Crystal Palace is where my train terminates. Had it not been, I might have stayed in my seat, staring at the advert in the hope of making sense of it. As it is, I’m the last to get off.

The rain has slowed to a drizzle, but I’ve barely left the Tube station before the newspaper in my hands is sodden, leaving traces of ink on my fingers. It’s already dark, but the street lights are on, and the neon signs above Anerley Road’s myriad takeaways and mobile phone shops mean I can see clearly. Garish lights hang from each lamp-post, in preparation for this weekend’s Z-list celebrity switch-on, but it’s too mild – and too early – for me to start thinking about Christmas.

I stare at the advert as I walk home, oblivious to the rain plastering my fringe to my forehead. Perhaps it isn’t me at all. Perhaps I have a doppelgänger. I’m hardly the obvious choice to advertise a premium rate chatline: you’d think they’d go for someone younger, more attractive. Not a middle-aged woman with two grown children and a bit of a spare tyre. I almost laugh out loud. I know it takes all sorts, but that’s some niche market.

Between the Polish supermarket and the key-cutter is Melissa’s café. One of Melissa’s cafés, I remind myself. The other is in a side street off Covent Garden, where her lunchtime regulars know to phone ahead with their sandwich orders, to avoid queuing, and the tourists dither by the door, deciding if the panini will be worth the wait. You’d think Covent Garden would be a licence to print money, but the high rates mean that in the five years it’s been open it’s struggled to turn a profit. This one, on the other hand, with its tatty paintwork and unlikely neighbours, is a gold mine. It’s been here for years, raking in the cash long before Melissa took it over and put her name above the door; one of those hidden secrets that appear occasionally in city guides. The best breakfast in South London, says the photocopied article Sellotaped to the door.

I stay on the opposite side of the road for a while, so I can watch without being seen. The inside of the windows are steamed up around the edges, like a soft-focus photo from the 1980s. In the centre, behind the counter, a man is wiping the inside of the Perspex display. He wears an apron folded in half and tied – Parisian waiter style – around his waist, instead of looped over his head, and with his black T-shirt and dark, just-got-out-of-bed hair he looks far too cool to be working in a café. Good looking? I’m biased, I know, but I think so.

I cross the road, watching out for cycles as a bus driver waves me across in front of him. The bell above the café door jingles and Justin looks up.

‘All right, Mum.’

‘Hi, love.’ I look around for Melissa. ‘You here on your own?’

‘She’s in Covent Garden. The manager there’s gone off sick so she left me in charge.’ His tone is casual, so I try and mirror it in my response, but I feel a swell of pride. I’ve always known Justin was a good boy; he just needed someone to give him a break. ‘If you give me five minutes,’ he says, washing his cloth out in the stainless steel sink behind him, ‘I’ll come home with you.’

‘I was going to pick up a takeaway for tea. I suppose the fryer’s off now?’

‘I’ve only just turned it off. It won’t take long to do some chips. And there are some sausages that’ll be thrown out if they’re not eaten today. Melissa won’t mind if we take them home.’

‘I’ll pay for them,’ I say, not wanting Justin to get carried away with his temporary position of responsibility.

‘She won’t mind.’

‘I’ll pay,’ I say firmly, getting out my purse. I look up at the blackboard and calculate the price for four sausage and chips. He’s right that Melissa would have given them to us if she’d been here, but she isn’t here, and in this family we pay our way.

The shops and businesses peter out as we walk further from the station, giving way to terraced houses in rows of around a dozen. Several are boarded up with the grey metal shutters that mean a repossession; graffiti adding red and orange fireworks to their front doors. Our row is no different – the house three doors down has missing tiles and thick ply nailed across the windows – and you can spot the rented houses by the blocked gutters and stained brickwork. At the end of the row are two privately owned houses; Melissa’s and Neil’s, in the coveted end-of-terrace spot, and mine, right next door.

