After a lovely week with Rosie, Emma returned from honeymoon to collect her and the last of their stuff and head back to Scotland to start married life. Richard had taken a flight directly to Edinburgh to be in work the next morning, and Emma planned on driving her and Rosie up the following day.

I was looking forward to a final evening at home with Emma, but just as she’d arrived, I received a text from Dan. I quickly checked it while Emma greeted Rosie.

It literally took my breath away. All the doubts that had plagued me since our phone call dissipated, and I wanted to sing loudly and dance like Beyoncé round the kitchen. Everything was fine between us and he missed me. He. Missed. Me.

After I’d chatted with Emma and heard all about her honeymoon and bathed Rosie, I locked myself in the toilet (four-year-olds think it’s okay to sit and chat everywhere) and tried to call Dan back. It was 6 a.m. in Australia by then, but I didn’t care – I just wanted to let him know I missed him too. The line rang and rang, and Rosie was soon knocking on the toilet door, shouting, ‘I’m coming, ready or not!’ and Emma was suggesting a Chinese takeaway and there’s only so much multitasking a woman can do. So I decided to concentrate on them for now – I could talk to Dan later, or tomorrow when they’d gone and I was alone again. I had all the time in the world now, and he and I could plan another magical summer – only this time I wouldn’t be coming home.

I abandoned my bathroom sanctuary to deal with the important matter of Rosie’s game and the question of sweet and sour chicken or pork. We were just going through the takeaway menu when there was a knock on the door. Suddenly my heart was in my mouth. Having received that lovely text, my mind could think only of Dan and I know it was stupid because mathematically, it wasn’t possible because he’d texted only a couple of hours before from Australia, but I wasn’t thinking straight. As I got up and went into the hall to answer the door, I hoped against hope it wasn’t him. As delighted as I would be to see him, I was tired and hungry, my roots had grown and I looked like an old dog with day-old make-up and tied-back hair. The joy of my Dan weekends away was that I could be glamorous and carefree and didn’t have to be Mum or Grandma. I could be blonde, funny Faye, who made Dan go weak at the knees, and I wanted to be that again for him. But right now all I could do was hold in my stomach, push my hair back and wish for the best. As I opened the door, I felt breathless – my heart doing a little dance…

Then I saw Craig and I stopped holding my stomach in, my heartbeat now pounding out a dance of death.

‘Oh hi,’ I said, unable to hide the disappointment on my face.

‘What’s up with you?’ was his opening gambit.

In that first sentence he’d managed to conjure up all the years of our marriage. What I wanted to say was ‘What’s up with me? You cheeky bastard, you are what’s up with me! You stole my youth, took the joy away from everything and turned me into a bored, bitter, empty woman who hated you. But more than that, Craig, you taught me how to hate myself.’

Of course I didn’t say any of that because it was pointless; he would look at me like I’d lost it and then I would want to kill him. I was also in the presence of my daughter and granddaughter and whatever I might think of Craig, he was still their family.

‘Nothing’s wrong with me,’ I said, standing back for him to enter, like a teenager letting a hated stepfather in. Honestly, I tried, but he was so infuriating. And he’d only just arrived.

‘Thought you were in Greece?’ he muttered as he walked down the hall.

‘Yes, I was… four years ago,’ I answered, wondering if it would be rude to order the Chinese now so he’d be obliged to go when it arrived. Then I remembered how thick-skinned he could be. In fact, I decided I’d hold off with the sweet and sour chicken because he might see it as an excuse to stay. I didn’t share my Chinese with anyone, least of all Craig.

I wandered after him into the living room. Emma greeted him – she’d told him it was her and Rosie’s last night before they went to Scotland for good, and apparently he’d felt obliged to pop round. We all sat down on respective chairs and the sofa and looked at each other. It felt awkward, like my past and my present had collided. I sometimes felt a bit mean about how I felt towards Craig, but he only had to say hello and it annoyed me. And I know the feeling was mutual; I irritated him just as much.

He’d never been able to understand why I’d left him and couldn’t see why I’d wanted to travel or do a degree. A mutual friend once told me that he’d said he hated the fact I was now ‘one of those students’. Apparently he’d said I should grow up and get a job and stop dreaming – which sounded just like him. Funny, when I think back to the blushing (pregnant) teenage bride I’d been, believing it was forever, that this was the man I would grow old with. At forty-six, with a failed marriage behind me, I was less naive now and knew nothing was forever – and looking over at Craig, now picking his teeth, I decided that was probably a good thing.

Rosie seemed quite happy that Granddad had arrived. Kids always like someone different appearing on the horizon – to them it’s someone new to play with, fresh blood for hide-and-seek. But Craig was socially awkward and had little imagination. Good luck with that, love, I thought, as Rosie attempted to adorn him in a pink feather boa from her dressing-up box.

