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.

“Mom. Are we really gonna meet Grandpa?”

Nia leaned forward over her belt. “What about Grandma? Is she gonna be there?”

And I looked at four hopeful faces at eight thousand feet and I said: “We’ll find out when we get there.”

I wanted to promise them something. All four of them were looking at me.

I have never once in eight years promised any of those children anything about a person I do not control, and I was not going to start at eight thousand feet.

But I had put four children in matching coats on an aircraft, which is its own kind of promise, and I knew that then and I knew it at the time.

All four of them have his face.

That is not a figure of speech and it is not something people are being polite about.

The grey eyes. All four of them, which the genetics people tell me is not even particularly unusual and which still stops strangers in shops.