Justin’s fiddling in his rucksack for his keys, and I stand for a moment on the pavement by the railings that run around what might generously be called our front garden. Weeds poke up through the wet gravel; the only decoration a solar-powered lamp shaped like an old-fashioned lantern, which gives off a dull yellow glow. Melissa’s garden is gravelled, too, but there are no weeds to be seen, and either side of her front door sit two perfectly manicured box trees, shaped into spirals. Beneath the lounge window is a patch of brickwork a shade lighter than the rest; where Neil scrubbed off graffiti left by someone in South London still narrow-minded enough to object to a mixed-race marriage.

No one has bothered to pull the curtains in our own lounge, and I can see Katie painting her nails at the dining table. I used to insist we all sat at the table for meals; used to love the opportunity to catch up on what they’d done at school. In the early days, when we first moved in, it was the one time of day when I felt we were doing all right without Matt. There we were, a little family unit of three, all sitting down to a meal together at six o’clock.

Through the window – coated with the ever-present layer of grime that comes from living on a busy road – I notice that Katie has cleared a space for her nail kit among the magazines, the pile of bills, and washing basket, which has somehow chosen the table as its natural home. Occasionally I clear the mess so we can eat Sunday lunch together, but it isn’t long before a creeping tide of paperwork and abandoned carrier bags pushes us on to our laps again, in front of the telly.

Justin opens the door and I remember what it was like when the kids were little and they’d run to greet me when I came home, as though I’d been away for months, instead of stacking shelves at Tesco for eight hours. When they were older it would be next door I’d call on, thanking Melissa for the after-school care the kids claimed to be too old for, but secretly loved.

‘Hello?’ I call. Simon comes out of the kitchen with a glass of wine. He hands it to me and kisses me on the lips, his arm sliding around my waist to pull me closer. I hand him the plastic bag from Melissa’s café.

‘Get a room, you two.’ Katie comes out of the lounge, her fingers spread out and her hands in the air. ‘What’s for tea?’ Simon releases me and takes the bag into the kitchen.

‘Sausage and chips.’

She wrinkles her nose and I cut her off before she can start moaning about calories. ‘There’s some lettuce in the fridge – you can have yours with salad.’

‘It won’t get rid of your cankles,’ Justin says. Katie hits him on the arm as he ducks around her and runs up the stairs, two at a time.

‘Grow up, you two.’ Katie is nineteen and an easy size eight, with not a hint of the puppy fat she still had a few years ago. And there is nothing wrong with her ankles. I move to give her a hug, then remember her nails and kiss her cheek instead. ‘I’m sorry, love, but I’m knackered. The odd takeaway won’t do you any harm – everything in moderation, right?’

‘How was your day, honey?’ Simon asks. He follows me into the lounge and I sink into the sofa, shutting my eyes for a brief moment and sighing as I feel myself relax.

‘It was okay. Apart from Graham making me do the filing.’

‘That’s not your job,’ Katie says.

‘Neither is cleaning the loo, but guess what he had me doing yesterday?’

‘Ugh. That bloke is such an arsehole.’

‘You shouldn’t put up with it.’ Simon sits next to me. ‘You should complain.’

‘To who? He owns the place.’ Graham Hallow comes from the breed of men who inflate their egos by belittling the people around him. I know this, and so it doesn’t bother me. For the most part.

To change the subject I pick up the London Gazette from where I dumped it on the coffee table. It’s still damp and parts of the print are blurry, but I fold it in half so the chatline and escort ads are showing.

‘Mum! What are you doing looking up escort services?’ Katie says, laughing. She finishes applying a top coat to her nails and carefully screws the lid on, returning to the table to push her hands under an ultraviolet lamp to seal the varnish.

‘Maybe she’s thinking of trading Simon in for a newer model,’ Justin says, walking into the lounge. He’s changed out of the black T-shirt and jeans he was wearing for work, into grey joggers and a sweatshirt. His feet are bare. In one hand he carries his phone; in the other a plate heaped with sausage and chips.

