Jess saw now that when Marty had left, everything she had felt had been related to practical matters. She had felt unsafe. She had worried about how the children would feel with him gone. She had worried about money, about who would mind them if she had to do an evening shift at the pub, about who would take the bins out on a Thursday. But what she mostly felt was a vague relief that she was no longer governed by his moods. That she didn’t have to act as referee between him and the children. That she no longer had to try to convince herself that this was a relationship worth saving.

More than anything she hated the fact that a man who had seen only the best of her now thought the worst. To Ed she was now no better than any of the other people who had let him down or messed him up. In fact, she was probably worse. And it was all her own fault. That was the thing she could never escape from. It was entirely her own fault.

She thought about it for three nights, then she wrote him a letter.

So, in one ill-thought-out minute, I became the person I have always taught my children not to be. We are all tested eventually, and I failed.

I’m sorry.

I miss you.

PS I know you’ll never believe me. But I was always going to pay it back.

She put her phone number on it and twenty pounds in an envelope, marked First Instalment. And she gave it to Nathalie and asked her to put it with his post at Beachfront Reception. The next day, Nathalie said a for-sale sign had gone up outside number two. And she watched her reaction just slightly too closely and then she stopped asking questions about Mr Nicholls.

When five days had gone by and Jess realized he wasn’t going to respond, she spent an entire night awake, and then she told herself firmly that she could lie around feeling miserable no longer. It was time to move on. Heartbreak was a luxury too costly for the single parent.

On Monday she made herself a cup of tea, sat down at the kitchen table and called the credit-card company; she was told that she needed to up her minimum monthly payment. She opened a letter from the police who said that she would be fined a thousand pounds for driving without tax and insurance and that if she wanted to appeal against the penalty she should apply for a court hearing in the following ways. She opened the letter from the pound, which said she owed a hundred and twenty pounds up to the previous Thursday for the safekeeping of the Rolls. She opened the first bill from the vet and shoved it back in the envelope. There was only so much news you could digest in one day. She got a text from Marty, who wanted to know if he could come and see the kids at half-term.

‘What do you think?’ she said to them, over breakfast.

They shrugged.

After her cleaning shift on Tuesday she walked into town to the low-cost solicitors and paid them twenty-five pounds to draft a letter to Marty asking for a divorce, and for back payments in child support.

‘How long?’ the woman asked.

‘Two years.’

She didn’t even look up. Jess wondered what kinds of stories she heard every day. She tapped in some figures, then turned the screen to Jess’s side of the desk. ‘That’s what it comes to. Quite a sum. He’ll ask to pay in instalments. They usually do.’

‘Fine.’ Jess reached for her bag. ‘He has someone to help him.’

She worked her way methodically through the list of things she needed to sort out, and she tried to see a bigger picture beyond that small town. Beyond a little family with financial problems, and a brief love story that had snapped in two before it had really begun. Sometimes, she told herself, life was a series of obstacles that just had to be negotiated, possibly through a sheer act of will. She walked the length of her seaside town and she vowed that she would hide the full extent of her financial worries from the two of them. It was important that they were allowed to hope, to dream, even if she no longer would. If she could give them nothing else she could give them that. She stared out at the muddy blue of the endless sea, gulped in the air, lifted her chin and decided that she could survive this. She could survive most things. It was nobody’s right to be happy, after all.

Jess walked along the pebbly beach, her feet sinking, stepping over the groynes, and counted her blessings on three fingers, as if she was playing a piano in her pocket: Tanzie was safe. Nicky was safe. Norman was getting better. That was what it all boiled down to, in the end, wasn’t it? The rest was just detail.

If she said it often enough she might start believing it.

Two evenings later, they sat in the garden on the old plastic furniture. Tanzie had washed her hair and was on Jess’s lap while Jess tugged the comb through the wet tangles. She told them why Mr Nicholls wouldn’t be coming back.

Nicky stared at her. ‘From his pocket?’

‘No. It had fallen out of his pocket. It was in a taxi. But I knew whose it was.’

There was a shocked silence. Jess couldn’t see Tanzie’s face. She wasn’t sure she wanted to look at Nicky’s. She kept combing gently, smoothing her daughter’s hair, her voice calm and reasonable, as if that might bring reason to what she had done.

‘What did you do with the money?’ Tanzie’s head had become unusually still.

Jess swallowed. ‘I can’t remember now.’

‘Did you use it for my registration?’

She kept combing. Smooth and comb. Tug, tug, release. ‘I honestly can’t remember, Tanzie. Anyway, what I did with it is irrelevant.’

Jess could feel Nicky’s eyes on her the whole time she spoke.

‘So why are you telling us now?’