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longer.’

      ‘Are you?’ I asked her in surprise.

      ‘Danni really is mad. Even her mum says she’s got to see someone. It’s intolerable,’ Tilly added dramatically. ‘I can’t live there.’

      ‘What about your job?’

      Tilly waved a hand as if the latter was a minor detail.

      ‘She’s only saying that,’ Ben looked at me, ‘so she can have this room. She’ll go back for the hot social life she’s always on about.’ He lay back and stretched out his limbs. ‘Mmmm a lovely double bed …’ Ben grinned. Tilly threw a trainer at his head.

      ‘You can sleep in Oliver and Sam’s till they get here.’

      ‘No, he can’t,’ I said at once. ‘That’s ready for them. Don’t mess it up.’

      ‘How come Golden Boy gets all the special treatment?’ said Tilly. ‘Flowers, candles …’

      ‘I was trying to make it nice for Sam,’ I told her. ‘Since they haven’t got a proper bedroom.’

      I’d bought a sofa bed and new blinds for the funny old conservatory-type sunroom that led off the dining room, determined there would be room for all my offspring to stay. I even had a blow-up double mattress stowed away in a cupboard in case they brought strays. I had been moved to tears by the tale of one of Ben’s friends whose mother and new boyfriend had turned his bedroom into a home gym the moment the poor lad went to university and who now had to camp out with friends during the holidays.

      ‘My children will have a home with me for as long as they need one,’ I had declared to Caroline, who had not been as traumatised by this story as I was.

      ‘My friend Liz actually pays her teenagers to go away with their father,’ she told me. ‘Just so she can have an empty house. The minute they get pads of their own, she’ll be changing the locks!’

      This had made me cry more – and Ben hadn’t even left yet. Caroline had bought me another cocktail and insisted I went to have my eyebrows threaded. ‘Your lot will still be hanging around you in their thirties,’ she’d said. ‘And see? It takes five years off you!’

      But how wrong she was. All three of them now had bedrooms elsewhere.

      ‘On future visits, you could take turns to be down there,’ I told Ben and Tilly now.

      ‘Don’t mind. I really don’t care where I sleep,’ said Ben.

      Tilly pounced. ‘Get your arse in that spare room, then!’

      ‘But it’s more convenient to stay where I am now …’

      I left them bickering and went downstairs, just happy to have them back. I poured a small glass of red and put two onions on the chopping board. I would make Tilly’s favourite pasta tonight and do shepherd’s pie tomorrow for Ben. I’d make a vegetarian lasagne for Sam at the same time. Or perhaps we could all have fish? Sam ate a lot of that – it was just meat she didn’t like. On the other hand, Oliver wasn’t over-keen on seafood – he preferred chicken …

      As I crushed garlic and tore basil leaves, I heard Ben come downstairs. Soon the sound of his guitar floated through from the sitting room. I stood in the doorway watching him leaning back, eyes closed, fingers moving over the strings. ‘Want a beer?’

      ‘Yeah, great,’

      ‘Have you given in?’

      ‘I rubbed my feet on the pillows. She doesn’t want to sleep there now.’

      ‘Ugh! Ben! How old are you?’

      ‘I’m joking, Mum’

      ‘He’s not – he really did. He’s such an animal.’

      Tilly flounced past me into the kitchen and cut off a piece of Parmesan. ‘Can I have some wine, Mum?’

      I leaned up and kissed her. ‘Of course.’ I poured a can of cold lager into a tall glass. ‘Give this to Ben and then you can tell me about Danni.’

      I kept my face serious as my daughter gave me the full lowdown on her flatmate’s bursts of hysteria, but as I sliced and stirred I wanted to beam. I’d forgotten how good this made me feel. Tomorrow Sam and Oliver would make it complete. I could hear Ben singing a James Blunt song in the background, as Tilly wagged her empty glass at me. ‘I mean, I did use the last of the hair gel but you’d think I’d stolen money from her handbag the way she carried on.’

      ‘Why don’t you buy her some more?’ I suggested. ‘Make her an Easter basket of nice products and say sorry?’

      Tilly got off the stool, refilled both our glasses and picked at the cooked pasta. ‘Because she uses my stuff all the time and I don’t go mental and I haven’t got any money.’

      I took a sip of the Valpolicella she’d put in my hand. ‘Sometimes it’s worth being the first to climb down.’ I tried to remember what my balance had been at the cash point earlier. ‘I expect I can help you.’

      ‘I’m broke too, Mum,’ Ben stuck his head over Tilly’s shoulder and gave me a wide grin. ‘I need money for Easter baskets and shampoo too or all the guys in my flat will cry as well.’

      ‘Fuck off, Ben,’ said Tilly. ‘Loser.’

      I didn’t go to the pub with them. I cleared up and made coffee and lay on the sofa, full of rigatoni and contentment.

      Caroline was off to a glittering awards ceremony tonight, one of the many invites she got in her job as PR director for a cosmetics company. She’d be drinking champagne, in a fabulous frock and killer heels, looking a million dollars. She’d despair of me sitting here in my pyjama bottoms, waiting for my grown-up kids to come in and raid the fridge again. Instead of putting my energies into getting a man.

      But I couldn’t imagine a partner sitting here. It might be nice to share things. But relationships were fraught with complications. Was the sex worth it? I couldn’t really remember …

      Caroline, on her regime of organic, botanical, libido-boosting synthetic hormone injections – ‘like having a shot of testosterone, darling, without the facial hair’ – boasted an insatiable appetite and Jinni had said she kept a list of willing participants because she needed it at least once every couple of months or she got cranky. I hadn’t had any for years.

      My mother shared a bed with Gerald if they went away but had implied it was for warmth and to save a single supplement, and that even with my father ‘that side of things’ had dwindled quite early on. What, she had enquired, while vigorously scrubbing an already-pristine milk pan, was wrong with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit?

      I suddenly had a bleak feeling in the pit of my stomach.

      Suppose this was as good as it was going to get? The kids would come home less and less – Ben would finish university and live permanently elsewhere – there would just be me stuck in small market town, a slightly batty old lady with not many friends …

      ‘You’re 47, not 80!’ I heard Caroline’s voice as clearly as if she were in the room. I gave myself a shake and took a swallow of coffee.

      If it didn’t work out I could move back to London. I frowned. It would have to be somewhere bloody small.

      These cheering thoughts – I was now visualising a bedsit in a dodgy tower block miles from the tube, having been made redundant because I couldn’t think up gripping Facebook posts – were brought to an abrupt halt by my mobile ringing. Fran sounded furious and close to tears.

      ‘I have had ENOUGH. Jonathan isn’t supporting me AT ALL. The kids are a nightmare. Bella is so indulged and he lets her speak to me however she likes …’

      I shifted into a more comfortable position with another cushion under my knees and made soothing grunts.

      Jonathan had done nothing since coming home

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