‘That’s not funny,’ Simon says. He takes the paper from me. ‘But seriously, why are you looking at chatlines?’ His brow furrows and I see a shadow cross his face. I glare at Justin. Simon is fourteen years older than me, although sometimes I look in the mirror and think I’m catching him up. There are lines around my eyes I never had in my thirties, and the skin on my neck is beginning to crepe. I’ve never had a problem with the age difference between us, but Simon mentions it often enough for me to know he worries about it. Justin knows that, and takes every opportunity to stick the knife in. Whether he’s getting at Simon or at me, I can never be sure.

‘Don’t you think that looks like me?’ I point to the bottom advert, beneath Angel’s ‘mature’ services. Justin leans over Simon’s shoulder, and Katie removes her hands from the UV lamp so she can get a proper look. For a second we all stare at the advert in silence.

‘No,’ Justin says, just as Katie says, ‘It does a bit.’

‘You wear glasses, Mum.’

‘Not always,’ I point out. ‘Sometimes I put my contacts in.’ Although I can’t remember the last time I did. Wearing glasses has never bothered me, and I quite like my current pair, with their thick black frames that make me look far more studious than I ever was at school.

‘Maybe it’s someone playing a joke,’ Simon says. ‘Find the one dot com – do you think someone’s signed you up to a dating agency as a joke?’

‘Who would do something like that?’ I look at the kids, wondering if I’ll catch a glance passing between them, but Katie looks as confused as I am, and Justin has gone back to his chips.

‘Have you called the number?’ Simon says.

‘At £1.50 a minute? You must be joking.’

‘Is it you?’ Katie says. Her eyes are mischievous. ‘You know, for a bit of pocket money? Go on, Mum, you can tell us.’

The uneasy feeling I’ve had since I first saw the advert starts to subside, and I laugh. ‘I’m not sure who would pay £1.50 a minute for me, love. It really does look like me, though, doesn’t it? It gave me quite a start.’

Simon fishes his mobile out of his pocket and shrugs. ‘It’ll be someone doing something for your birthday, I bet.’ He puts his phone on speaker and taps in the number. It feels ridiculous: all of us crowded round the London Gazette, calling a sex line. ‘The number you have dialled has not been recognised.’

I realise I’ve been holding my breath.

‘That’s that, then,’ Simon says, handing me the newspaper.

‘But what’s my photo doing there?’ I say. My birthday isn’t for ages, and I can’t think who would find it funny to sign me up for dating services. It crosses my mind that it’s someone who doesn’t like Simon; someone wanting to cause problems between us. Matt? I dismiss the thought as quickly as it arrives.

Instinctively I squeeze Simon’s shoulder, even though he shows no sign of being bothered by the advert.

‘Mum, it looks nothing like you. It’s some old bird with bad roots,’ Justin says.

There’s a compliment in there somewhere, I think.

‘Jus is right, Mum.’ Katie looks at the advert again. ‘It does look like you, but lots of people look like someone else. There’s a girl at work who’s the spitting image of Adele.’

‘I guess so.’ I take one last look at the advert. The woman in the photograph isn’t looking directly at the camera, and the resolution on the image is so poor I’m surprised it’s being used as an advert at all. I hand it to Katie. ‘Stick it in the recycling for me, love, when you go and dish up for the rest of us.’

‘My nails!’ she cries.

‘My feet,’ I counter.

‘I’ll do it,’ Justin says. He dumps his own plate on the coffee table and stands up. Simon and I exchange surprised glances and Justin rolls his eyes. ‘What? You’d think I never helped out around here.’

Simon gives a short laugh. ‘And your point is?’

‘Oh fuck off, Simon. Get your own tea, then.’

‘Stop it, the pair of you,’ I snap. ‘God, it’s hard to know who’s the child and who’s the parent, sometimes.’

‘But that’s my point, he’s not the …’ Justin starts, but stops when he sees the look on my face. We eat on our laps, watching TV and bickering about the remote, and I catch Simon’s eye. He winks at me: a private moment amid the chaos of life with two grown-up kids.

When the plates are empty of all but a sheen of grease, Katie puts on her coat.

‘You’re not going out now?’ I say. ‘It’s gone nine o’clock.’

