A muffled bang echoed from the sitting room; Theo's yell, and Ben crying. He was genuinely hurt-I could tell from the noise he was making. Hannah would deal with it. I shut my eyes. I whispered the word Mum, over and over.

Mum. Mum. Mummy.

A breath brushed my cheek. Just the lightest, coolest whisper of a breath. My heart began to beat very fast. Perhaps it was a draught from under the door, but to me it was Mum, trying her very best to touch my face with her ghostly hand. I sat absolutely still.

Mum?

There it was again, as though a gossamer veil had been drawn across my skin. I felt the little hairs stand up straight on my arms. The air seemed to crackle with a presence. I so wanted it to be Mum.

'Is that you?' I said aloud.

I'd stopped breathing completely. The air seemed much more still than usual. I even imagined-or maybe it wasn't imagination-a hint of sandalwood and coffee and wine.

'I love you,' I said.

Again, a puff of air. Perhaps she was trying to say that she loved me too.

'Help me,' I begged. 'Tell me what to do about Dad.'

A door slammed downstairs. Bloody Theo, in one of his rages. I barely heard it. Every cell in my body was focused on Mum, on this feeling that she was with me. Suddenly the sun went behind a cloud, and the room was drowned in blue-grey shadow.

'Are you sad?' I asked.

As soon as I'd spoken, a feeling hit me-like a punch in the chest that knocked all the breath out of my lungs. Of course she was sad-she was dead, banished from the world. How could I have sat and chatted to Dad?

'I'm sorry.' I began to cry. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'

The next moment, she'd gone. It was very sudden. I knew I was on my own. The cardigan that still smelled of her lay folded in my circle of memories. I wrapped it around my face, and breathed it in, and felt the softness. Then I curled up on the floor, and my tears made the cardigan wet. I hoped she wouldn't mind.

Hannah They liked him. I could tell from the way they crept into the house; I could tell by Scarlet and Theo's guilty politeness over lunch, the blank-faced shrugs when we asked them how they'd got on, the way neither of them could quite look me in the eye. Even Ben-our chatterbox-seemed to be keeping secrets.

It didn't make them happy, of course. We'd barely finished lunch when Scarlet took herself off to her bedroom. She claimed to have homework, and I heard her door shut behind her. Freddie went for forty winks in our room because the morning's ferrying had exhausted him. He'd been gone for some time when Ben ran wailing into the kitchen.

'Theo punched me,' he roared, presenting me with his arm. 'Here.'

I rolled up his sleeve to find a cruel flower of bruises blossoming on the soft skin. 'Theo did this?' I asked. He nodded tragically, rubbing his running nose.

'What happened?' I asked, rocking him on my knee as I rubbed in arnica cream.

He was sucking his thumb. The memory made him sniffle again. 'Theo told me to give him my . . . give him my . . . bean bag. And I said I wouldn't because it's mine and I was comfy. Then he picked me up and threw me onto the floor, and then he hit my arm. And it hurt, Hannah, it hurt! And then he said I was a . . . was a stupid little fucker.'

'He said what?'

'Stupid little fucker. That's what he called me.'

Enraged, I set Ben on his feet. 'We'll see about that.'

I found Theo lying rebelliously across the boys' two beanbags, watching TV. He pretended to ignore me when I came in, so I marched across the room and switched off the set at the wall.

'Hey!' he yelled indignantly.

'How dare you attack Ben?'

'He's a liar!'

'He has the bruises to prove it.' I was furious. 'How could you?'

Theo rolled until he was face down, screaming, 'No, no, no! He's lying!'

'I'm terribly disappointed in you, Theo.'

'He's just trying to get me into trouble-he's a nasty little liar!'

I folded my arms. 'That's no pocket money this week for you, young man. Come and apologise immediately.'

He was up and off the beanbags, his expression livid. 'You always take his side! You always, always do! He's your favourite. You love him most, you always have, you don't love me at all.'

'What has got into you, Theo?'

'Piss off, you fat old cow!'

My jaw dropped as he shot from the room. I followed-yelling dark threats-just in time to see him dart out of the kitchen door, and across the lawn. I abandoned the chase. I knew where he was heading; he had a hiding place in the far corner of the garden, behind the shed. I stood at the kitchen window, staring sightlessly at that barren winter garden and feeling as though I was in a war zone.

Ben's voice behind me made me jump. 'Wow. Theo is in big trouble this time.'

'Maybe,' I replied absently.

'Can I read you a story, Hannah?'

He had a dozen first reader books clutched in his arms. I couldn't resist such an appeal. We sat on the sofa and read stories to one another, though my mind was elsewhere. Ben's legs stuck straight out in front of him, and he held the books up like a pompous schoolmaster. He could manage the simpler words. I was willing to bet most four-year-olds couldn't do that. I'd taught him to write his own name, too. One of our all-time favourite books had wonderfully quirky illustrations. It was about Boogie the dog, whose appetite was forever leading her astray.

This is Boogie. Boogie is a big brown dog.

What is that good smell? It is sausages in the shop. Boogie likes sausages.

Look! Boogie has a sausage. She is running.

'Stop!' shouts the man from the shop. 'Stop that big brown dog!'

