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Look, you know how I feel about Beth. I’d do anything for her, you know I would, give her anything.’
    She sighed. It was true. As far as intentions went, he was a model father.
    â€˜I know I was late with her money in June and July, too, but I caught up when I did that piece in The Observer . And I’m not saying I can’t pay anything this month, I can manage a hundred or so now, and in a couple of weeks, who knows? I wouldn’t ask …’
    Her smile was wry. ‘Don’t tell me – unless it was an emergency.’
    â€˜What emergency’s this?’ Beth, holding a cushion in one hand and the TV remote in the other, was standing in the kitchen doorway.
    Laura covered the receiver. ‘The boys are ill.’
    â€˜Dad! Can I talk to him?’
    â€˜Here,’ Laura told Simon. ‘Speak to your daughter.’
    Swapping the phone for the remote, she headed for the sitting room to switch off the television before retreating to her study. Behind her, she caught the sound of Beth’s laughter: a proper, leaping laugh, spontaneous and gleeful, that she hadn’t heard enough lately – not nearly enough – and was struck by a shaft of pure jealousy.
    â€˜Click it down properly when you hang up,’ she called back towards the kitchen. ‘Or the battery will go flat.’
    It was all very well for Simon to plead pennilessness. Not that he would say it if it wasn’t true; a new wife and three sons must eat up money, and his work had never been lucrative or even reliably regular. But it wasn’t easy for her, either, even with just the two of them. Academic researchers were not well paid. Eighteen years in the department without achieving tenure meant a hand to mouth existence, surviving on a series of precarious, soft money posts; it brought in sufficient, but only just. The outside steps needed doing, and she ought to have someone look at the roof, too; there were loose slates after last winter, and she was worried about the flashings. And now no maintenance this month, or less than she’d expected. It made it imperative – she had to let the pumphouse as soon possible.
    But, to Willow? Of course it was a risk, but there had been mention of an enhancement on the rent. And if not her, then how soon would she find another prospective tenant?
    Â 
    The space between bath and bed had always had a magical quality. When Beth was small, of course, it was literally a time of fairy tales, and the spell, for Laura at least, had never quite lost its hold.
    Where once she would have been on the bathroom floor, encouraging washing operations and playing hide and seek with plastic ducks, now she liked to work with her study door open when her daughter was in the bath. That way she knew at once when she emerged, trailing warm, shampoo-scented vapour, and could follow her along the landing to her bedroom, drawn like some maternal version of the Bisto kid.
    â€˜Hiya,’ said Beth as Laura came in the room, announcing her entrance with the token knock she had recently adopted in deference to her daughter’s shyness when unclothed. ‘How d’you think I should do my hair tomorrow?’
    Laura went to the window to draw closed the curtains on the starless fen night; then she turned towards the bed. ‘How about a French plait? I could put it in for you in the morning.’
    â€˜Hmm. I don’t know about French plaits. Nobody really has them at the college.’
    â€˜We could frizz it? I’ll do you a Hermione Granger.’ This had been a favourite game since Beth was small: Laura bound her wet hair up in a dozen tiny, tight braids and in the morning it brushed out into a glorious bounce of curls.
    â€˜Uh-uh.’ Beth shook her head emphatically. ‘God, no. I’d get so laughed at. Everyone has totally straight hair. Rianna has extensions. Hers is down to here.’ She indicated somewhere near the base of her spine.