‘AOB,’ says Maisie firmly. ‘Let’s sort the wheat from the chaff!’ Becky swears her daughter’s love of attention is only getting more pronounced. Will she end up commanding a boardroom or an audience from the stage? Becky often finds herself wondering whether her daughter’s life will be anything like that, or nothing at all like that. What would Maisie have been like with young brothers or sisters? Does she have half-siblings now, somewhere, unknown? Has Becky’s assailant made a life for himself, with a wife and children and a job and the rest? Has he ever done it again or was she somebody’s one-off, their great and last mistake? Or have they forgotten her?

Did Becky say yes that night?

Maisie tears open a shiny, metallic-papered package from Lily. It’s a garish, deliberately ugly knitted jumper with the words Hot Sauce written in Comic Sans font. Maisie laughs delightedly. ‘She remembered! This is awesome! Look at that font. I totally love it. I’m wearing it forever.’ Maisie wriggles her way into it.

‘You’d look good in something like that, love,’ says Grandpa, turning to his wife. ‘I still think of you that way. Hot Sauce.’

‘Oh, enough!’ Grandma says, pleased and smiling. ‘You look gorgeous, Maisie.’

‘I thank you!’

Becky grasps her champagne stem. She can’t concentrate. Her mind is on Siobhan now. Will Siobhan really drop it? And will it matter if she doesn’t? What if she goes to the police? Becky thinks about raising it with Matthew: perhaps they should say that she came to him, after the story broke, and told him then that she’d walked in on them? That she’d offered to be his witness but he’d told her not to bother feeding the fire. That he’d declined because he trusted his own innocence absolutely. There was no crime to bear witness to.

His story fitted with everything she knew, after all. She had been moved by his candour. His confession of ugly behaviour, albeit with the desire to show Amber a hard truth lying beneath it all. He was trying to show her the truth: wasn’t that what he had said, in so many words? Done for her sake as much as his. And now Amber is in hospital, because she has tried to end her life.

She listens to the burble of Adam and Maisie riffing off each other about another present opened; she barely registers what it is. A prank present from a friend, perhaps. Here is her beautiful, accomplished daughter on the verge of the exams that will launch her into the next exciting phase of life. She has everything laid out ahead of her … This is a good day and yet she feels on the other side of the glass: smiling along, nothing really touching her.