As a staunch believer in sustainability, she’d baulked at buying something brand new from one of the many fast-fashion online retailers, and she simply didn’t have the time to trail up the A38 into Bristol, or across to Taunton, to check out the high-street stores. But there was, actually, very little she owned that she could wear. There were, of course, many clothes shops on Willowbury High Street, but they were of the New Age and alternative variety, and while she secretly wanted to buy a mock Pre-Raphaelite crushed-velvet maxi dress, she didn’t think it would strike quite the right note with Charlie’s local party members. Her last hope, therefore, in the brief breaks she had when Rachel was minding ComIncense, was to check out the rails of the two charity shops that bookended the top and bottom of the High Street. Holly hoped that one or other of them would come up with something she could wear for this night out that would be a happy compromise.

Miraculously, she spotted the absolute perfect dress in the St Peter’s Hospice shop, albeit in a rather subversive colour, and snapped it up for a fraction of the price it would have cost when it was new. Sustainable box ticked, and feeling distinctly happier, she headed back to her shop.

On Wednesday evening, Rachel came over, having left Harry at his grandparents’ for an hour, to help Holly get ready. Holly hadn’t really needed any help, but Rachel, sensing that Holly was more nervous than she was letting on, had insisted.

‘I feel as trussed up as a turkey the night before Christmas!’ Holly grumbled as Rachel put the finishing touches to her hair.

‘Well, you look stunning, so suck it up, sis,’ Rachel replied. ‘That colour really suits you, although it shouldn’t, with the shade your hair is at the moment.’

‘Thanks,’ Holly said dryly. She stood up from the stool at her dressing table and smoothed down the velvet bodice of the long, fishtailed dress she was wearing. It was a vintage piece and, much to her surprise and Rachel’s approval, it fitted her as though it had been made for her. Of an early 1990s pedigree, it looked astonishingly like the dress Julia Roberts wore to eat snails in Pretty Woman and, with her long red hair piled on top of her head and her late grandmother’s pearls at her throat, Holly did bear more than a passing resemblance to the heroine of the iconic film. The butterfly tattoo on one shoulder blade that just peeked out from the high back of the dress gave the look a bit more of her signature individual twist, and as she turned to face her sister, Rachel smiled in approval.

‘I know this isn’t usually your thing,’ Rachel said as she tucked a stray strand of unruly hair behind Holly’s ear, ‘but when you get dressed up, you look absolutely amazing.’