whatever that means), and she still loves to sit drawing at the kitchen table. In Izzy’s world, there is little in life that can’t be made better with a new set of felt tips.