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.

What it contains is a paragraph about the photograph on the sideboard, in which she says she knew exactly what she was doing and does not expect me to accept anything, and then a sentence asking whether she may write to the children.

I said no for eleven months.

Then I said yes to one supervised visit and she came, and she was good with them, and she has been good with them every time since, and I have had to hold two things at once for two years.

She is the only one who turns up. And she is the woman who put her hand flat on the back of my first scan photograph and told thirty-five people to listen while I denied my own children’s father.

She has never once said sorry to me and I have stopped waiting and I have not forgiven her.

Nobody in here believes you. Say it isn’t his. Everyone’s listening.

She was right about the room. Thirty-five people and not one of them said anything, and eleven of them were at that house on Christmas Day eight years later and watched four eight-year-olds come out of a helicopter with their son’s jaw on every single face.

But she was wrong about the sentence, and I have thought about which part for a long time.