DEEP WATER

There is a rule in life that if you definitely don’t want your kids to do something, invariably it will be the only thing they want to do. I can’t remember who said this to me as I watch Pete’s temperature climb up the thermometer, not that I’d needed the confirmation – he was a sweaty, rancid mess who was in no state to stand on the side of a cold lake that afternoon.

‘Sorry, Jodes,’ he says, as he turns over. ‘You know I’d have gone if I could.’

I have to pause on the landing before I go downstairs, my brain rushing through a hundred scenarios in which I don’t have to go. But there are none because