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‘MummEEEEE! Where’s the tractor?’
    I turned round and looked at my little girl. She was frowning, bored and cross. Her brown hair was matted with the chocolate we had been giving her for the past two hours to keep her quiet. She was sitting next to boxes and bags filled with everything that was going to keep us going until the lorry arrived, sometime within the next week. Her books and toys were strewn on top of the bags. Alice fixed me with an intense stare, and restated her demands. ‘I want to see the tractor,’ she said forcefully. ‘Let’s go back to the boat. I want milk.’ She thought for a moment. ‘More chocolate,’ she added, for good measure.
    Her hair had been cut before we left, so she had a perfectly straight bob with a blunt fringe. I had dressed her for the journey in my favourite of her outfits: a blue corduroy pinafore over a red top, with red tights and blue shoes. I had wanted her to look like an immaculate French child, but she was smeared with chocolate and covered in biscuit crumbs. I was going to have to wrap her in sweaters and a blanket to carry her into the house. I had bought into the idea of spring so completely that I hadn’t even brought her winter coat with us. It would arrive later, in the removal lorry.
    ‘Let’s look out for another tractor,’ I suggested. ‘Anyway, we’re nearly there.’ I tried to sound as if this were a good thing. ‘Nearly at our new house. When we get there we can explore.’
    ‘I want milk.’
    ‘Daddy will go to the shop and get some milk.’
    ‘Want milk now.’
    Matt half turned. I could see from his face that he was feeling the strain of being the person solely responsible for this move. Although he had contributed nothing financially to the whole adventure, beyond paying for the removal, he still managed to be the Head of the Family, and he was very much in charge.
    ‘You can’t have milk now because you’ve drunk it all already,’ he said slowly and clearly. ‘Look, this is our road. First person to see our house gets a chocolate button.’
    We turned a corner. Suddenly, it was before us: a stone house set apart from the rest of the hamlet. It was huge and closed, uninhabited for years. It loomed above us. In the steely half-light, it was forbidding and unwelcoming. The façade was peeling. The shutters were closed. The creeper was dead.
    Matt looked at me. I said nothing. He turned to Alice.
    ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Can you see our house?’
    She shook her head, confidently. ‘No.’
    He stopped the car, turned the engine off, and pointed.
    ‘This one here. This is our house,’ he announced. Then he took a new packet of chocolate buttons from the ashtray, ripped it open, and poured its contents into his mouth. Brown saliva dribbled down his chin. As he chewed, he held his head in his hands.
    I was steeling myself to leave the car, to take the first footsteps over the threshold of our new life, when the clouds burst. One moment the car, the house, the road were dry. Then, instantly, they were soaked. Matt opened his door, closed it again and looked at me, grinning nervously with his mouth but not his eyes. He knew I would smile back, because that was what I always did. I always put a brave face on things and made sure everyone else was all right.
    I fell into line, and forced out a laugh.
    ‘OK,’ I said, affixing a smile. ‘It’s raining. Rain happens. It doesn’t matter.’
    ‘I want to get out of mine car seat!’ called Alice imperiously. I reached back and unclipped her straps, and she clambered across the handbrake onto Matt’s lap. Alice was unambiguously a daddy’s girl. It pained me, sometimes. They would go off into their own little world, share their own jokes, stroke each other’s faces. Matt spent so much time working, so many nights away from us, that his presence was the cause of endless excitement. I did everything for Alice every day, and so I was as dull as wallpaper. I knew that it was my very constancy