‘And does Becky like her new daddy?’

She shrugged, bored with the finer nuances of her story. ‘We saw pictures at Circle Time. It was long, like a princess dress.’

‘Ah. Lovely.’

‘Can I have one like that?’

‘Well, darling, I’m not sure I’m going to get married. That would mean you would have a new daddy, you see.’

‘We could ask him?’

‘Um, well, no.’ I scratched my neck. ‘I don’t think we’ll do that.’

‘If you do, can I have the dress?’ She slid off my knee, uninterested now that there seemed only a slim chance of sartorial splendour amongst her classmates.

‘Clemmie, do you ever think about Daddy?’

The health visitor had said I should ask things like this. I didn’t. Ever. It wasn’t my instinct. My instinct screamed: protect! Don’t mention it! So I hadn’t. Clemmie was on the floor with her tiny parents. The irony didn’t escape me.

‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. Carefully, almost. Too careful, for a four-year-old.

‘Do you remember what he looked like?’

‘He was a bit grumpy,’ she said eventually. To the floor.

And Phil was; had been. Had increasingly regarded the children as an irritant, particularly when he was trying to work. But I didn’t like the way she’d had to search her memory bank to come up with even this picture. Then again, I hadn’t provided her with one.

Clemmie sat back on her heels and looked triumphant. ‘And he had a pink shirt.’

I smiled. ‘He did, didn’t he, Clem.’

Later, when she was watching CBeebies with Archie after lunch, I went through the drawers in the bureau. Eventually I found what I was looking for, but it had been a search; I’d hidden them well. I found a couple of frames and popped one in each of their bedrooms. Photos of Phil, smiling. Yes, of course he smiled occasionally. Archie’s was taken on holiday in Majorca, and Clemmie’s on our wedding day. He may not have been perfect, but he was their father and you only get one. Clemmie could only remember him grumpy, but that would surely fade, and then she’d have this smiley photo to take its place. I didn’t put them in obvious positions, by their beds or on their walls, but on top of their chests of drawers, so that they’d come across them later, by accident maybe, when they were a bit older, then assume they’d always been there. I didn’t want Clemmie remembering a cross father. I wanted her life to be perfect, to the extent that I would erase those memories and replace them with nice ones, just as I took her dirty clothes and replaced them with clean ones. And I’d talk about him more, I determined, as I went downstairs. Remember happy times; make them up. Lovely picnics, bluebell walks. I could do that for them, my children. Lie. Let’s face it, I did it already. As I filled the dishwasher I wondered if he could become a bit of a hero, secretly in the SAS, trouble-shooting in Afghanistan, which would explain why he hadn’t been here much? But then one day, when she was a famous actress and on Who Do You Think You Are, she might discover he’d been a cycling nerd with a mistress in the next village. Perhaps not. Stick to the smiling photos and the bluebell woods.

So that was her memory sorted out. But what about her life? What about replacing Phil with something better, so that, blink, and she and Archie wouldn’t know any different? They were so young, any stepfather would soon be like a real father. Like Becky. She called her new daddy Papa. He was a farmer, and Linda, her mum, had never been happier. I knew Linda. Knew the family Clemmie had been talking about. Linda wasn’t automatically my type at the school gates – bottle blonde, very short skirts, chewed gum constantly – but I liked her. Her husband had walked out on her one Easter Sunday and taken up with a younger model. He’d bought a motorbike too; leathers, the whole bit. Two months later he’d been killed on the A41 when his bike hit black ice. Linda now lived on a dairy farm with her little girl, Becky, and Becky’s papa. The manic gum-chewing had stopped, I noticed. Jeans instead of micro minis. Hair slightly darker. Because perhaps Becky’s papa didn’t need the peroxide? Happy endings. Don’t knock them. And don’t pass them up, either.

The rest of the week was taken up with calming my best friend’s sartorial nerves. As Jennie frenziedly pointed out, she hadn’t been to a ball for years, had nothing to wear and anyway, what did one wear to balls these days? Was it long and slinky, or short and cocktaily? These, and other such burning issues, mostly to do with shoes and accessories, consumed us. For just as I couldn’t think for myself, Jennie couldn’t dress herself – something I found as easy as falling off a confidence log. Her lack of taste baffled me.

‘How about this with these?’ she’d say as she ran through my back door wearing yet another heinous combination, this time bursting out of a black dress of such sequined monstrosity, together with high red shoes, it fairly took my breath away.

‘No to both,’ I said firmly. ‘And certainly not together. The only thing black goes with is black, Jennie. Take the shoes back to Angie and the dress to Peggy. She’d get away with that because she’s eccentric and it would hang off her.’

‘Whereas I’d just look like a tart?’

I shrugged, slightly pleased to have the upper hand occasionally with my bossy friend. But then I took pity and, piling the children in the car, took her shopping.

She ended up looking terrific in a grey slinky number I’d found in Coast: to the floor, high at the front, but low at the back. As did Angie in her black velvet, which she shook from a Selfridges bag and slipped into in the middle of my kitchen; and Peggy in the sequins which she’d generously offered Jennie, but which, with black pumps and on her rangy frame, looked stunning.

‘If only you were coming,’ they all said and Jennie looked a bit guilty, feeling perhaps she should have refused the tickets and insisted I go.

‘Oh, I really don’t want to,’ I said, meaning it. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you go to alone, is it?’

‘No, no,’ they chorused, as it occurred to us that Angie, and ostensibly Peggy, were doing just that.

‘It’s not really your sort of thing, is it?’ consoled Angie.

