I can hardly bring myself to speak to Simon on the walk home. He smells of booze and he ruined our daughter’s recital. Millie fills the gaps. She hasn’t stopped chatting since she burst through the hall doors and ran into our arms. I presented her with the bouquet, which she was giddy about.

‘Did you see me? Did you, Daddy?’ She asks, her face shining with hope and, if you look carefully enough, a tiny bit of concern.

‘Yes,’ replies Simon.

She looks doubtful. ‘Really.’

‘Too right.’ Simon lies easily. I don’t think he should have lied and lies should never come easily. They should be hard and painful. I’d have preferred it if he’d told her he was a little late. She’d have been disappointed, but she’d have known it was the truth. ‘You were the star of the show,’ he adds. She was, but he sounds glib.

We get home, just in time for the supermarket delivery. I have it delivered without plastic bags as this is kinder on the environment, but it does mean there’s a little more waiting around for the delivery guy as I unpack the crates, so it’s not especially kind to him. Simon heads straight upstairs. ‘Are you going to run her bath?’ I ask.

He doesn’t reply.

‘I can do it,’ Millie says, excitedly. She’s still dancing on air. Triumphant, having delivered a terrific performance. She’s very independent and likes to be as grown up and self-sufficient as possible.

‘OK, but be careful with the hot tap. You know it comes out really hot.’ She scampers off. I drop my backpack; it’s heavy. There are thirty-plus school books in it. I have a lot of marking to do tonight. I need to buy one of those pull-along shopping trolleys that are the domain of old ladies. I know I’ll look frumpy, but it’ll save my back aching. I ask the delivery guy to hold on one second. He hovers in the kitchen with the plastic crates. They look heavy too. ‘Just put them anywhere,’ I say.

I yell up the stairs, ‘Simon can you oversee Millie’s bath? I’m dealing with the shopping.’ I wait. I don’t get a response. I cast an apologetic glance at the delivery guy. He’s still holding the crates. There really isn’t an obvious space to put them. ‘Erm, just put them down there on the floor. That’s fine.’ But he can’t leave until I’ve unpacked. ‘Just one moment.’ I dash up the stairs and call, ‘Simon, hey Simon, where are you? Can you watch out while Millie baths?’

I pop my head into the bathroom. She’s not there. Probably changing in her room but she’s already started to run the bath. I check that the plug is in properly and I turn down the hot tap, add a little more cold water. Better she has a tepid bath than scalds herself. As I do so Millie explodes into the room. She reaches for the bubble bath and carefully pours a very generous amount into the water. A smell that’s manufactured to approximate strawberries immediately fills the air. She squeals excited to see the bubbles multiply. I start to help her undress, but she moves away from me, ‘I can do it.’ She’s growing up far too quickly.

Where is Simon? We don’t live in a big house. He must have heard me call him. He can only be on the loo or in our bedroom. I leave Millie to the task of undressing and stride into our bedroom. As I enter the room I sense movement, Simon was perhaps lying down and has sat up suddenly. Or, maybe… I stride over to the bed and duck to look under it. I immediately spot a small bottle of whisky. Simon has obviously just stashed it there.

‘What the heck is this, Simon?’

‘Nothing,’ he says sulkily. His tone is defensive and defiant at once. ‘Can’t a man have a drink after a long day in the office?’

He has had a drink. With Mick from work. That’s why he missed the recital. Or so he said. I don’t point this out. I haven’t got time. I’m conscious that I’m holding up the delivery guy. ‘Yes, he can, but usually people drink in their kitchens or sitting rooms, usually with their partners.’

‘It was just a sniff. Just a bit of fun.’

Then why did he try to hide it? I can hear the water gushing into the bath. I’ll pick up this matter later. ‘Can you go and help Millie get bathed? I need to unpack the shopping.’ I take the bottle downstairs with me. It’s about two thirds empty. I sigh. I hate it when he has a sneaky snifter in the bedroom. There’s no need. He can always open a bottle of wine at dinner. We do so whenever he asks. Personally, I try and not drink through the week. A hangover and a classroom of thirty eleven-year-olds is not a great combination. Sometimes I have half a glass just to keep him company. It’s different at a weekend. But even then, I rarely drink more than a glass or two. Millie has no idea about the concept of lying-in, so I like to keep a clear head.

