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recipes that she claimed would make even the fussiest families eat healthily and eat together. When she started the blog I thought it was naff and silly but to my surprise it had taken off and she was often mentioned when newspapers published ‘Top Ten’ lists of good food or family blogs.
    My sister was a brilliant cook and she combined recipes with good-humoured writing about the trials of raising a big family. It wasn’t my cup of tea – too contrived and twee by far – but it was impressive and it seemed to strike a chord with lots of women who bought into the domestic heroine ideal.
    I called her back, left a message in return. ‘Yes, we’re planning to come up on Saturday morning and leave after lunch on Sunday. Do you want me to bring anything?’
    I was making a point by asking that. I knew she wouldn’t want anything from me. She prided herself on being a perfect hostess.
    Limiting our stay was also deliberate. When I’d thought we were going to visit Nicky at their family home I’d been determined to stay only one night, because although Nicky was the only family I had, and I felt a duty to see her and to give Ben the chance to get to know his cousins, it was never something I looked forward to especially.
    Their big house just outside Salisbury was always perfectly presented, traditional, and loud, and it became claustrophobic after one night. I simply found the whole package a bit overwhelming: super-efficient Nicky working domestic miracles left, right and centre, her big, jolly husband, glass of wine in hand, and pile of anecdotes at the ready, and the daughters, bickering, flicking V signs at my sister’s back, wrapping their father around their little fingers. It was a world apart from my quiet life with Ben in our small house in Bristol.
    Not that the cottage was my ideal destination either, even without Nicky’s family to contend with. Left to both Nicky and me by our Aunt Esther, who raised us, it was small and damp and held slightly uncomfortable memories for me. I would have sold it years ago, I could certainly have done with the money, but Nicky remained very attached to it and she and Simon had long since taken on its maintenance costs entirely, largely out of guilt, I think, that she wouldn’t let me release the capital in it. She encouraged me to make more use of it but somehow time spent there left me feeling odd, as if I somehow had never grown up properly, never shed my teenage self.
    I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I’d reached the start of the path that led to the rope swing. Ben wasn’t there so I assumed he’d gone ahead of me. I made my way along in his wake, squelching through mud and batting away brambles. When I came to the clearing where the rope swing was, I was smiling in anticipation of seeing him, and of enjoying his triumph at having got there himself.
    Except that he wasn’t there, and nor was Skittle. The rope swing was in motion, moving from left to right and back again in a slow rhythm. I pushed forward to give myself a wider view of the clearing. ‘Ben,’ I called. No reply. I felt a flash of panic but told myself to stop it. I’d given him this little bit of independence, and it would be a shame to mar the moment by behaving in an overanxious way. Ben was probably hiding behind a tree with Skittle, and I shouldn’t wreck his game.
    I looked around. The clearing was small, no bigger than half a tennis court. Dense woodland wrapped around most of it, darkening the perimeters, although on one side a large crop of medium-sized saplings grew, spindly and brittle, leafless. They dispersed the light around them, lending it a quality of strangeness. In the middle of the clearing stood a mature beech tree, which overhung a small brook. The rope swing was tethered to one of its branches. I reckoned that Ben was hiding behind its thick trunk.
    I walked slowly into the clearing, playing along with him.
    ‘Hmm,’ I said, throwing my voice in the direction of the