She looks at me witheringly. ‘It’s Friday night, Mum.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Town.’ She sees my face. ‘I’ll share a cab with Sophia. It’s no different from coming home after a late shift at work.’

I want to say that it is. That the black skirt and white top Katie wears for waitressing is far less provocative than the skin-tight dress she is currently sporting. That wearing her hair scraped into a ponytail makes her look fresh-faced and innocent, while tonight’s do is tousled and sexy. I want to say that she’s wearing too much make-up; that her heels are too high and her nails too red.

I don’t, of course. Because I was nineteen myself once, and because I’ve been a mum long enough to know when to keep my thoughts to myself.

‘Have a good time.’ But I can’t help myself. ‘Be careful. Stay together. Keep your hand over your drink.’

Katie kisses me on the forehead, then turns to Simon. ‘Have a word, will you?’ she says, jerking her head towards me. But she’s smiling, and she gives me a wink before she sashays out of the door. ‘Be good, you two,’ she calls. ‘And if you can’t be good – be careful!’

‘I can’t help it,’ I say, when she’s gone. ‘I worry about her.’

‘I know you do, but she’s got her head screwed on, that one.’ Simon squeezes my knee. ‘Takes after her mother.’ He looks at Justin, who is sprawled on the sofa, his phone inches from his face. ‘Are you not going out?’

‘Skint,’ Justin says, without taking his eyes off the tiny screen in front of him. I see the blue and white boxes of a conversation too small to read from where I’m sitting. A strip of red boxer shorts separates his joggers from his sweatshirt, the hood pulled up despite being indoors.

‘Doesn’t Melissa pay you on Fridays?’

‘She said she’ll drop it round over the weekend.’

Justin’s been working in the café since the start of the summer, when I had almost given up hope of him getting another job. He had a couple of interviews – one for a record store, and another at Boots – but the second they found out he had a police record for shoplifting, that was it.

‘You can understand it,’ Simon had said. ‘No employer wants to risk taking on someone who might have their hand in the till.’

‘He was fourteen!’ I couldn’t help but be defensive. ‘His parents had just divorced and he’d moved schools. He’s hardly a career criminal.’

‘Even so.’

I left it. I didn’t want to argue with Simon. On paper Justin was unemployable, but if you knew him … I went cap in hand to Melissa. ‘Deliveries,’ I suggested. ‘Handing out flyers. Anything.’

Justin was never academic. He didn’t take to reading like the other kids in reception – didn’t even know the alphabet until he was eight. As he got older it became hard even to get him to school in the first place; the underpass and the shopping mall held more appeal than a classroom. He left school with a GCSE in computer science, and a caution for shoplifting. By then the teachers had worked out he was dyslexic, but it was too late to be any use.

Melissa looked at me thoughtfully. I wondered if I’d overstepped the boundaries of our friendship; put her in an awkward position.

‘He can work in the café.’

I couldn’t find the words. Thank you seemed inadequate.

‘Minimum wage,’ Melissa said briskly, ‘and on a trial period. Monday to Friday, on a mix of earlies and lates. Occasional cover at weekends.’

‘I owe you one,’ I said.

She waved away my gratitude. ‘What are friends for?’

‘Maybe you could start paying your mum some rent, now you’ve got a job,’ Simon says. I look at him sharply. Simon never gets involved in parenting. It isn’t a conversation we’ve ever needed to have; the kids were eighteen and fourteen when I met Simon. They were almost adults in their own right, even when they didn’t behave like it. They didn’t need a new dad, and thankfully Simon never tried to be one.

‘You don’t ask Katie for rent.’

‘She’s younger than you. You’re twenty-two, Justin, you’re old enough to stand on your own two feet.’

Justin swings his legs round and stands up in one fluid movement. ‘You’ve got a fucking nerve. How about you pay some rent, before you start telling me what to do?’

I hate this. Two people I love, at each other’s throats.

