I woke up at 2.00 the other morning. My head wouldn’t stop, so I got up and spent a few hours on the computer. At 4.30 Allison brought Kyria (5 weeks) out to the room I was working in; she nursed, and we sat and talked.

At 5.30 Ian (22 months) woke up crying, shouting, screaming: his mummy and daddy had abandoned him (we all sleep in the same bed) for another room and another kid. He raged around the house for an hour, shouting “go ‘way! go ‘way!”, and following us from room to room to push our knees away and writhe on the floor.

We kept telling him how much we loved him; to him we must seem like flagrant, fatuous hypocrites, silvering our tongues with words of affection while our actions have him wake up all on his only.

Will he ever trust us again? Kids do.