'Was it me? Did she miss me?'

Susannah knew he was only half joking. 'Not sure she actually remembers your name.'

Alastair clutched his heart theatrically. 'You wound me, Sis.'

'Have a good day, Romeo.'

'You too, Chunky.'

'Does anyone know what the origin of the term "kitchen-sink drama" is?'

No one answered. Of course. What did he expect, this early in the class? In the year? In the 'A' level course? Points for trying, Mr Blythe, Susannah thought. He'd taught her 'O' level last year, too some teachers taught in both buildings. They'd done The Great Gatsby and Othello together, and she really liked him. But he was one of those teachers most kids found it easier to mock than to be inspired by. He had a huge Adam's apple, a permanent shaving rash, and terrible taste in clothes. Amelia had christened him Ichabod years ago and the nickname had stuck (although most of the class hadn't a clue where it came from). Poor Mr Blythe. He so loved all things English Literature, she could tell, but he was facing a room full of blank-faced, lazy-eyed teenagers who'd rather be out on the grass in the sunshine talking about something anything else.

'Has anyone actually read this play?'

Susannah had, of course, but even she wasn't going to raise her hand straight away. She knew he'd know she'd read it. He'd know she knew exactly what a kitchen-sink drama was. And even something about the historical context of this kind of theatre. She didn't need the social handicap of everyone else knowing it, too. Not yet too early in the year for that. He was getting exasperated now, although they were only five minutes into the class. They were all supposed to have read it over the summer they'd all been given a copy. This didn't bode well for the rest of the double period.

People looked down and shuffled their papers, fiddling with the contents of their pencil cases and, in some of the more blatant cases, make-up bags.

Mr Blythe clasped his hands behind his back, legs apart, swallowed so that his Adam's apple bobbed violently in his throat, and launched into a monologue about the British New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the playwrights determined to bring realism to theatre in that era. Susannah was interested, though she expended some energy trying to look as though she wasn't. He didn't really look right at them while he talked. It was as if he was lecturing to the back of the room, at some mythical motivated students in his own imagination. Satisfied that he had warmed to his theme, and would talk for at least ten to fifteen minutes without requiring any feedback from them, most of the kids in the room started doodling and daydreaming, and mouthing things to each other across the floor.

Susannah looked around. The classroom was one of the rooms in the new block, on the second floor. Arranged in a horseshoe of desks, she had a clear view of everyone, or as clear a view as you could have when most of the kids were slouched down behind their bags. Next to her, Amelia was happily drawing elaborate and exotic flowers on the front of her new pink binder with Tipp-Ex. There were about twenty more of them, mostly kids she knew from her 'O' level class last year, although it was astonishing how different everyone looked out of the familiar uniform. Today sort of proved the point that uniform was a great leveller. Now, what you wore was going to create a pecking order that hadn't existed before.

And there was one new boy.

She'd noticed him straight away. He'd come in a couple of minutes late presumably he wasn't sure where he should be and he'd mumbled an apology. Then he'd sat down at a desk by the window. He didn't slouch he sat forward, his feet crossed at the ankles.

He was incredibly tall. She'd noticed that first, as soon as he came into the room. Much taller than most of the guys in the room, and at least five inches taller than Ichabod.

Now, with Ichabod's voice droning in the background, she was free to study him more carefully.

His hair was unfashionably short, but she liked it. She thought the late 1980s were an unfortunate era for the male hairstyle, and a cursory glance around the room revealed a number of scrawny ponytails and a few cases of Limahl-inspired, salt-and-pepper-highlighted mullets. His was dark brown, and just long enough to fall in a slight wave on the top of his head, short above his ears and around his neck. His eyes were very, very brown. And he shaved there was a clear shadow on his top lip and chin. He was olive-skinned he looked a little like he might be Mediterranean Spanish or something ... Mum would probably say he was swarthy (she suspected, but did not know for sure, that her mum was ever so slightly racist), but she quite liked it. He was big. A lot of the guys in this room were skinny still lanky. Boys. Not him. He was more ... manly. Just saying the word in her own head made her blush. Silly. Manly was such a romance novel word.

Susannah raised her gaze to his face again, and found he was looking right at her. She felt herself colour up even more, and then he smiled. His smile was broad and slightly wonky. He raised one eyebrow in a silent challenge, and Susannah stared down at her text, feeling her breath come fast, and not knowing why.