I hear the grocery delivery guy cough loudly. It’s not subtle but it is fair. I dash into the kitchen and apologise. I throw my groceries onto any available surface in order to be as fast as possible with the unloading, I accept all substitutes and then bundle him out of the door. I start to clear out the food in the fridge that is out of date and past its best. I consider washing the plastic vegetable drawer because a tomato has been squashed in to the back corner and already looks like a science experiment. I pull out the bulky drawer and look around with faint desperation because the sink is full of breakfast pots that should be in the dishwasher, but the pots in the dishwasher are clean, so they should be in the cupboard. Right. I need to set this place straight. I start to move about the kitchen. First I unload the dishwasher, then refill it with the dirty pots that are scattered about. Then I wash the vegetable drawer and only at this point am I ready to find homes for all the new groceries. I am just beginning to enjoy the sense of order I’m restoring to the room when I suddenly hear Millie scream. It’s loud and convincing, not a playful shriek but a scream that’s full of pain and panic. I launch myself upstairs, dashing two at a time and explode into the bathroom.

My first thought is that she’s crying so not drowned, not dead. Relief. Then I notice the blood. There’s a lot of it. Panic. It’s smeared on the back bathroom wall and all over her hands and face. I pull her out of the bath, she’s wet and slippery but I hold her tight. Examine her quickly. ‘What happened? Where did you get hurt?’

‘I slipped. I banged my head.’ She points to the back of her head. My stomach lurches. There’s a nasty cut, and she’s losing a lot of blood. I grab a towel and put it over the wound, trying to stem the flow of the bleeding. I realise that the blood on her face comes from her hands, where she’s touched her own wound. I can smell iron in the air. I want to be sick, but I must stay focused, useful. I wrap another towel around her and pick her up. She sobs into my shoulder. I can feel her entire body hiccup with stress and pain. ‘We need to go to A&E,’ I tell her. ‘The doctor will take a look but don’t worry. It’s going to be OK.’

I call to Simon, but he doesn’t reply. I haven’t got time to look for him. I swiftly dress Millie in pants and a long T-shirt then carry her to the car and drive her to the hospital.

When we get back from the hospital, the house is in darkness. Millie’s head is glued, and she has a sticker declaring her bravery. She’s fallen asleep in the back of the car. Usually when she sleeps I’m relieved. She has a lot of energy and by the time she is ready for bed I’m begging her to go. However her sleep makes me slightly uneasy now. It’s deep and terrifying. I have been given a leaflet that tells me what to look out for: drowsiness, dizziness, forgetfulness, headaches. I feel queasy just reading it. A close call. The friendly young doctor called it a ‘nasty bump’. I was asked a lot of questions. ‘Who was supervising her when she slipped?’ ‘Her father,’ I lied. I couldn’t bring myself to admit she was on her own. We’d failed her. It isn’t a concussion, but you can never be too careful with head injuries. I will wake her every couple of hours tonight. She’ll be grumpy, but I don’t care.

I lift her from the car and carry her into the house. Her feet trail low, down past my knees, she’s too big to carry but I want to hold her close and tight. I lower her into bed, she rolls onto her side as her injury is too tender to allow her to sleep on her back. That thought causes a twinge in my belly. I’d take her pain if I could. I kiss her forehead and she murmurs, ‘Don’t worry, Mummy. It doesn’t hurt now.’ Then her eyelids drop heavily, like a metal shutter over a shop window.

I wander into the bathroom. The water is still in the bath. It’s pink with her blood. I’m shocked again as I see her blood smeared on the tiles. It’s obvious where she fell, the blood is most concentrated there. It’s dried hard. There are also small bloody hand prints on the bath edge. I pull the plug and use the hand-held shower to sluice it away.

‘What’s going on here?’ Simon is stood in the doorway. He wipes his eyes, clearly he’s been asleep for the entire time we have been at the hospital, four hours. He must have been asleep when she fell.

‘Millie slipped as she tried to get herself out of the bath,’ I snap.

‘Daisy!’ I hear accusation in his voice. He thinks this is my fault and maybe it is. I can’t trust him. I glare at him.

‘I asked you to bath her, or if that was too much, at least to watch her whilst she bathed. She could have drowned.’

He looks a little shamefaced and then defiant. ‘But she didn’t.’

‘She’s badly hurt her head. It’s been glued.’

‘Glued?’

‘They do that instead of stitches now.’

‘So she’s OK?’

I know what he’s asking but I can’t give him that glib reassurance yet. I’m too angry. ‘No, she’s not OK. I’ve just told you. She cut her head, banged her elbow. She was really upset. There was a lot of blood. A lot of painful bruising.’

‘I need a drink.’ He leaves the bathroom and goes downstairs. I’m furious. That was not the response I wanted. But then I sigh. What response did I want? What could he say or do now? I finish cleaning the bathroom. I want it to look spotless by the time Millie sees it next. After washing away all evidence of her fall I also put her dirty clothes in the wash basket. I pop my head around her bedroom door just to check on her, before I go downstairs and join Simon in the kitchen. He’s stood by the breakfast bar in semi-darkness. He has only bothered to put on the small light above the hob. I don’t flick the switch for the overhead lights. I think it would be too garish. The dimness offers us both a cloak which, for reasons I can’t explain or even understand, I feel we need.