Boogie runs very fast.

The man runs very fast too.

He huffs and puffs, but he cannot catch Boogie.

Boogie runs all the way home. She is very happy.

Greedy Boogie.

The story was far beyond Ben's reading skills, but he'd learned every word by heart. He seemed intrigued by the penultimate picture, in which a florid butcher in a striped apron galloped after a high-tailing, tongue-lolling dog.

'Boogie was naughty,' he remarked thoughtfully.

'Mm, yes, but we like her, don't we?'

'The man is very cross, look at him. His face is red.'

'Well, I expect I would be cross if a big brown dog stole a sausage from my shop.'

Ben smacked his palm down onto the dog in the picture. 'The shop man should bash Boogie with a big stick-whack, whack!-and call the policeman and take her away to jail.'

I was taken aback. 'Really? But she only stole a sausage. That's what dogs do. They like sausages. We wouldn't want anyone to bash poor Boogie, would we?'

Ben's soft features had become pinched. 'Theo bashed me. If you call a policeman he will take Theo away and put him in jail.'

'Sweetie,' I suggested wearily, 'would you like to watch Fireman Sam?'

So I settled him down with a biscuit and a cup of hot chocolate beside him. Then I made a pot of tea and took some up to Frederick. He was just rolling off our bed, his narrow feet bare and blue-veined.

'Tea,' I announced. 'Did you get any shut-eye?'

'I can't find my jacket.'

'The children are all churned up.' I put his mug on the bedside table. 'Damn and blast Joseph Scott.'

'Hannah, I can't find my jacket.'

'Your tweed one? Okay-well, where did you leave it?'

He patted the bedspread, looking dismayed. 'I left it here, on the end of the bed. Just here, you see? Now it's gone. Did you take it?'

'Whatever would I want with your jacket?'

He lowered himself painfully onto all fours and peered under the bed. 'Somebody's stolen it. Somebody must have been in here while I was asleep.'

'Of course they haven't.'

'But I left it here on the bed! Who would come in while I was sleeping? Who would do that?'

That dreaded day had taken on a nightmarish quality. To humour him, I searched around the room. I soon spotted his jacket, carefully folded and jammed onto a shelf of the bookcase. 'Here it is!' I cried, shaking out the creases. 'What on earth did you leave it there for?' I held out the garment and he pushed his arms into the sleeves.

'Where was it?'

'In the bookcase. Funny place to put it.'

'What's it doing in the bookcase?'

'Well, you must have put it there. Now drink your tea, for heaven's sake.'

He sat down again. I moved quietly around the room, hanging up clothes and straightening periodicals on the bedside table. 'They're all at sixes and sevens,' I said. 'The children.'

'Are they?'

'One hour with their father, and they've unravelled. Scarlet's shut herself in her room. Theo's walloped seven bells out of poor little Ben.' I began to hang a pile of Freddie's cotton shirts in the cupboard: pale blue stripes, smelling of soap. Smelling of Freddie. 'Everything we've worked for. It's all coming apart at the seams.'

When he still didn't answer me, I looked around. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands clasped in his lap. His gaze was fixed blankly on the wardrobe doors in front of him. He looked terrifyingly old.

'Freddie?' I said sharply. 'Are you still with me?'

He turned his eyes up to mine. His seemed to have faded in the past hour, as though some light had dimmed. Those same eyes had bowled me over forty years ago, bright with humour and understanding. Now I saw only a horrible emptiness.

'Frederick?' I persisted. 'For God's sake, say something.'

'Hmm?'

I came closer, staring into his face. It was happening. It was happening. My mother had predicted this when first we became engaged. 'He'll be an old man when you're still young.'

At twenty-four, such horrors seemed so absurdly distant as to be irrelevant. I distinctly recall laughing.

'I love him,' I told her. 'I am going to marry him and be happy until death do us part.'

She sniffed. 'You'll end up acting as a private nurse till death do you part.'

As the years passed, and mortality began to leer through aching joints and fading eyesight, I'd remembered her words. Fear had begun to gather in the dark corners of my mind.

'Freddie?' I said now. 'Knock-knock, anyone home?'

A sudden smile transformed him; a sunrise of a smile. I breathed again, as light returned to his face. 'Sorry, my darling,' he said. 'Still half asleep, silly old fellow.'

'All right?'

'I just need to drink this lovely witch's brew.' He reached for the mug.

'Are you sure?'

'Stop fussing, woman.'

Sitting there, sipping quietly at his tea, he became Frederick again. Some quality fluttered down, landed on him and made my man himself once more-what was it? The set of his shoulders, the gleam in his eyes, the strength in his voice. He watched me folding clothes and opening and shutting drawers.

'Don't fret, Hannah,' he said. 'It's just the lost sleep making me a bit slow.'

'Hmph. And I know why you're not sleeping. That man.'

'I used to work and party for seventy-two hours straight, and still function. Ha!' It was a classic Frederick Wilde laugh: a sudden bark, sharp and dry. 'Can't do twelve anymore.'

'Come on downstairs. I need you to have a man-to-man talk with Theo about his behaviour. He's beyond the pale.'