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.

They knew all of it, at the level an eight-year-old can hold, and they had known since they were six and Beau asked directly at a kitchen table.

What I told them then, and have not changed since, is that their father did not believe I was expecting them, and that he chose to go before they were born, and that this was about him and had nothing to do with anything they had done, because they did not exist yet.

Zadie asked at six whether he knew there were four. I said no. She thought about that for a while and said, “That’s quite funny.”

The invitation I read out to them at the kitchen table in the December. All of it, exactly as it was written, including the words one last time.

Then I said they did not have to come, that I would go on my own, and that nobody would be in any trouble whatsoever for saying no.

They asked to talk about it on their own, which they do, which is a thing about four children the same age that nobody warns you about.

They came back after eleven minutes and Ike said, “We want to see what he looks like.”