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her eye and packs away her make-up. Actually, she can’t remember the last time they kissed properly, and wonders how Rob will react to her black lacy lingerie. She’s slightly worried that he might claim to be tired or, worse, not even react at all. What would she do then?
    ‘So, can we have a dog, Mum?’ Freddie asks as they all trot downstairs.
    ‘Oh, Freddie, don’t start that now …’ She zips up the children’s overnight bags which are packed and waiting in the hall.
    ‘But you promised!’ he exclaims.
    Kerry sighs, calculating how much there’s still to do – breakfast, washing up, the gathering together of the last of her own bits and pieces – before she can be granted her small blast of freedom.
    ‘I can’t think about getting a dog right now,’ she tells him, filling two bowls with the only cereal her children will tolerate (virtually pure chocolate –
confectionery
, not breakfast, as Rob once pointed out).
    ‘Why not?’ Mia asks, fiddling with the banana-shaped hairclip at her forehead.
    ‘Because I’ve got too many other things to think about right now.’
    ‘What things?’
    Oh, you know – getting this house sorted out and you two settled into your new school, not to mention figuring out how I’ll earn enough money and make some friends – you know, have an actual adult to talk to occasionally …
    ‘Just things,’ she says, turning away to make coffee.
    ‘Daddy would get us a dog,’ Mia says with a sigh.
    ‘Yeah,’ Freddie snarls. ‘We’ve got the meanest person on earth as our mummy.’
    *
    Anita is clearly
not
the meanest, most despicable person on earth, as Freddie and Mia are delighted to be having a sleepover at her place tonight. Having grown up in Shorling, where Kerry first met her during one of her numerous holidays to Aunt Maisie’s, Anita and her family headed inland as soon as the Cath Kidston wellie brigade surged to the coast.
    ‘Can’t stand it,’ Anita had announced at the time. ‘It’s all artisan-this, artisan-that. What if I want a completely un-artisan pint of milk or some frozen peas?’
    The final straw had been trotting along to the cheap and cheerful kids’ clothes shop, from which Anita had managed to kit out her four children, and discovering it had turned into a chi-chi boutique selling cashmere pashminas for babies.
    ‘Wish they still lived in Shorling,’ Mia declares as they turn off the main road and follow the twisting lane towards Anita’s Sussex village.
    ‘Me too,’ Kerry says, more forcefully than she means to.
    ‘Did they move ’cause
we
live there?’ Freddie asks.
    ‘No, of course not,’ Kerry laughs, glancing back at him. ‘They came here a couple of years ago, long before we thought of moving to Aunt Maisie’s. Anyway, they’re not too far away. Only forty-five minutes. Look – can you see the church spire in the village? We’ll be there in a few minutes …’
    ‘Yey!’ he cries, unclipping his seatbelt in readiness and ignoring Kerry’s barked command to put it back on again. Minutes later they are pulling up outside Lilac Cottage, the ramshackle house which Anita and her husband Ian plan to renovate, but haven’t got around to yet.
    ‘So it’s the big surprise today,’ Anita says, hugging her friend as their children greet each other in a whirl of excitable chatter.
    ‘Yep.’ Kerry smirks. ‘Scare the socks off him, poor sod. He’ll probably have a cardiac arrest.’
    Anita laughs as all six children descend on a tray of just baked, as yet un-iced cakes. Cramming their mouths, they surge as one – tailed by Bess, an excitable spaniel – into the living room where the TV is turned on at deafening volume.
    ‘Our mummy doesn’t like dogs,’ Freddie announces loudly, causing Kerry to laugh mirthlessly as Anita hands her a mug of tea.
    ‘Bad, bad Mummy,’ Anita teases her. ‘Imagine, not wanting to be wading through great drifts of hair and being hammered with vet and kennel fees.’
    ‘I know.