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Bill had lived with them for nine months now, having moved in shortly after her mother's death. Being Bill, it wasn't that he had been found sobbing hysterically or starving or letting the house go to ruin. He had just retreated quietly into himself, becoming a smaller and smaller version of the upright former furniture-maker she had known for three decades until he seemed like a shadow presence. "I just miss her," he would say, when she turned up for tea, bustling round, trying to inject some energy into the too-still rooms.

"I know, Bill," she would say. "I miss her too."

The fact was, Lila hadn't been coping well either. She had been in shock when Dan had announced he was leaving. When she finally found out about Marja, she realized Dan simply leaving had been a whisper of a blow, a thing that had barely touched her, compared to this. She had barely slept for the first six months, her mind a toxic whirlwind of finally drawing threads together, of recriminations, dread and cold fury, a million unspoken arguments in her head—arguments that Dan always managed somehow to evade: "Not in front of the children, Lila, eh?"

And then, just months later, even this had been dwarfed by the sudden death of Francesca. So when she suggested Bill move in for a bit they were both at pains to assure each other that this was really to help Lila with the girls, to provide a bit of practical help while she adjusted to single parenting. Bill kept the bungalow, heading off most days to work in his neat shed at the end of the garden, where he mended neighbors' chairs and sanded replacement stair spindles to stop Lila's children falling through the gaps in the banisters at Lila's house. Neither of them discussed when he was going to move home. It wasn't as though having him there got in the way of Lila's life (what life?), and Bill's gentle presence gave what remained of their little family a much-needed sense of stability and continuity. An anchor for their vainly bobbing little rowing-boat, which felt, most days, slightly leaky and unstable and as if they had abruptly and without warning found themselves adrift on the high seas.

*  *  *

Lila walks to the school. It is the first week back after the long holidays and Bill had offered to go, but she needs to up her step count (she is haunted daily by Marja's endless legs, her still-defined waist). Besides, she has to leave the house to pick up Violet, which means she can stave off the guilt that comes with not having done any writing again.

They both know the reason Bill offers: Lila hates the afternoon school run. Mornings are fine: everyone is in a hurry, she can drop and run. But this is too painful: her acute toe-curling visibility as she gathers with the other mothers at the school gates. There had been a whole month of head tilt after it first happened—You're kidding me. God, how awful, I'm so sorry—or perhaps, behind her back, You couldn't really blame him, though, could you? And, of course, there had been the awful cosmic joke of the timing of it all: just two weeks after The Rebuild had been published, alongside a slew of her promotional interviews talking about how best to repair a marriage that had grown stale amid the demands of work and children.

Two days after he had left, she had walked grimly up to the playground and three of the other mothers, heads bowed together, had been reading a copy of the Elle article, helpfully titled How I Made My Marriage Watertight. Philippa Graham—that over-Botoxed witch—had hurriedly shoved it behind her when she saw Lila and blinked hard with pantomime innocence, and her two acolytes, whose names Lila could never remember, had actually corpsed with suppressed giggles. I hope your husbands are right this minute contracting an antibiotic-resistant venereal disease from underage rent boys, she had thought, and pasted on a smile ready for Violet to traipse out, schoolbag dragging behind her.

For weeks she had felt the murmur of appalled fascination follow her around the playground, the faint turning of heads and gossip exchanged from the corners of mouths. She had held up her head, skin prickling, jaw aching with the rigid faint smile she had plastered, like a kind of permafrost, across her face. Her mother had taken over play-date duty, explaining to the girls and their friends' mothers when she drove her little Citroën to pick them up that Lila was busy working and she would see them next time. But her mother wasn't here anymore.

Feeling the familiar clench of her stomach, Lila pulls her collar around her ears and positions herself at the far edge of the scattered groups of mothers, nannies, and the odd lone father, studying her phone intently, and pretends to be engrossed in a Really Important Email. It is her standard procedure, these days. That or bringing Truant, who barks hysterically if anyone comes within twenty yards.

Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow there will be no interruptions. I will sit down at my desk at 9:15 a.m. when I get back from dropping Violet, and I will not move until I have written two thousand words. She decides not to think about the fact that she has made this exact promise to herself at least three times a week for the past six months.

"I knew it!"

There is a shriek of delight from a group of the mothers near the rainbow-painted bench by the swings. She sees Marja among them, leaning forward, Philippa squeezing her arm and beaming. Marja is wearing a long camel cashmere-type coat and trainers, her blonde hair pulled loosely and artfully into a huge tortoiseshell clip. "Well, you weren't drinking at Nina's, were you? I have a Spidey sense for these things!" Philippa laughs. She is just placing her hand on Marja's stomach when she glances over, sees Lila, and turns away theatrically. She mouths, "Oh, God. Sorry."