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.

Isaiah straightened his little officer’s cap for about the fifth time.

“Mom. Are we really gonna meet Grandpa?”

Nia leaned forward over her belt. “What about Grandma? Is she gonna be there?”

And I looked at four hopeful faces at eight thousand feet and I said: “We’ll find out when we get there.”

I wanted to promise them something. All four of them were looking at me.

I have never once in eight years promised any of those children anything about a person I do not control, and I was not going to start at eight thousand feet.

But I had put four children in matching coats on an aircraft, which is its own kind of promise, and I knew that then and I knew it at the time

All four of them have his face.

That is not a figure of speech and it is not something people are being polite about.

The grey eyes. All four of them, which the genetics people tell me is not even particularly unusual and which still stops strangers in shops.

The slightly crooked smile.

And the dimple that only comes up on one side when they laugh — which is his, exactly, down to the side it is on, and which I found charming for about four years in a previous life.

There was never going to be any explaining that away. Not by anybody, in any room, at any distance.

The Vail place came up below us at about half past nine.

Snow across the whole of it. Decorations across a frontage about a hundred and forty feet wide, done properly, by somebody paid to do it.

Four rows of expensive cars down a drive, and a marquee at the side for the catering.

We put down on the pad they keep for the general’s old aircraft — which has not been used since 2016 and which somebody still clears the snow off.

About two hundred yards from the front of that house.

It attracted attention.

It was designed to attract attention. I had chosen that landing point myself, on a chart, on the Thursday, with a ruler — because it is about two hundred yards out and in full view of four large windows on the front of that house.

There was an alternative pad behind the treeline. I looked at it for about four seconds.

Security came out of the house. People came to windows.

When the crew gave me the nod I stepped down onto the snow in full command uniform with the wind taking it.