‘Do you want something to eat? I’m hungry,’ I say. We missed supper. This offer is as conciliatory as I’m capable of being right now. I feel I can’t blame Simon for the fall, at least not entirely. I knew he was less than sober and in a weird mood. I should have unpacked the shopping and then bathed Millie myself. I shouldn’t have allowed her to try to manage and I shouldn’t have relied on him. I’m telling myself all of this to try to stop feeling angry with him, but I just find I’m angry with him for a different reason. Not for the fall but because I can’t rely on him.

Simon reaches for a bottle of red wine from the wine rack. He slides it out. The sound of the glass bottle scraping against the wooden shelf is a familiar one. Like opening the fridge or the sound of the back door closing, the TV jumping to life; a domestic sound, familiar to our home. ‘Do you want a glass?’

‘No, it’s too late for me,’ I say pointedly. Then I dare to add. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

‘No, I don’t.’ He says firmly as he unscrews the cap and reaches for a glass.

Simon has had enough to drink. Too much. Why can’t he see it? Why can’t I say it?

This happens from time to time in our marriage. Simon likes a drink and then there comes a point where he drinks too much. Usually I wait it out. After months, maybe a year, he’ll notice he’s over-doing it and cut back. No one is perfect. We all have stuff to deal with. He drank heavily when we were trying to conceive. He drinks heavily if things are stressful at work. I wonder what’s on his mind now? I fear it’s something to do with wanting another child. The visit to the fertility clinic was so peculiar. The way he ran out of the place. Odd. When I asked him what the doctor had said to upset him, he said he never even got the chance to speak to the doctor, that he’d just been left waiting in the consultation room. He said that was what had annoyed him, the lack of manners. The arrogance. ‘I knew you didn’t want to be there, Daisy, so I just gave up. I thought, forget it.’ I don’t really believe him. I suspect it had something to do with his drinking, nearly everything does. Maybe he felt woozy or nauseous, maybe the doctor commented that he didn’t seem quite sober, maybe he suddenly just wanted a drink more than he wanted a baby; he did bolt straight to a pub.

He’s right about one thing, I didn’t want to be at the fertility clinic. It was a great relief to me when he charged out of the building and I was left to hurriedly collect up Millie and our belongings. I daren’t even ask him if we got a refund. I don’t really care. I want to leave the matter alone. I’m glad he’s stopped talking about a sibling for Millie. Yet, I can’t ignore the fact that Simon is drinking heavily again. It’s not social drinking. It’s not even overindulgent drinking. It’s purposeful, determined drinking. It’s as though he’s trying to find something at the end of the bottle. Oblivion, maybe.

‘Simon, you were drunk and therefore late to the recital and then you came home and drank some more so fell asleep instead of looking out for Millie. How could you let her down like that?’

I steel myself to look at him. I don’t want to because he’s ugly to me right now, he’s in the wrong. Millie got injured, she will still be in pain tomorrow, she’s shocked, scared and it could have been a whole lot worse. That doesn’t bear thinking about. But when I lay eyes on Simon, my fury crashes, dissipates. He’s staring at the counter. He looks sad, confused.

‘I didn’t mean to let her down,’ he says with a sigh. He looks out to our garden. My eyes follow his. I think I see a fox by the bins.

Whoever means to let anyone down? I wonder. ‘Have you got something you want to talk about?’ I ask his reflection in the kitchen window.

He shakes his head. We stand in silence for a minute. Then he asks my reflection, ‘Have you?’

‘No.’

He picks up the bottle of red wine and pours a second glass and I put two slices of bread in the toaster. We eat and drink in silence.

Chapter 8, Simon

Saturday, 18th June 2016

Simon really wanted to make it up to Millie for leaving her alone in the bathroom. When he thought about her battered head, her aching elbow, when he imagined the moment of panic she must have felt when she slipped, the fear, the confusion – he hated himself. He got up early on the Saturday morning and made pancakes with her. The first couple were misshapen, but he told her that they looked like Mickey Mouse’s ears and she was kind enough to agree with him. He got into his groove and then made twice as many as they could possibly eat. They took some up to Daisy in bed because Millie wanted to, even though breakfast in bed was usually only something that occurred on birthdays or Mother’s Day. As it happened, Daisy was already in the shower. But they persuaded her to put on her robe and climb back into bed to eat them. She said they were delicious. There was a lot of smiling. Simon’s smiles were bashful, then hopeful, then rather pleased with himself. Daisy’s were tentative, possibly forced, certainly smaller than he’d have hoped. Millie’s smiles were the most fabulous and uncomplicated. Her smiles buoyed everyone up. Like a life raft.

