With Lorna’s kind maternal gaze fixed on her in concern, Olivia tried to pull herself together. ‘I’m finding . . . I’m finding life a bit tough at the moment,’ she confessed. She had been on the verge of saying that she was finding motherhood tough, but at the very last second remembered who she was talking to. How crass it would have been of her, how insensitive, to have sat there complaining about being a parent, when Lorna and Roy were sitting opposite her on the twentieth anniversary of their only child’s death. Lorna and Roy, who would have given anything to have their son back.

Guilt wormed inside Olivia that she could have driven away from her own boys with such comparative ease yesterday. It had been such a strange moment, though, sitting there on her sofa, clutching her spoiled photograph of Aidan and remembering that summer when everything had changed. And then, noticing the date on her phone, her mouth had dropped open as she worked out that the very next day would be twenty years exactly since the accident, that fateful car journey.

‘Oh, Aidan,’ she’d gulped, pressing the photo to her heart. Twenty whole years. She couldn’t believe it. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She had been a different person back then. A girl, still finding her place in the world, with her head full of dreams. Now look at her: a hopeless, hapless, fat housewife. Good for nothing. She wished she could run away to that old life of hers, turn the clock back and do things differently. If only she could start all over again!

Glancing back down at the photo, she had remembered the afternoon it had been taken: how she and Aidan had been mucking about on a boat in the estuary. A perfect summer’s day, just after they’d finished their A-levels when the world seemed wide and welcoming, opportunities stretching before them far out to the horizon. Happier times. And now look at his picture – ruined forever.

Then she’d found herself thinking about the moments in the car before he’d died; what she’d said to him. How he’d looked at her. The instant when the wheels went skidding off the tarmac, the sound of her own screams echoing around them, the meaty smack of his head against the steering wheel . . .

She’d whimpered in distress, tearing her gaze away from the photograph, but it was as if his eyes followed her, cold and accusing. You did that to me, they said. It’s your fault I’m dead. She remembered the moment of silence after the impact, as if the night was holding its breath in shock. His terrible staring eyes, fixing her with reproach as she sat beside him screaming. Thank goodness for the paramedic who had eventually pulled the lids gently down, like blinds on dark windows.