At the end of the interminable class, she stayed in her seat until most of the kids had left, rushing to lunch. Looking down intently at the contents of her bag, she watched his feet come across the room, pause slightly in front of her desk, and then carry on out of the room.

Present Day.

Behind Lois, Rob smiled at her, almost shyly a smile that revealed no teeth behind his lips. That same wonky smile.

'Hi, Susie.'

Strangely, no one else had ever called her Susie (and, while they'd been together, he had never called her anything else), and the use of the familiar nickname jolted her like a volt of electricity. She was struggling, for the moment, to separate past and present. Memories, long buried and almost forgotten, had flooded back unexpectedly and vividly when she saw him, swamping her brain. She had to consciously drag herself back to this moment.

'How are you, sweetheart? You look gorgeous ... !' Lois was holding both her hands, but leaning back, looking her up and down.

'Thanks.' She felt as self-conscious as a teenager. 'I'm well. Very well, thank you. And how are you?' Then, without really meaning to, she blurted out, 'All of you how's Frank?' She wished she'd written. 'I was so sorry ... Lois ... so sorry to hear that he was ill.'

Lois waved away the apology, not unkindly. 'Bless you, love. He's not too bad ... considering ...' But she looked tired.

Now Rob spoke. 'He's been in hospital. They've been changing some of his drugs. That's why I'm home. I've been here, helping Mum, for a few days.'

Lois didn't drive. At least, she didn't used to.

'He's coming home tomorrow.' Lois put her arm up around Rob's waist now, and leant her head in towards his chest. He was such a lot taller than she was. 'He's been a great help, my boy. Lovely to have him here ...'

'I'm sure he is.' The memory of his calm, quiet strength brushed past her like a ghost. Susannah was still watching Rob's face. He looked good. Hardly the boy his mother pronounced him to be, but still boyish, somehow. There were a few fine lines around his eyes, and on either side of his mouth. His hair had receded a little, but it was still thick and dark, with just a smattering of salt and pepper at each temple. His eyes were as brown as ever. Usually olive, he was quite tanned today his blue check shirt was open at the neck ... She realized she was staring at him. And no one was saying anything. Where was all this coming from? She didn't remember the last time she had felt this vulnerable, this emotional ...

For a long moment the three of them smiled at each other. It felt to Susannah as though there was so much to say that none of them could start to speak.

Then, suddenly, Sadie was pulling on Susannah's skirt. 'Auntie Susannah!'

Relieved, Susannah lifted Sadie on to her hip. Over her shoulder she saw Alastair standing, waiting for her. He must have sent Sadie over.

'So, this is one of Alastair's, is it?'

She nodded. 'This is Sadie.'

Lois clucked a little at Sadie, who preened and glowed with pleasure. Then, 'Daddy says you have to come now, Auntie Susannah ...'

'Of course.' Lois smiled, and stepped back. 'Of course, you must go ... it's been just lovely to see you.'

'You, too, Lois.' And she meant it. 'And you, Rob. Good to see you.'

The same shy smile. 'And you, too, Susie.'

The name again. All of them so polite. She put Sadie down, and the little girl grabbed her wrist, pulling her away. She mock-grimaced, and let herself be dragged, giving them a small wave.

When she reached Alastair, Sadie considered her duty discharged she dropped Susannah's hand and headed off at a trot towards the house in search of her mother.

'Just call me Sir Galahad.'

'Did I look like I needed rescuing, then?'

'I just figured you could do without a blast from the past today.'

'Probably.' She looked back at Lois and Rob, but they had turned and were walking back across the common, arm in arm. She was disappointed she wanted to see his face again. How ridiculous.

'Hey! Earth to Chunky.'

She shook her head and smiled at her brother.

Alastair put one arm around her shoulder. 'Come on, snap out of it, or I'm going to have to slap you. Let's get you a glass of champagne ... Actually, forget you, let's get me one ...'

In just a minute or two more they were reabsorbed by the party it was impossible not to be. The bride and groom beamed, the marquee was as lovely as Mum had boasted. A small jazz ensemble was playing, and 120 guests distracted Susannah from her reverie. Almost.

