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My home. Everything clean and tidy, the cushions on the sofa plumped up. A child’s shoe discarded by the kitchen worktop. A small reminder of where I’d been, and where I was now.

Light years apart, it seemed, when in reality it had barely been… I shook my head, stumbled downstairs, and clothed myself, detouring by Constance’s door on the way back upstairs. A careful knock.

“You all right?” I asked softly, pushing the door slightly open.

“Yeah?” She looked up from her phone, sat on her bed. Pinks. A shelf full of books. A stuffed toy on her lap.

“Just wanted to say good night. Thanks for today.”

“Dad.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s nice to be home. Really. But today was chaotic. Is this what it’s like here now? All these kids and people lounging around?”

“Is it a bad thing?” Perhaps it was. Maybe I’d done this all wrong. Oh God, I had, hadn’t I?

“Calm down,” she said, like she could read my thoughts. “It was really cool. I mean, Mommy has all these staff, and they barely speak to us. Jean is chill. And I like Reuben.”

“He’s a nice young man.”

She made a noise, rolled her eyes again.

“He’s, like, semi-famous. Weird. Like, I see his pictures online, and there’s this blog that has a couple-goals column, and him and The Dieter are on there all the time, and then suddenly he’s sat on our sofa in a shirt that has holes in it. I mean?”

Now I made a noise. I had no idea what to say to that.

“If The Dieter turns up on our sofa, I might faint.”

“You won’t.” I had to smile. She wouldn’t. And neither would I, despite barely having said a word to him. I wasn’t going to share the little incident of our first brief encounter. Nor the fact that—

“Is Stewart staying the night then?”

Busted.

“Is that okay?”

“Dad, it’s okay to have a boyfriend. He’s pretty decent, and nothing like Brandon. Brandon’s a creep.”

“Okay.”

“And you need to ring school and get the fees paid. I filled in all the paperwork, but you need to speak to them. I can start on Monday, but I need a uniform.”

“We can fix that,” I promised, hoping I could. Things suddenly seemed…possible. Maybe anything was. “School will be good.”

“Marmie should go back too. He used to love school here.”

“I will sort that all out, Constance. It’s only day one.”

“Yeah,” she said calmly. “But I just want things to go back to normal. I want to feel normal again.”

“Darling, I want that too. I want all this to be our normal. But it will be slightly different. We’ve all…changed.”

“And no more stupid stunts.”

“Stunts?”

“Jumping off balconies.”

I’d been standing there like the fool I was. Now I sat on the edge of her bed and pulled my daughter into my arms, shushing her as she sobbed against my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” I tried to whisper, but those words would never be enough. I had lost so much. Made too many mistakes. Stupid ones. Selfish, ridiculous, stupid things.