The holiday just felt all wrong without Amelia. Waking up in the too-quiet cottage this morning had seemed so strange. Maggie had gone into the second bedroom and her throat had tightened as she saw the bed there, unslept in. She’d actually sat down on it for a moment and put her hand on Amelia’s pillow because she felt so bereft. Then, in the kitchen, she’d automatically pushed two slices of bread down in the toaster for her, as she did every day. It was only as she was buttering the toast and opened her mouth to bawl Amelia’s name that she had realized what she’d done. She’d ended up eating them herself, on top of the bowl of porridge she’d already put away.

‘I miss you,’ she said into the dead air of the room. ‘I wish you were here.’

Surprise surprise, she imagined her sister-in-law Helena saying sarcastically, if she could see Maggie now. Helena had never bothered hiding the condescension she felt towards her, and Maggie still bristled whenever she thought about Helena and Ross’s New Year’s Eve dinner last year, when things had really come to a head. Helena was one of those people who intensely disliked not getting their own way and, having tried but failed to talk Maggie into staying over for the night, she then began jokingly calling her boring and a party-pooper – or Maggie had assumed she was joking anyway. But then a mean sort of light began shining from Helena’s piggy eyes and the mood changed abruptly. ‘I knew you wouldn’t stay. You never do. You always use Amelia as an excuse – your cover story, stopping you doing anything interesting with your life. Ross thinks so too. What are you so scared of?’

Maggie had been so shocked and humiliated by the accusation that she had jerked Amelia away from her cousins and they’d left pretty much there and then, but the moment came back to her now. Helena’s plump, scornful face looming at her, a small shred of bruschetta wedged between her two front teeth, the stale waft of alcohol drifting from her open mouth. What are you so scared of?

I’m not scared of anything, she had told herself indignantly that night as she drove home, the roads empty as the rest of the country poured another drink and danced the old year out. Of course I’m not, she had repeated once back at the house, alone on her sofa as she watched the London fireworks crack and pop above the celebrating crowds. She’d always prided herself on her competence, how she’d kept her little family going by pure strength of will – as opposed to the strength of Will, you could say. But today her sister-in-law’s unkind words jabbed at her like thorns. They weren’t true . . . were they?