Ella tucked a strawberry-blonde lock of hair behind an ear and grinned up at her dad. ‘You want some?’ she asked, offering him a spoonful of her ice-cream sundae.

Haydon leaned forward with his mouth open to swoop in and capture the prize, only for Ella to whip it out of his way, giggling. Haydon grinned. It was a well-rehearsed piece, something they’d done a thousand times before, but it never got boring no matter how much older Ella got. Perhaps they both saw it as a link, a connection back to the times when their family was together, when they were strong and happy and nothing could break them.

‘You’re such a tease,’ he said.

Ella grinned through a mouthful of ice cream.

‘So, what’s the news?’ he asked, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. ‘Still madly in love with Jack in Miss Palmer’s class?’

‘Ugh!’ Ella screwed up her face. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I saw you…’ Haydon laughed. ‘You were all goggly-eyed when I dropped you off at the school disco.’

‘It’s not a disco, and no I wasn’t.’

‘If it’s not a disco, what is it?’

Ella shrugged. ‘A party.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

‘Seriously?’

‘Oh, OK. But you did look as if you liked him a smidgen.’

‘No I didn’t,’ Ella fired back but this time Haydon detected a little blush. His baby was growing up, and it was too fast for his liking, but he couldn’t say so, not unless he wanted the eye-rolling disapproval reserved for his full-on soppy dad moments. He seemed to have a lot of those lately too – at least, Ella kept telling him so. But he was missing so much. Every weekend Ella seemed to have leapt ahead in years; every weekend with her reminded him that soon this little girl would be gone and he’d have only known highlights, never the full picture, of how she became the wonderful adult he was sure she was going to be.

He’d been forced to respect her mother Janine’s decision to divorce him, and he’d had to quietly accept her new partner Kevin’s arrival. He’d even borne the news that Kevin was moving in with them after only six months of dating his ex-wife with a gritty silence that belied his urge to shake her and ask her what the hell she thought she was doing. She hardly knew this man, and yet he was going to be living with her and Ella, and there was nothing Haydon could do about it. He couldn’t be there to protect them if things went wrong, and he wasn’t allowed to offer an opinion unless he wanted to face Janine’s rage. And even if he could have dealt with that, all it would make her do was clam up, so it would hardly be helpful in the end. All he could do was watch helplessly from the sidelines, glean as much information as he could from Ella’s weekend visits and hope that all the reports continued to be good. So far, Ella seemed to get along with Kevin just fine, but somewhere deep inside, though Haydon knew he ought to be glad about this, he was also saddened beyond words.

‘So I don’t need to go round to his house and look intimidating while I give him the dad talk?’

‘No!’ Ella cried, looking mortified. But then she broke into a smile. ‘Very funny, Dad.’

‘So, what do you want to do for your birthday next month? Your mum’s OK’d the weekend and fourteen is a pretty big deal. I thought we might go out to do something. Maybe bring your friends? How about I rent somewhere for a party?’

Ella shrugged. ‘Kevin’s renting out Pizza Express for my friends. We’re going to have a pizza-making party. And then we’re all sleeping over on his houseboat.’

‘He has a houseboat?’

‘Uh huh. He’s just bought it.’

‘He just bought a houseboat. Just like that? No big deal?’

‘I guess. He just saw it and said he liked the look of it.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Somewhere in Norfolk.’

‘Norfolk? Is your mother going to stay on it?’

Ella nodded. ‘Says she can’t wait to see it.’

‘Funny. She always said she hated the idea of sleeping on a boat whenever I mentioned a boating holiday.’

‘I suppose she changed her mind,’ Ella said blithely, licking her spoon. ‘They’re looking at things all the time right now. He wants to buy a house too.’

Haydon swallowed hard. ‘For you guys to live in together?’

‘Yes.’

‘Close to where you are now?’ Haydon asked, dread of the reply bubbling up.

‘In London.’

He paused, staring at Ella as she continued with her ice cream, seemingly unconcerned by the idea of moving to London. The one answer he hadn’t wanted was the one he’d somehow known he’d get.

‘And you’re happy about that?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not really up to me. Mum says I’ll still be able to see my friends because the train journey is only an hour. And I suppose living in London would be cool.’

‘But… how will I see you?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She looked up now, for the first time showing signs of awareness that the news she was relaying wasn’t going down well.

Haydon ground his teeth. ‘It’s not your fault. Your mum should have talked to me about this.’

‘She said she was going to when she knew for sure. I think she’s still trying to decide.’

Haydon pondered this for a moment. Ella was backtracking now, he could tell. It sounded to him like Janine had already decided.

‘On whether to move?’ he asked. ‘Or on other things?’

‘About moving. But Kevin says the commute to London takes too long out of his day, and he wants to spend the extra time with Mum, but he doesn’t want to lose his job in London because it pays a lot. He wants to show her some houses to help her make up her mind, and the photos had her excited, so I think it’s going to happen.’

Ella’s phone bleeped and she unlocked the screen, smiling as she recognised the sender of the text. Probably a schoolfriend, Haydon mused vaguely as he watched her. He sensed that chasm open again, that space between them that took her further and further from his life as she grew up without him. He wasn’t around enough for her as it was, but if she moved to London, how much more difficult would it be? But he had never felt so powerless to stop it. What right did he have to ask Janine to live her life according to his own wishes? She was entitled to be happy and, as much as Haydon didn’t like it, she had a right to fall in love again. Maybe Kevin would be able to get right what he’d clearly got so horribly wrong. Maybe Kevin would be the one to put the smile back on Janine’s face, the one Haydon had never noticed was fading until it was too late. He’d thought they’d had a good marriage until the bombshell he’d never even suspected was coming. And then it had all been too late and too hard to fix – at least that was what Janine had kept telling him.

‘You like Kevin?’ he asked.

‘Huh?’ Ella looked up from her phone.

‘You like Kevin? I mean, if you’re going to be living in London with him then you should at least be happy about it.’

‘He’s nice,’ Ella said.

‘He treats you and Mum well?’

‘He brings her a ton of flowers every week. Mum says she hasn’t got the heart to tell him about her hay fever so she just takes an extra tablet. He got me a new iPad too.’

‘But you’re going to be living in his house far away from here… Ella, do you really understand how massive that is?’

Ella frowned. ‘I’m not a baby. Mum says it’s not that far away. She says the train is only an hour.’

‘It’s…’ Haydon paused. How could he explain that distance was about more than physical space? It was about emotional and family connections being separated by more than miles. It was about the feeling of having someone close by who was on your side and would be there for you in an instant should you need them. It was about Haydon not losing his daughter to some slick banker who wanted to replace him in her life. When she needed a cuddle, or advice, or something as simple as extra pocket money, it would be Kevin, not Haydon, on hand to give it. And soon Kevin would slot into the Dad-shaped hole in her world, and Haydon would become obsolete, surplus to requirements, and she wouldn’t need him any more.

And if Ella didn’t need him, then who would?