Eight years after my husband filed for divorce the week I told him I was pregnant, he texted me an invitation to Christmas dinner at his mother’s house. He expected me to turn up alone. I turned up with four eight-year-olds who have his jaw — and then one of them asked him a question and the room stopped.

Then we left, because I had told the pilot two hours and because forty minutes was exactly as much as those four could carry.

Trent asked for a test. In the car park, quietly, and he was right to ask and I told him so.

It came back in the January.

---

PART 5 — FOUR VISITS

That was two years ago.

Trent has managed four visits.

Four, in two years, all of them here, all of them arranged by me, and the last one was in the June and he cancelled the one in the October by message at nine the night before.

I had a version of this in my head where he fell apart and put himself back together and turned up every second weekend for the rest of his life.