‘Just don’t answer the door!’ Helena said later on, when she and the girls called round for tea. They’d found me limp and exhausted on a sofa in the sitting room. Amanda had just left. My sister plonked herself down on the end of the sofa. I curled my legs up to accommodate her. ‘You’ve got a spy hole – use it! Then if it’s her, creep upstairs and lie doggo on the bed till she’s gone!’

Hard to explain to Helena the feeling of physical terror Amanda inspired in me, courtesy of her connection to Michael. She’d think I was mad if I told her that recently, when the doorbell went, at increasingly odd times and with no message beforehand, that old terror would literally take over my body. I’d notice my hand trembling as I reached for the doorknob.

‘Yes – or,’ exclaimed Maudie, fresh from school and still in her hockey kit, muddy knees included, ‘when you hear the bell, lie under the window seat like this!’ She demonstrated by flinging herself to the floor and lying like a corpse, eyes shut, hands on heart.

‘But what if she creeps right up to the window before she rings the bell and Luce hasn’t got time?’ said Tess, wide-eyed. ‘Or, even worse, sees her make a dash for it?’

‘Turn to stone,’ commanded Maudie, leaping up from under the window and demonstrating. ‘Like musical statues. There’s a disease you can get, which turns you literally to stone. It’s called Stone Man Syndrome.’

‘Stop it.’ Tess was gripped. ‘Where did you hear that?’

‘It’s in Ant’s medical bible, that big black one. Remember when he thought he had a stomach ulcer? Almost called an ambulance? It’s the next one down.’

‘Calm down, girls, that’s enough. Lucy is wrung out enough without your hysteria,’ Helena told them.

‘Speaking of ambulances,’ Tess turned to me avidly, ‘did you hear that Ant had one on their holiday last week? Blue flashing lights, sirens, the lot! He thought his heart had stopped.’

‘I did hear,’ I said, trying not to smile as Helena rolled her eyes.

‘Only the third time we’ve had an ambulance on holiday,’ she muttered dryly.

‘It always happens on a romantic mini break,’ Tess told me quietly, perching next to me. ‘I can’t imagine why, can you? Too much for the old ticker, perhaps?’

‘And this time, it was in Paris,’ Maudie informed me. ‘Quelle drama on the Champs-Élysées.’

‘And quels fit doctors at the hospital. If only we’d been there.’

‘Ah monsieur,’ Maudie affected an outrageous French accent, ‘ees thees your petite fille? But she is soo beautiful!’

‘Ah, mais une autre fille! Très, très belle, far more belle than the other one!’

‘All right, girls, enough,’ scolded Helena, but not ferociously.