At one point, with anger flashing in her eyes, she tells me that Rich has hinted several times that he’s interested in her, but even when things were at their worst between us, she never dreamed of letting anything happen.

This vaporises what little strength I have left, and all I can do is cry breathlessly, just repeating how sorry I am, over and over again, like a broken record.

We move from room to room in the flat, alternately crying and talking and shouting, until finally, as the sun starts to come up outside, we’re left sitting in silent, broken exhaustion at opposite ends of the living room sofa.

Daff goes upstairs and packs a bag. She tells me she’s going to her parents’ and she needs some time to think about everything. I tell her that of course that’s fine, she should take as long as she wants.

And then she leaves, and she doesn’t come back.

Chapter Forty-Nine

The undecorated Christmas tree stares back at me from the other side of the living room. It seems mildly insane to suspect an inanimate object of taunting me, but that’s what it feels like.

According to my watch, it’s now half past ten in the morning, and outside, I can hear the cheery sounds of Christmas Day whirring into action: kids laughing, dogs barking, car boots being opened and loaded with presents. Neighbours calling ‘Merry Christmas!’ as they pass each other in the street.

And here I am: alone in my flat with the curtains drawn, two biscuit tins full of keepsakes open on the sofa beside me. I’m not sure why I even brought them down. To remind myself of what Daff and I have been through? To convince myself that we’ll be OK in the end?

She’s been gone a few hours now, and even though I haven’t slept a wink all night, I don’t feel in the slightest bit tired. I don’t know what I feel really. Devastated at hurting her, of course. Heartbroken that she’s gone. Terrified because I don’t know when – if – she’ll come back.

But as crazy as it sounds, I also feel a weird kind of peaceful stillness. Everything is out in the open now; both of us have been completely honest with each other for the first time in years. I’ve finally owned up to my mistakes, to the hurt that they’ve caused, and now I can focus on trying to make up for them.

When Daff walked out of the door, a horrible feeling swept through me that maybe that glimpse of my Christmas future had been real. That by telling her about Paris and everything else, I had set in motion a timeline that would lead me, inevitably, to Alice and Marek and Phil and Becky and Wyndham’s.