‘Justin, don’t talk to Simon like that.’ Picking sides isn’t a conscious decision, but as soon as I speak I see the look in Justin’s eyes, like I’ve betrayed him. ‘He’s only making a suggestion. I’m not asking for rent.’ I never would, and I don’t care if people think I’m soft. I won’t budge. I could charge Justin rock-bottom prices for bed and board, and he’d still have next to nothing left over. How can he have a life, let alone put something aside for the future? I was younger than Katie when I left home, with nothing but a suitcase of clothes, a growing belly and my parents’ disappointment ringing in my ears. I want more than that for my kids.

Simon isn’t letting it lie. ‘Are you looking for work? The café’s fine, but if you want to buy a car, get your own place, you’ll need to earn more than Melissa can pay you.’

I don’t understand what’s got into him. We’re not rich, but we do all right. We don’t need to take money from the kids.

‘Dad said he’d lend me money for a car once I’ve passed my test.’

I feel Simon bristle beside me, the way he always does when Matt is mentioned. There are times when this reaction is irritating, but more often than not it gives me a warm glow inside. I don’t think it ever occurred to Matt that someone else might find me attractive; I like that Simon cares enough about me to be jealous.

‘That’s nice of Dad,’ I say quickly; loyalty towards Justin making me say something – anything – in support. ‘Maybe you could consider doing the Knowledge one day.’

‘I’m not driving a cab for the rest of my life, Mum.’

Justin and I used to be so close when he was younger, but he’s never quite forgiven me for walking out on Matt. He would, I think, if he knew the whole picture, but I never wanted the kids to think badly of their dad; didn’t want them as hurt as I was.

The woman Matt slept with was exactly halfway between Katie’s age and mine. Funny the details you fixate on. I never saw her but I used to torture myself imagining what she looked like; imagining my husband’s hands running over her twenty-three-year-old stretchmark-free body.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Simon says. ‘It’s a good job.’

I look at him in surprise. He’s been quick to slag off Matt’s lack of ambition in the past. A piece of me feels annoyed that what I distinctly remember him calling a ‘dead-end job’ is apparently good enough for my son. Matt was at college, studying engineering. That all changed the day I realised my period was so late it could only mean one thing. Matt walked out of college and got a job that same day. It was just labouring, on a local building site, but it paid well enough. After we got married he did the Knowledge and as a wedding present his parents gave us the money for his first cab.

‘The café’s fine for now,’ I say. ‘The right thing will turn up, I’m sure.’

Justin gives a non-committal grunt and leaves the room. He goes upstairs and I hear the creak of his bed as he assumes his habitual position, lying down with his head propped just high enough to see the screen on his laptop.

‘He’ll still be living here when he’s thirty, at this rate.’

‘I want him to be happy, that’s all.’

‘He is happy,’ Simon says. ‘Happy sponging off you.’

I swallow what I want to say. It wouldn’t be fair. I was the one who said I didn’t want Simon paying rent. We even argued about it, but I won’t let him. We split the food and the bills, and he’s forever treating me to meals out and trips away – the kids too. He’s generous to a fault. We have a joint bank account and we’ve never once worried about who pays for what.

But the house is mine.

Money was tight when I married Matt. He worked nights, and I did eight till four at Tesco, and we managed like that till Justin started school. By the time Katie came along things were easier; Matt had more work than he could handle, and gradually we were able to afford a few extras. The odd meal out; even a summer holiday.

Then Matt and I broke up, and I was back to square one. Neither of us could afford to keep the house on our own, and it was years before I was able to save for the deposit on this place. I swore I’d never throw my lot in with a man again.

Mind you, I swore I’d never fall in love again, and look what happened to that.

Simon kisses me, one hand cupping my chin and then sliding around the back of my head. Even now, at the end of a long day, he smells clean; of shaving foam and aftershave. I feel the familiar heat run through my body as he wraps my hair around his hand and tugs it gently, pulling my chin up and exposing my neck to be kissed. ‘Early night?’ he whispers.

‘I’ll be right up.’

I pick up the plates along with the London Gazette, carry them into the kitchen and load the dishwasher. I drop the newspaper into the recycling bin, where the woman in the advert stares up at me. I switch off the kitchen light and shake my head at my foolishness. Of course it isn’t me. What would a photograph of me be doing in a newspaper?