Susannah didn't go into the house straight away when she got back to Islington later that night. She was tired, and strangely drained by the day. That wasn't how you were supposed to feel at the end of a wedding especially when it was the marriage of people you loved. You were supposed to feel suffused with joy, and bathed in the reflected glow of the newly-weds' love for each other, weren't you? Or at least, if you couldn't manage that, full of catty observations about the guests, and criticisms of how this particular couple had chosen to do it. She had the beginnings of a blister on one toe, as it happened, but that wasn't it. Maybe she should have stayed at Mum's. (Maybe not if the wedding itself had been tiring, the clean-up tomorrow was going to be a hundred times more so ... the party had still been close to full swing when she'd left, entering a pretty dangerous 'requests of the DJ' phase. Madness had just started playing when she made her escape, and Alex and Chloe's young lawyer friends looked pretty set in for the night.) She found a parking space a few houses down from home how she longed for a driveway and sat in the car with her head laid back against the headrest. She'd only had a couple of drinks across the whole day two glasses of champagne but the beginnings of a nasty headache were stirring in her temples anyway. It was almost dark outside now, and all the lights in her house were blaring already. Alastair was right about one thing things weren't right here. Bright, maybe, but not right. It wasn't right that she'd been alone at her brother's wedding today, and it wasn't alright to be sitting in the car now, slightly dreading going into her own home.

The kids were all there, she knew. It wasn't Doug's weekend to have them, but the arrangement was, as Douglas always said with a touch of pride (as though it proved how civilized he was), a 'fluid' one. If 'fluid' meant that the two of them were always at the mercy of his ex-wife, Sylvie, and her whims, then he'd be right. He'd have picked them up from their mother's this morning, after she'd left.

That's what the fight had been about. Nominally, at least. These days the fights were about lots of things but, like icebergs, only ten per cent ever surfaced. He'd waited until last night to tell her, although it turned out Sylvie had called on Wednesday to ask him to have them. He wasn't brave. She'd been furious. He'd presented the problem with no solution glad to unload it on to her. What was he supposed to do? He was supposed to say no, she said. Unless he was actually glad to have the excuse to get out of coming. He said that wasn't true, said he'd wanted to come. Shrugged, as though he expected her to call her mum, who she knew had been laying tables in the marquee all afternoon, and suddenly find space for three kids she barely knew. No, she'd screamed, hearing herself sound ugly and mean. No. Enough was enough. He should have said no. And now it was his problem. Don't bother coming, she'd said. And he hadn't. Had she expected him to do anything different? Call Sylvie and say he'd changed his mind? Not for a minute.

She could already visualize what she'd find when she went in it was always the same. Sylvie lived in a tip, and the kids had picked up their housekeeping skills from her and could not be persuaded that things were different in this house. The kitchen would be a mess dishes in the sink, the detritus of meal preparation left across the counters, cheese going hard, and a knife left in the butter. She had this peculiar sensation, whenever the children were there, even after all these years, that it wasn't her house any more.

It wasn't her house, actually. Technical point. She did have her own home, though she never thought of it in those terms just a little flat she'd bought after Sean and before Douglas, and had never really lived in. But this house belonged to Douglas. He'd lived here when they first met. Not with Sylvie this was the house he'd bought after the divorce had split their assets and reduced both their circumstances. Much smaller than the one he'd lived in with her, apparently. That had been a detached house in a better road, with off-street parking. This was a terraced house with three bedrooms and a pocket handkerchief lawn. But it felt like hers, when they weren't here. When they were, she definitely felt invaded. And then felt guilty about feeling that way. And then irritated by feeling guilty. This was a very, very familiar pattern. Daisy would be shut in her room, doubtless with the phone from the landing pulled to the limit of its cord, playing music too loud. Susannah had never understood how teenagers could listen to their stereo at full blast and talk to their friends on the phone at the same time, but couldn't hear you ask them to make their beds if you were standing right beside them and all around was silence. No doubt she'd be talking to Seth 'the boyfriend'. Rosie would be watching some rubbish on the TV. (Sylvie limited 'screen time'; she and Doug didn't. So there was a real feast and famine thing going on that Susannah didn't think was at all healthy the kids were all plugged into something or other 24/7 when they were with them. Rosie had tried to wear the earbuds of her iPod shuffle through dinner last week.) And Fin, who should probably be in bed by now, would be plugged into his DS Lite, far too wired by the game to realize he was sleepy.

It hadn't always been like this. She'd never meant it to turn out this way. She sounded like a mother, and she had the workload of a mother, but she'd never had a Mother's Day card.

