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slow-moving traffic approaching Putney Bridge.
    â€˜What would you like to do this weekend? Perhaps Sasha could come over tomorrow and I’ll take you out somewhere,’ Nina offered.
    Lucy, her mouth full of her favourite Dairylea cheese and salami sandwich, carried on munching but waved her hand to indicate something was about to be said. Eventually she swallowed, laid the half-eaten sandwich down in her lap and turned to her mother. ‘Mum. There’s something I want to say. You mustn’t be cross, promise?’
    â€˜Well it depends. Have they just invented Saturday morning detention at school and you’re about to tell me you’ve got one?’
    Lucy laughed. ‘Huh, no I’m too much of a
goody
for that. No it’s weekends. Since Dad, you know, went.’
    Nina pulled up at the traffic lights behind a BodyShop truck, and the hope that it was using lead-free petrol crossed her mind.
    â€˜What about weekends? Don’t you like going to stay with Daddy?’ she asked anxiously. Perhaps Lucy detested Catherine. The shaming truth was that she rather hoped she’d say exactly that.
    â€˜Weekends, they’ve got like . . .’ Lucy sighed with the frustration of finding the right expression ‘. . . like they’re
weekends
, something different, something that’s got to be really special,
every single time
.’
    Nina thought for a moment, choosing words carefully. She heard Lucy crunch hard into an apple. ‘Well that’s because they have to be shared out. I expect Daddy just wants to give you a really good time so you’ll want to keep coming to stay with him. It’s he and I who are getting divorced, you see, not
you
and him.’
    â€˜Mum. It’s not just Dad. It’s you
as well
. You’re always wanting to make them sort of special too. I mean when Dad was there we never got dragged out to the zoo or the Kingfisher pool or to the theatre. Well we did, but not all the time anyway. Now you’re both doing it. I want to be just ordinary, do nothing.’
    The traffic was on the move again and Nina concentrated on manoeuvring beneath the Hammersmith flyover. For a Friday evening, as many people seemed to be hurtling into London as out of it.
    â€˜Well tell me what you’d really like to do then. What’s your idea of a perfect Saturday?’
    Lucy didn’t hesitate: ‘Getting up at 10.30 and lying on the sofa in my dressing gown and my Totes and eating Coco-Pops right there, not at the table, and watching cartoons on telly for as long as I want.’
    â€˜Is that it?’ Nina laughed, though it didn’t sound too bad. It was the child’s version of lazy Sunday morningsin bed with a choice of both intellectual and inane newspapers and coffee and croissants. She remembered mornings like that with Joe. Before the children they’d involved making love among the itchy crumbs, sharing a shower and then going to the pub. Now he probably did all that with Catherine, who, just as she had, thought they were making the most of the pre-baby stage.
    â€˜Yes.’ Lucy turned an anxious face to her. ‘And can you tell Dad, because Catherine thinks television is all rubbish unless it’s a documentary about old dead history people and she thinks we should only eat muesli with no sugar, and
never ever
on the sofa.’
    Nina smiled. ‘I don’t expect she’ll change her mind about that until she has children of her own.’
    â€˜She doesn’t need any though, does she,’ Lucy decreed firmly, ‘because she’s got Dad to look after.’
    Nina sighed heavily. ‘Oh Lucy, how can you of all people have picked up the idea that men are there to be looked after by women? He’s a
grown-up
, not a baby or a pet.’
    Lucy went into peals of gleeful laughter. ‘I
knew
you’d say that!’ she shrieked. ‘It’s so
easy
to get you to fall for it!’
    Nina