My ex-husband invited the former wife he believed was still childless and miserable to his family’s Christmas at their military estate. He never imagined I would arrive on a government tactical helicopter — with four eight-year-olds who had his face.

Four lines. Very steady, no reproach in it anywhere, and one sentence at the end asking whether the children were all right.

She is not with him any more. That is nothing to do with me, and I have said so to her in writing, and she has said she knows.

And Isaiah.

He asked me, in the fourth week, in a car, whether he had said something bad at the party.

Because nobody answered him.

He stood in a room with a hundred and twenty adults in it, asked one direct question in a clear voice, and not one single person said anything back to him.

Not his father. Not me. And he had been carrying that around for four weeks before he asked.

I told him the truth. That the question was fine, and that it was my sentence and not his, and that he had been given it by me without either of us noticing.