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.

She is in the back bedroom, the one that gets the morning. There are two carers on a rotation and something being arranged for the nights from about the fourth week.

She has about three months. Possibly less. Nobody will put a number on it and I have stopped asking for one.

That was Nia’s idea.

She is eight years old and she asked me in a car, in a car park, about four days after Christmas.

Why can’t Grandma come to our house?

And I sat there with the engine off and could not produce one single argument. Not one, and I am a woman who can produce four arguments about anything.

Those four children have now had eleven weeks with their grandmother. They will have about twelve more.