I was finding the whole scenario intense and irritating, the three of us all looking at each other and poor Emma trying to make small talk. She tried to include me, desperately hoping I’d catch her rope, but for once I had no inclination to fill the silence. I removed myself by offering to make a cup of tea. I was angry at his intrusion. I knew it was selfish and immature of me – he was Emma’s parent too – but this was our last proper evening together at the house. It was supposed to be a girls’ night, with Chinese and Frozen and a nice bottle of Pinot – and monosyllabic Craig dressed in a pissing pink feather boa wasn’t part of that, he never had been. I went into the kitchen and boiled the kettle, hoping he’d feel he’d done his duty and would leave after a cup of tea.

I took the opportunity to sneak a look at Dan’s text again and felt a warm fizz in my chest. After a while, when I’d made the cups of tea as slowly as I could so I didn’t have to go back into the room, Emma wandered into the kitchen (it seemed even the small talk had dried up now).

‘Everything okay, Mum? Did you want to order the food now? I don’t think Dad will be staying much longer.’

‘I don’t mind if you’d like Dad to stay and eat with us,’ I said, trying to smile while holding my breath and hiding my horror at the prospect. I wasn’t going to be unreasonable – this was her dad, and Rosie’s granddad, so I made an attempt at being mature and behaving like a grown-up. I never once gave any hint that if he were to stay for Chinese, he was likely to be wearing a chopstick up each nostril, kindly inserted by me.

‘No, Mum, it’s fine,’ she said. ‘Dad doesn’t like Chinese anyway, remember? It gives him terrible heartburn.’

‘Oh, of course,’ I said, nodding vigorously in faux sympathy. Somehow I’d forgotten that particular joy – the romantic Chinese dinner where Craig retched over a kung pao chicken in front of the whole restaurant. No, the only thing he wanted in his mouth was of English origin – accompanied by chips and peas. ‘Foreign muck’ was Craig’s generic term for anything that wasn’t chips. Now I knew why I loved Chinese food so much; anything that made my irritating ex-husband’s oesophagus burn hotly was a friend to me.

I went back into the living room with Emma, handed Craig his cup of tea and sat down on the edge of the same sofa he was sitting on. I had no choice, Rosie had covered every seating area with toys – it was a hospital and apparently the patients were sleeping and couldn’t be moved. I was holding my tea by the handle, one arm folded around myself, clear in my body language that I was ready for fight or flight, whichever came first.

‘Granddad, do you love Nana?’ Rosie suddenly said into the silence, while checking a zebra’s ‘blood pressing’.

Craig almost choked on his tea, the spluttering made Rosie laugh and I looked away, unable to watch. Or listen.

‘Rosie,’ Emma said, stepping into the breach, ‘that isn’t a question we ask grown-ups, is it?’

Rosie began to protest, but Emma picked up her iPad and held it out to her. She wasn’t usually allowed the iPad ‘after hours’ so this was a rare treat and an indication of how much Emma didn’t want this discussion to be pursued. Neither did I!

‘Nana?’ Rosie turned to me and I held my breath. ‘Don’t you love Granddad any more?’ she asked, taking the proffered iPad and pushing it to the side for later, along with the zebra’s ‘blood pressing’. Rosie wasn’t bothered about the hospital or the iPad now, there was more sport to be had from torturing the adults. She clearly had more pressing matters to deal with before operating on teddies or enjoying any Dora the Explorer interaction.

‘Don’t keep asking questions, Rosie,’ Emma snapped, returning the iPad to her daughter’s hands. But Rosie apparently felt the need to have a frank and open discussion about the breakdown of her grandparents’ marriage.

‘Nana loves Dam now, Granddad,’ she said gently, bending her head to one side and touching his knee like she was the first one to break this to him.

I didn’t know where to put myself. I adored my granddaughter, but she had a tendency to keep going when other four-year-olds might have given up and moved on to the virtual world by now.

I grimaced at Emma, she mirrored back with a slight raising of the eyebrows, and I realised it would be easier for everyone if I made myself scarce. Rosie clearly had ambitions of the marriage guidance kind, and was keen to probe the relationship, deal with the tensions and bring them right out into the open. She was a mini Jeremy Kyle and it was only a matter of time before she was demanding lie detectors and paternity tests. And before this happened, one of us had to leave.

‘I’m just popping upstairs,’ I said brightly, placing my cup on the coffee table, and running up the stairs two at a time, like a teenager escaping questioning parents.

As soon as I was inside my bedroom, I leaned back on the door for a few seconds in case the mini marriage guidance counsellor chased after me, keen on an intervention.

I had this urge to climb out of the window and flee from Craig, the man who’d spent a lifetime making me feel worthless, stupid and insignificant. I’d even have foregone the Chinese and the Pinot – I just wanted Dan. And like a teenage girl, I unpacked my old rucksack, taking out the pressed Paris blossom, the postcards we’d sent each other, and the photos of the two of us in sunshine, somewhere in Europe.

Seeing Craig was always a good reminder of why I’d walked away from my marriage, my life. If I ever doubted myself, I would think about him and the life we had and remember why I left.

Dan’s text may only have been four sentences, saying he missed me, but it was so much more. I realised his apparent lack of enthusiasm or engagement when I called was probably more about hurt and pride and fear of being rejected all over again on his part. So, as I was now free as a bird for the summer, I was going to fly. Straight back to him.