It wasn't the kids. She'd wanted to love the kids. She'd always thought that would come in time. Maybe not the instant punch of unconditional love that assaults a biological parent in the delivery suite, but a gradual sweet affection, and that then they'd be a family the five of them. A blended, chaotic family, dysfunctional, maybe, but no more than anyone else was. They worked you saw them all around you. The children weren't a surprise, after all. She'd worked with Doug before the two of them got together, so she'd known known perfectly well that there was an ex-wife, and three young children. They hadn't seemed like a barrier then. They'd even seemed a little like a bonus. It was time. She was in her thirties. She thought she was ready. And here they were. She wasn't hung up like some women might be about them not being her own. At least, that's what she told herself.

But that wasn't quite how it had been. That wasn't, it seemed, what Douglas had wanted.

The Douglas of back then seemed like a whole different person. (Did everyone feel that way, after a few years, when they woke up and looked at the guy in the bed next to them?) She'd been thirty-one, divorced from Sean by then, damaged. Certainly not 'actively looking'. And certainly not looking in his direction. She was doing the classic 'focusing on her career' thing, and office romances were not in her plan. He was a colleague a senior colleague at that not her boss, but the boss of several of her peers, and a partner in the firm and he was twelve years older than her. They were friends, she supposed, in the beginning. He was kind, and seemed sweet. Sad, even. And maybe just a little bit grateful that she would spend time with him. It was such a gradual thing, falling in love with him. Which didn't sound romantic, or sexy, or all that convincing. But at the time, she thought it was just what she needed. Sean had more than bruised her. Maybe Sylvie had done the same thing to Doug. They needed a slow burn. Time to trust again. They were both more careful with their hearts this time around.

She'd honestly thought he was being the same way when it came to the children. Protecting them. She loved him for it, at first. Like she loved him, at first, for a hundred things that drove her crazy now, like the way he always fell asleep in front of the news and couldn't make a decent cup of tea. It was ages before he introduced her to them. They'd been sleeping together for nine months when she was first invited to go for pizza with them. She remembered vividly standing in her underwear, the phone tucked on her shoulder with Amelia on the end of the line, talking her through what to wear. Amelia, her touchstone for so many years, had taken on, since Susannah had met Douglas, the stature of a goddess mother to three small children, including her god-daughter Elizabeth and godson Sam, and thus the expert on all things 'small people'.

'I've got to get it right. It's really important, first impressions.'

'Don't make such a big deal of it. To them, it isn't. They probably couldn't care less. Well, except the oldest one, maybe. Daisy?'

'Yes. Daisy's eight. Rose is three.'

'What's with all the flower names?' Amelia was a traditionalist.

'I don't know. He says it was Sylvie.' Sylvie was not.

'And the boy child?' Amelia always called Sam 'the boy child'. Or 'Bub', which was short for Beelzebub, and directly attributable, at that time, to his penchant for emptying drawers out on to the floor.

'Fin. He's just two.' She thought he looked like an angel in his photographs. A blond, curly-haired angel.

'So, that's easy. Fin and Rose are like Sam and Victoria. They just want you to get down to their level, talk to them, be a bit silly, you know? Show an interest, but not like a teacher, you know. Like a cool babysitter.'

'You say that as if I know how to be one of those.'

'You're kidding, right? You're the cool babysitter. They love it when you come round here. You're a bloody baby whisperer. Victoria still hasn't forgiven me for not asking you to be her godmother, too.'

'Yes, well. Me, too, now that you mention it ...'

'Oh, bugger off. You know we had to ask J's sister ...'

She laughed. 'But Daisy?'

'Daisy'll be the tricky one. She's your Elizabeth, and Lord knows I have to watch myself around mine ... Eight is the new thirteen. She's old enough to know what's going on. Sylvie sounds like enough of a head-case to have told her stuff she's not old enough to understand, too. And most of it is probably rubbish. I bet you she's told Daisy it's your fault their dad left them.'

'That's not even physically possible. I hadn't met him.'

'That won't stop a wacky ex, I'm telling you. Hell hath no fury like a forty-something woman whose husband has moved on. They'll say anything ...'

'How do you know so much about this stuff?'

'I watch EastEnders while I do the ironing,' Amelia deadpanned. 'So, this Daisy, she could be tricky. They close?'

'Who Sylvie and Daisy?'

'No, Douglas and Daisy.'

'I don't know. In either case, as it goes. I've never seen them together, have I?'

'That's right you haven't.' Amelia said this thoughtfully, in the style of Inspector Poirot, and then let the line fall silent for a moment, making her point. 'Have I mentioned that's weird ... ?'

