Eight years after my husband filed for divorce the week I told him I was pregnant, he texted me an invitation to Christmas dinner at his mother’s house. He expected me to turn up alone. I turned up with four eight-year-olds who have his jaw — and then one of them asked him a question and the room stopped.

I got out first.

Then Ike. Then Beau. Then Marlow. Then Zadie.

The front door opened before the rotors had stopped.

Bobbie Mercer came out onto the step with a glass in her hand and she got about three feet and then she stopped dead, and that glass went out of her hand onto the stone and broke.

I put my hand on Zadie’s shoulder and said, quietly, “All right?”

Four heads nodded at once, which is a thing they do and which I have never got used to.

We walked up to that door and the whole house went quiet.

Then I saw him.

Heavier. Greyer at the front. And the smile he had arranged for my arrival came off his face in about half a second.

Beside him was a blonde woman of about twenty-nine in a red dress with a ring on.