With our nanny still in mid-air on her way back from Australia and my wife off to court, I was left to look after the kids. I always dread days like today. Not, I should make clear, because I dislike spending the time with the kids. It is because, for some reason, the days always consist of me staggering from one micro-crisis to another. Ladies and Gentlemen, my day:

There’s more (so much more) but I find I’m crying too hard to type. I am brought down by minor inconveniences like a tree felled by very very annoying ants.

It is time to face the year ahead. We arrived home after dark. The kids had slept through the drive. P asked the girls if they could remember what they are due to do tomorrow. “Be Princesses!” they answered, correctly (it’s along story). Then Sophia said “Mummy I wish you could take us”. P is in court and said she was sorry but she would see the girls in the evening when she got back. Sophia dissolved, sobbing: “Please don’t go Mum. I’m going to miss you”.

It is like this at the end of every holiday. I don’t know whether it is commonplace or an aspect of the attachment issues adopted children so often have. As they ease into a holiday they calm and their behaviour improves dramatically. As the end of the holiday arrives, they become anxious. Anxiety translates into difficult behaviour. P sat down with Sophia to work on letter formation and tried to correct how Sophia held her pencil. “I’ll do what I like” said Sophia. That is ridiculously out of character for her. She is normally agonised at the thought of upsetting people but her impulse won out and she was sent off to the playroom to calm down. As I stripped the Christmas Tree of its decorations I could hear her mumbling to herself that it was unfair and that mummy didn’t love her. Both girls will do this: vocalise their fears if left alone. It was heart-breaking. She emerged 10 minutes later and hugged P until I thought her arms might snap.

I know attachment will take years to mature. I know they may never trust our love because we came into their lives so late. But if they could just see inside us. If they could just see the love we have for them, they might then know there us no need for fear. There is no risk the love will run out – that we will drop them and run.

I paused at the door on my way to putting the tree on the kerb for collection. Together we thanked it for its service and wished it luck in its recycled state. May it come back as something precious to Sophia – a Peppa Pig comic perhaps.

We are in the countryside. I awoke with a migraine that I maintain was caused by exposure to fresh air. Certainly not the alcohol we consumed last night. We started the day in Wells. It’s market of artisan cheese and award-winning sausage stalls felt like undiluted, cask-strength Englishness. Already P is bemoaning the city life.

Sophia climbed the rounded outcrop of Mendip limestone opposite where we are staying and gazed across the landscape to Glastonbury Tor. “Look Mum” she shouted “you can see everything”. Another unexpected benefit of parenthood: the chance to be with someone to whom things are still, literally, wonderful.