Lou knocked back her whisky. The harsh liquid burned her throat and reinforced the fact that she was here. In the kitchen. At home. As far away from a world of dancing and ice swans and ball gowns as it was possible to be.

Stephen picked up the bottle and Lou held out her glass. She took another slug. This supermarket own brand was sandpaper-rough. Sir Charles’ malt, open in the library, would have been silk smooth. ‘Where’s Dean?’ she asked quickly.

‘At a mate’s,’ Stephen said, inspecting the contents of his glass. ‘Didn’t seem much point forcing him to hang around here. It’s not exactly festive in here.’

‘Is he ok?’

‘Getting there.’

Stephen ran his hand over his stubble. He was a week past needing a shave and his work T-shirt and trousers – spattered with plaster and unidentifiable plumbing muck – were more than a week past needing a wash. His crumpled face looked like an old man had crept inside and used his skin as a sleeping bag. While she had escaped to live a charmed life of parties and shoots and dresses and other peoples’ problems, Stephen had been left to deal with the shit storm of their real life. Hadn’t there been days in the last week when she hadn’t woken with the clawing despair of loss? Days when she had managed, for short periods of time at least, to forget their mum completely. ‘Stephen, I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘for starting that argument last week. For running out. For everyth –’

Stephen threw the contents of the glass down his throat. ‘Forget it.’

‘But it’s my faul –’

‘Please, Lou, can you just drop it.’ He ran his hand over his hair. ‘Going over it again and again won’t change anything.’ The bottle chinked on the glass as he refilled it. ‘Anyway, it was six of one …’ He left the familiar phrase unfinished as he took a swig of his whisky.

‘Half a dozen of the other,’ Lou said.

Stephen smiled. Lou wanted to see him smile again. She wanted to make him better and iron out the bags beneath his eyes. ‘Least said …’ she tentatively tried.

‘Soonest mended,’ Stephen responded. He grinned. ‘She always did like her stupid sayings, didn’t she? It used to drive me mad. Do you remember when we were kids, and she used to make us hug after we had a fight?’

‘You loved it.’

‘Yeah, right. Almost as much as you.’ He held his glass up. ‘To Mum,’ he said.

Lou chinked her glass to Stephen’s. ‘To Mum,’ she said quietly.

They both downed their drinks. Lou spluttered.

‘Lightweight,’ Stephen laughed. ‘You’d make a crap alcoholic.’

For once, Lou was grateful that outpourings of emotion and lengthy discussions of feelings weren’t their style. An insult delivered with a smile was the closest they would ever get to a gushing show of affection.

Stephen rolled his glass round his hands, staring into it as though the cheap whisky held some deep secret. ‘You know it’s not your fault, don’t you?’ he said. ‘It was the bastard driving the car, not you.’