‘Absolutely not,’ I agreed, stung. Why wasn’t it? Why? ‘Anyway, I’m going to Dad’s,’ I said quickly, to save them. ‘Haven’t seen him for ages. I’m going to cook him supper.’

‘Oh, good.’ They all said, relieved, feeling much better. They bustled away content.

Dad, however, wasn’t much help when I decided to follow through. ‘Steak and chips,’ I told him cheerfully, ‘in front of Viva Las Vegas. I’ll bring the steak.’

‘Oh, sorry, Poppy, I’m going to the hunt ball.’

‘Are you?’ I was astonished.

‘Yes, Mark sent me a ticket, wasn’t that kind? Just a single, but they’re a hundred quid a pop, so terribly generous. Especially after all that business with the hound. Aren’t you going, love? Half the county’s going to be there.’

‘Well, I was going to – he sent me some too – but I gave mine to Jennie.’

‘Ah, right. Not really your sort of thing, is it? Anyway, must go love, I’ve got to feed the horses before I shimmy into my glad rags.’

And he was gone. Leaving me irritated. And then I found myself growing more irritated as I put the children to bed. Not my sort of thing? Why not? Christ, I could party with the best of them! Just because Phil and I didn’t much – he was teetotal and liked an early night – didn’t mean I couldn’t. Bloody hell, you should have seen me in the old Clapham days, creeping back up the stairs at three in the morning, barefoot, high heels in hand. When I was young. But I was still young, surely? I swept Archie’s curtain shut with a vengeance. Through the crack I could see the bedroom lights across the road at the Old Rectory, where Sylvia and Angus would be getting ready: Angus stooping to adjust his bow tie in the mirror, Sylvia popping diamonds in her ears at her dressing table. Marvellous. How lovely for them. I seized the groaning nappy bucket and marched downstairs. Cinders by the fire, then. I shook the nappies viciously in the bin. With her solitary boiled egg, in her dressing gown and her ancient Ugg boots. Splendid.

I told myself I’d be the smug one in the morning, though, when everyone else was nursing hangovers. Oh yes. In the pub. Laughing and reminiscing over bloody Marys. Hm. They’d all be there tonight, of course. Sam – no, don’t think about Sam. I’d successfully blocked him for days; resisted imagining him in his black tie, even whilst helping Jennie buy a new white shirt for Dan. I wasn’t going to give in now. Instead I helped myself to a large gin and tonic and told myself there was a good film on at nine and that I might even stay up till it finished. Live a little.

It was a surprise, therefore, when my doorbell rang much earlier, at eight, and I opened it to find my father on my front step, an overcoat over his dinner jacket. He seemed mildly taken aback to see me in my dressing gown. Looked me up and down, eyebrows raised.

‘Didn’t you get my message?’

‘What message?’

‘I left one on your mobile. About tonight. Mark rang to say Mary Granger was throwing up and would I like to bring anyone. Didn’t you get it?’

‘No!’ I could have kissed him. And hit him. So like Dad not to try again. Not to persevere. Just turn up and assume.

‘Well, I can’t come now,’ I said testily. ‘I’ve got the children.’

‘Can’t you get a babysitter?’

‘Of course not, it’s far too late.’

‘What about Jennie’s daughter, next door?’

‘She’s out with her boyfriend. And the little ones are at a sleepover.’

‘Oh.’ He looked vaguely stumped. Then: ‘Bring them with us?’

Ordinarily a suggestion like this from my father would be greeted with scathing derision from me. But genes will out, and in many respects I am my father’s daughter. Can, at the drop of a hat, revert to type. I stared at him.

‘OK.’

In my heart, I was far from sure I was going to run with this; but in the spirit of living dangerously was nonetheless interested to see how he’d execute it: keen to give him his head.

‘Right. You get changed, brush your hair and whatnot, and I’ll carry them into the lorry.’

‘The lorry?’

‘Well, the car hasn’t worked for weeks, Poppy.’

So my father drove his horse lorry. Blithely parked it in Tesco’s car park, no doubt, as if it were a Vauxhall Cresta.

‘So … we’re piling the children into a dark lorry, and what, leaving it in a muddy field? Where they’ll wake up cold and frightened?’

‘No, no, we’ll take them in the house, find a bed for them.’

‘Arrive at a black-tie ball with two sleepy children? Forget it, Dad. Have fun.’ I went to shut the door, but he was already in.

‘Don’t be wet, Poppy, how d’you think your mum and I ever went to parties? We were never organized enough for a sitter. You were always under one arm. Now go and put your frock on and I’ll sort the kids out. It’s only one night, for God’s sake, it won’t kill them, and they’ll love it. Everyone’s going, d’you want to be the only one who isn’t?’

He knew which buttons to press. He was also halfway up the stairs.

Twenty minutes later, we were in the lorry – the one with no seat belts, remember – rattling over a cattle grid at the entrance to Mulverton Hall, only this time we took the fork in the drive that led, not to the home farm and a muddy field of cows, but to the main house. A sweep of dark green lawn swam like a lake in front of us. Dad, at the wheel, skirted it carefully, then followed signs to parking in the paddock alongside, behind the park railings. I had on my old black dress, and my hastily washed hair was still wet down my back; between us on the front seat, sitting bolt upright and wide awake, were two overexcited and highly delighted children.

I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this-I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this, was my overriding thought as a surprised car park attendant in a long white coat – surprised at the lorry initially, then the children – beckoned us into the field. Dad gave him a cheery wave and wound down the window.