Sunday is always a bit of an unusual day between me and Paige, and the next morning is doubly so. She's up before me, which almost never happens, and she's already got Joey fed by the time I come downstairs. They're in the front garden playing footie.

While Chloe sits in her highchair trying to fist food into her mouth, I watch them from a window. Not for the first time, it strikes me how lucky I've been to land in this house. Tom was right—somehow, miraculously, I landed on my feet.

Perhaps my mum is looking out for me somewhere. After my streak of bad luck, I gave up on that notion, but if I hadn't had Chloe, if Imogen wouldn't have left, if my childminders hadn't been so inconsistent, if I hadn't lost my job, I would never have ended up here. At the moment, I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.

"Da-da?" Chloe calls from the highchair.

"What you need, love?" I go to the tray to check the bits and bobs I placed there. Most of it is gone. I mix some cereal, and as I stand in front of her feeding it, occasionally letting her give it a messy go, the front door opens.

Joey shouts excitedly about his last goal, and Paige tries to shush him.

"We're awake," I call.

She appears in the doorway, flushed from their running outside. "Hi."

"Hi." I scan her the same way she's scanning me. Bloody gorgeous. Might be a little harder to pretend last night didn't happen than I thought. I really want to go over and scoop her up.

"You've got football today?" She leans against the doorway, and Joey comes to wrap his arms around her leg.

"I do, yeah."

"Are Tejinder and Diya coming for dinner?"

"Is that alright? Diya's boyfriend might be here too." We've fallen into a routine of them coming every other weekend for a roast of some sort, but with Chloe's birthday yesterday, I could likely beg off. Not sure if other people will be able to spot the change in us, but it feels very obvious right now. I thought being with her would ease this tension between us, but I swear it's only ratcheted it up. If I could, I'd abandon the kids and carry her back upstairs.

"Diya and her boyfriend broke up," she says. "Got a text this morning. Had a fight after the party last night. He had the audacity to mention wanting a family some day."

That makes me laugh, and Chloe claps her hands in excitement. I spoon another scoop into her mouth. While Diya is good with watching Chloe and Joey, she's got no desire for kids of her own. Her parents keep trying to inch her toward agreeing to an arranged marriage, and Diya's got a defiant streak the size of a football pitch. It's been one bloke after another since they tried to get her to meet with the matchmaker in London.

"What do you want to do, then?" I scrape out the last of the cereal and offer it to Chloe. She takes the spoon and smears the lot all over her face as she tries to get it into her mouth. Looks like bath time might come early.

"Let's have them here, as long as you think that's a good idea."

"I reckon it'll be alright," I say as I get a cloth to wipe Chloe's face. "I'll get the chicken out to defrost."

"Ash," Joey says. "Ball?"

"We can play for a bit, mate, as long as your mum is okay to watch Chloe." I finish cleaning Chloe's mess, and I pop her out of the highchair to set her on the ground. She toddles over to Paige and smashes into her legs.

When Paige lifts her up to rain kisses all over her face, Chloe giggles before grabbing Paige's face and planting a slobbery kiss in return. Not sure seven months of this will feel like enough.

~ * ~

Tejinder is beside me in the midfield, and we're supposed to be paying attention to our coach who is having a go at a couple of the other players for being lazy blighters.

"I told my mum I'd meet the auntie who's become a matchmaker," Tejinder says. "I'm tired of the random hookups and trying to figure out new dating apps."

"It might work," I agree, though I sort of suspect he also agreed to get their mum off Diya's back. He's always been the one more likely to appease his parents.

"Worth a try." Tejinder shrugs. "At this stage, I reckon anything is better than what I've been doing. If you can move in with a random bird and make it work, maybe I can too."

"Paige and I aren't like that."

"Sure you're not," Tejinder says with a twist to his lips. "Neither of you fancies the other at all. Not one bit. Plain as day."

"Even if I did," I say, "I can't fuck up my job. Isn't that what you told me?"

"'T'is." Tejinder puts his hands on his hips and releases a deep sigh. "But I've never seen you so settled, mate. It's what made me think maybe the matchmaking thing would be alright. Shake things up. You did something totally out of the box—way out of your comfort zone, and I honestly thought you were mad to be doin' it, but look at you now."

Except there's this clock ticking in the back of my brain every time I think about how happy I am. This is temporary, and there's no way to make it permanent or even longer term. Based on what Paige said last night, another year, maybe, but I can't count on that. The coach calls us back to the drills, and for the rest of the practice, I try to stay focused on what I can control both on and off the pitch.

We're walking toward the changerooms when someone calls my name from the sidelines. I stop at the familiarity in the tone of their voice, and I squint at the two people standing on the edge of the pitch, not far from the goal. How long have they been there?

"Mate, is that who I think it is?" Tejinder asks, and there's a tinge of anger in his voice.

I'm not angry, not yet, at least. Bewildered and a bit shocked. "If you think it's Imogen's parents, you'd be right." Instead of going over to them, I clap Tejinder on the shoulder and lead the way into the changerooms. "Got nothin' to say to them."

In the changerooms, I shower and get dressed slower than normal, my mind trying to work out why her parents would show up here almost a year after Imogen left us.

"What the fuck are they playing at?" Tejinder asks me, finally. He's been mimicking my slow pace, likely in a bid to walk out with me.

"Don't know," I say. They moved down south to work when Imogen and I finished Upper School, and while we saw them once in a while, the distance meant we hadn't seen them as much the last few years. After Imogen left me and Chloe, I thought they might have been in touch to see their granddaughter, but they never were. Figured that said it all. I wasn't about to hound people who didn't want to be in my daughter's life. Never chased Imogen, and I certainly wasn't chasing her parents, no matter how much I'd once liked them.

I sling my bag over my shoulder, and Tejinder walks out with me. In the carpark, Imogen's parents are waiting.

"Ash," her dad, Toby, calls. "Can we have a word? Won't take long. We've moved back to Bedfordshire. A quick chat, that's all."

I glance at Tejinder, and his jaw is set like I'd expect mine to be. So far, curiosity is driving me more than anger. To wait almost a year to make any sort of contact is absurd, and if the situation didn't involve my daughter, it'd be laughable.

"I wouldn't, mate." Tejinder is tense beside me. "When you needed help, they were nowhere to be found."

Fair point. "No," I say to Toby. "Not interested." I take long strides toward my car, and I keep my head down.

Her mother, Flora, hurries over to my side, and she's thrusting something toward me—paper or a card. "Our contact details are in here. We just want to talk."

I take it on instinct, and I open the boot to throw my football kit inside along with the card. Seeing Flora reminds me too much of Imogen, and I've finally gotten to a place where the thought of her doesn't gut me.

"I've got no need to speak to you," I say, and I duck into the car before shoving it into first and following Tejinder's car out of the carpark. My focus is straight ahead. I'm not looking back.

Whatever they want, the only thing they can bring either me or Chloe is pain. This tightness in my chest is already the worst I've felt in months.

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