Daisy said she had a lot of marking to do. Simon realised that she’d probably intended to do it the night before but had had to abandon it to dash to the hospital. Usually Millie spent Saturday morning at ballet school and Daisy marked her books whilst she sat in the car waiting for the classes to finish, she had to do it this way because the ballet school was a serious one and not the sort that allowed the mothers to sit on chairs along the wall, chatting and distracting. However, Millie wasn’t allowed to dance for a week or so because of her injury. Simon offered to take her to the park instead but even that caused Daisy to look aggravated. ‘She can’t play on the swings or slides. She has a suspected concussion.’

‘We’ll just have a stroll about,’ he replied. Daisy didn’t look convinced. Her brow was knitted with concern. Simon decided not to pursue the matter. He wanted to entertain his child, yes, but he also wanted to please his wife. He’d woken up ashamed. Of course Millie was his child. Of course Daisy would never be unfaithful and then pass off another man’s child as his. That was madness. He was mortified by his own stupidity and only glad that he hadn’t shared his fears with anyone else, grateful that no one could read his mind.

‘How about we go and buy a tent?’ he suggested.

Millie had been begging to go camping for weeks now. She’d seen people camp on the beach during half term and fallen in love with the adventure and freedom that sleeping outside offered. They didn’t own any camping equipment, it wasn’t Daisy’s idea of fun. Simon used to camp as a boy, he’d been a Scout, and as a young man he’d had a few rowdy nights under the stars at festivals. He had a vague idea that one day they could all go on a family camping trip and he’d impress them with his tent pitching skills. Or, if Daisy wasn’t up for that, then maybe a father-daughter camping trip. It would be fun. Not now, not while Millie was injured. But the weather was starting to warm up, maybe they could camp in the garden to start with, to see if Millie caught on to it. If so, they could go further afield at a later date. He suggested as much to Daisy, taking care to do so when Millie was not in earshot, because Daisy would appreciate them talking about it as parents first and reaching a consensus before Millie’s exuberance railroaded them into a decision. ‘It would take her mind off her injury,’ Simon pointed out. ‘We don’t have to buy a tent. We can borrow one off someone.’

‘I’m not sure. Not all night, not when we’re still monitoring her. But maybe you could put up a tent, make a den, cook supper on a stove in the garden. She could fall to sleep out there and then you could carry her into her bed,’ Daisy conceded.

Millie loved the plan. She and Simon travelled by tube to Holland Park to see their friends, Luke and Connie Baker. They had three kids and all the trappings of a middle class west London family life. They owned little fold-out chairs that ‘Came in handy on prize-giving day or at the races’, they had a picnic basket with glass, silverware and china ‘for Glyndebourne’, and a roof rack that was useful when collecting the two-metre tall Christmas tree that they bought from a Chelsea garden centre every Christmas. Simon guessed they’d have camping equipment. One phone call to Luke had confirmed that indeed they had. Luke laughed and told Simon that a few years ago they’d tried camping, ‘Connie and my girls hated it. We spent a bloody fortune on all the gear. Only ever used it once.’ Luke laughed about things like that. He and Connie were loaded, the waste didn’t matter as long as it made an amusing anecdote. ‘Borrow what you like. It’s good to know it’s getting used.’

Luke was an architect. He sometimes put interior design work Simon’s way, decent work, Simon couldn’t complain. Connie was a photographer and was managing to make a good living out of it even though everyone had an iPhone and filters nowadays, and could take decent snaps for themselves. Simon had known Luke for twenty-something years, Daisy and Connie had made friends at university when they were still teenagers. Simon and Daisy met at Luke and Connie’s first wedding anniversary party. Somehow, the fact that they’d found each other through the Bakers, and Luke sometimes commissioned Simon, had led to an unarticulated hierarchy in their relationship. Simon always felt Luke was lording it over him. Simon felt stung by a sudden determination that his girl would like camping, and that they’d go on to have lots of memorable trips away together, which they’d record on his iPhone and post on Facebook.

The trip to the Bakers and back took most of the morning. By the time they returned, Daisy had finished marking her books. They had a sandwich lunch and then pitched the tent together. Millie filled it with pink cushions from her bedroom and a huge number of cuddly toys. Simon doubted there would be room for him to lie down. Daisy found some solar fairy lights in the back of the cupboard where they kept their boxes of Christmas decorations. They draped them over the tent and waited until it got dark. For supper they made beans and sausages. The Bakers’ camping stove worked a treat. Millie was too excited to fall to sleep in the tent. At 10 p.m. they all gave up and went inside, but it wasn’t with an air of defeat, it was a decisive victory. The day had been won. The day had been glorious. Daisy made hot chocolate in the kitchen.

Simon made his that bit tastier by adding a nip of whisky.