She had mentioned it, of course, more than once. If by 'mentioned' you meant endlessly harangued and gone on about. And, apparently, she was going to again, if Susannah didn't stop her ... 'I mean, you've been practically living there with him for the last six months, and you haven't met his kids yet?'

'Give it a rest, Meels. I'm meeting them now, aren't I? Could we focus? Wardrobe?'

'Right. Ask a woman who hasn't worn anything without an elasticated waistband for ... I don't know ... about a thousand years yeah, ask her for fashion advice ...'

'I have to leave in about six minutes ...'

'Okay, okay.' Amelia finally got down to business. 'Jeans. Dark wash, low rise. No mum jeans.'

'I don't have any mum jeans.'

'Right. Forgot. Sorry. The biker boots, that suede jacket. Dangly earrings. Cool but not too cool. Casual.'

Susannah was pulling clothes out of the wardrobe. 'Thanks a million. Love you.'

'Love you, too. Call me after ...'

Amelia had been so right about Daisy. She was eight almost nine, she said, but she seemed more like eight going on eighteen to Susannah. There was something knowing and slightly hard about her that was unnerving in a child so young. Maybe Amelia was right, and Sylvie had been trying to poison her against Susannah. Rose was just a pretty, pouty princess with a big baby belly, who came to dinner in a tutu and a tiara. And Fin was little more than a baby, with a dummy firmly plugged into his little rosebud mouth, and a large grubby square of satin that smelt like socks gripped tightly in his hand, every bit as delectable as he had appeared in his pictures just considerably noisier.

Of course, at first, it touched her to see Douglas, the man she had fallen in love with, with his children. At the beginning. It was touching, and it was sexy, all at the same time. For about five minutes. Until Rosie threw a fit because they didn't serve chips, and Fin started crying loudly, no one knew why ... And until she realized that he didn't apparently know them a great deal better than she did. Couldn't calm the tantrum or quell the tears. Or at least, didn't have a clue how to relate to them. His questions to Daisy were prescriptive and mechanical, her answers bland and delivered parrot-fashion. The next stage was to feel sorry for him the displaced dad. Just after that was the irritation. The kind only a childless woman can feel while sitting in a booth with ill-mannered children for whom she is not responsible, with a father who blustered ineffectually and kept making threats he didn't follow through on.

That first time had been a real eye-opener. Beyond a frank up-and-down perusal at the beginning of the evening by Daisy and the dubious honour, at the end, of wiping Rosie's bum on a trip to the loo the kids had shown almost no interest in her, or her assumed cool babysitter demeanour, or her coolish outfit. And the suede jacket had a mozzarella grease stain on the right lapel to this day. It remained one of the most exhausting and least pleasurable evenings she had ever spent, right up there with most New Year's Eves for the disappointment of anticipation.

But it wasn't on the occasion of that initial meeting that Susannah had first tried to intervene (however much she might have wanted to). Douglas had smiled winsomely and apologetically at her in the cab on the way home (having left her, carefully invisible, around the corner from Sylvie's while he dropped them off with their mother) and held her hand and told her how happy he was that she'd met them at last. And then they'd had distinctly childless-couple-type sex on the sofa at home, which had been wonderfully distracting.

That wasn't until months later after she and Douglas had become an established item and she'd left the firm they both worked at (Amelia had been really cross about that, gone all feminist on her over it, but Susannah knew one of them had to leave, and Doug was the partner) and she had moved in with him officially. They'd all been in the park, Susannah giving it her best shot, and Rosie had been earnestly torturing Fin in the sandpit taking toys from him, deliberately filling in the holes he'd painstakingly dug, and stamping on his castles. Douglas had been on the other side of the park, helping Daisy stay upright on the roller-blades Susannah had persuaded him to buy her for her birthday. Susannah had first remonstrated with Rosie, then shouted, and finally, in exasperation, slapped her hand, hard. Douglas had watched the whole thing from a distance, and he was tight-lipped and white-faced for the rest of the afternoon. It hadn't helped that Daisy had fallen off the skates moments later, twisting her ankle so hard she howled for a full ten minutes.

Later that night, when the kids had gone to bed, and he'd gone up to tuck them in, she'd poured two big glasses of Pinot Noir, ready to talk about what they were going to do about Rosie's increasingly unkind behaviour towards her little brother. But when Douglas had come down, he hadn't sat beside her at the kitchen table as she had thought he would. He'd stood, formally, in front of her, with the table between them, and delivered a speech he'd clearly been rehearsing in his own head all afternoon.