‘PLAY LION KING,’ Olive shouted at the sound system, still sniffing in the aftermath of her violent sobs. The opening chants of ‘Circle of Life’ began.

‘LOUD,’ Olive shouted again and the song boomed off the kitchen tiles. Mark went to turn it down.

‘Let her,’ Katherine said.

‘Dance, Neenaw,’ Olive demanded as drums reverberated around the room. I crouched down and held her hands to twist her back and forth. She grinned.

‘Dance, Mummy, dance, Daddy!’ Mark rolled his eyes and stood up, swaying enthusiastically in time to the music. ‘MORE!’ she shouted and Mark waved his arms around in the air with uncoordinated gusto. I laughed and scooped Olive up, hoisting her on to my hip and sashaying around the kitchen. The chorus built and Katherine lifted Freddie up above her head, like Rafiki holding Simba to the sky. Olive broke into giggles. Freddie made a burping noise and white spittle dribbled down his chin.

‘Chuck me a muslin, babe?’ Katherine said, resting him back on to her chest.

‘DON’T STOP DANCING, DADDY!’ Olive shouted. Mark dance-walked to the cupboard and picked up a cloth that he threw across to Katherine who grabbed it with her free hand. The choreography of well-coordinated parenthood – they’d never know what those brief moments were like to watch, from the outside looking in. It was worth spending an exhausting day of tantrums and stinking nappies with a young family, just to get a glimpse at these short-lived shooting stars of togetherness.

I left after ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’, slipping out as quietly as possible so as not to aggravate Olive. As I closed the front door, I was illuminated by the golden light of Saturday dinner time streaming out of their front window. The cacophony of laughter, shouting, clattering plates and ‘Hakuna Matata’ faded as I walked down their road. I knew the deal – shortly after I left, there’d be the struggle to get Olive into the bath, then calming her down before bed, then storytelling under the covers while they longed for a glass of wine. There’d be washing-up and breast-pumping and sterilizing bottles. Mark and Katherine would be in bed before ten and one or both of them would silently recollect all their past Saturday nights of total freedom. I didn’t romanticize child-rearing – I couldn’t, having spent so much time observing it close-up through my friends over the last few years. But I didn’t need to. Katherine was so desperate to hide the mess of her home life from me, little did she know it was the mess that I longed for. It was not the domestic, cuddly quiet I envied – the sleeping baby in the pram or the perfectly arranged family portraits on social media. The shambles of raising children was what I craved – the toys on the floor, the Disney soundtrack filling a kitchen, the rainfall of tears followed by the rising steam of laughter, the wet jumper after bath time with a wriggling, splashing toddler. My flat had begun to feel so quiet – my shelves too neat, my surfaces too crumbless, my diary pages too blank.

I tried to call Lola on the train home to see if she was free and fancied meeting up, but I went straight to her voicemail. I scrolled through my phonebook to see if there was anyone who might like to go for a drink, but they were all tied into unwritten contracts of relationships and families which meant I’d have to confirm a night with them a fortnight in advance.

I got home, noticed that Angelo had put a black bin bag in the recycling bin again, ignored it and went upstairs. I didn’t have the energy for neighbourhood warfare tonight. I opened my laptop and worked on the new book. Almost immediately I turned away from the manuscript and googled Max’s name, which I now did about once a week. Like always, I stared at the one small picture of him that existed online – the LinkedIn profile photo of him in a white shirt and green tie that became pixelated if I zoomed in on it. I had recently abandoned my other bizarre habit of going on to the LinkedIn profiles of his colleagues, to see if they might have information on where he went to. They didn’t, they just had lots of information about their client experience and relationships with HMRC and Treasury. I wondered how long I would be indulging in this ritual – Max and I had now been apart for as long as we’d been together.

I googled Freddie’s full name. There was, of course, nothing. He was seven days old. If only he could know how lucky he was, to exist on a blanket of untouched snow, with not one footprint yet to be found. If only he could consciously savour this period. What would appear when you typed his name at the end of his estimated 120-year-long life? What mess would he leave?

I typed ‘Bill Dean secondary school teacher’ into Google. Up came the familiar results purpled by the exhaustion of my countless previous clicks. There was an interview with Dad in a local paper about being a headmaster, which he did when he retired. There was a photo of him from another newspaper article in the early noughties, about his support of a national literacy campaign. But just like Max’s online edifice, crudely constructed and bare, there was little to excavate. The vast majority of Dad’s life had happened in a world that wasn’t yet online. Now my dad was fading, I wanted to keep in touch with as many past versions of him as possible. But the internet had failed me – I could look up the full names of all of the parents of the cast of Friends, but I couldn’t find one photo of my dad as a student. I could get a street-view photograph of a road the other side of the world that I’d never visit, but I couldn’t find one video of my dad. I remembered meeting Dad’s former student in the bakery after the Picasso exhibition and what he’d said about there being a Facebook group in his honour. I typed ‘Bill Dean teacher’ in the Facebook search bar, but nothing came up. I tried ‘Mr Dean teacher St Michael’s’ and there it was – ‘MR DEAN WAS A LEGEND’ and a photo of my smiling dad as I remembered him in my childhood, thick salt-and-pepper hair like a Border collie, skin wrinkled but capillaries yet unbroken. Eyes as dark as molasses, alert and bright. I went on to the description: ‘For anyone who went to St Michael’s and was taught by the LEGEND Mr Bill Dean.’

I scrolled down the wall of the group to find discussions of Dad’s unusual snacks that he’d eaten during class (smoked oysters from a tin with a cocktail stick, pickled walnuts wrapped in foil) and his unusual lessons (the derivatives of cockney rhyming slang, Leonard Cohen lyrics as poetry). There were photos of him dressed up as Huckleberry Finn for World Book Day. There were numerous posts from ex-pupils who said Dad’s enthusiasm for literature had ignited their love of reading. The latest post was from Arthur, saying he’d bumped into Bill Dean recently and that, while he’d seemed a little older, he looked exactly the same. He made a self-deprecating joke about the fact Dad hadn’t recognized him and said this was understandable as he must be the favourite teacher of any kid who was taught by him, he couldn’t be expected to hold every single student in the same regard. I logged into Facebook and wrote Arthur a direct message.

Dear Arthur

My name is Nina, I’m Bill’s daughter. We met very briefly in a café a while back. I just wanted to drop you a message because, understandably, you might have thought that my dad was behaving strangely that day. I wanted to let you know that he’s suffering from