Becky’s hands are cold and they quiver at the edge of the phone.

She wonders whether she wouldn’t just do the same if she was in trouble: call a friend and get them to help out, corroborate her point of view. Give the world her truth, as she saw it.

You walk over glass for friends like that.

Becky runs a quick search on Amber Heath and finds that off the back of Matthew’s statement ‘mentioning’ her mental wellbeing, other stories have been mushrooming all over the internet in the last few hours.

Becky swipes through the pictures of Amber Heath tripping up, wearing short skirts, shocking-pink bra straps loose and hanging, falling out of cars – outside night clubs and restaurants. As much as they could get of her body without it being inappropriate or illegal to print. Elastic long limbs and bloodshot eyes and messed-up hair. She looks so young in the pictures, early twenties, perhaps – chubbier then, and just breaking out.

An ex-boyfriend of Amber Heath’s, who used to supply the highs, talks about why he broke it off and why he thinks Amber is trying to stitch this producer up.

Emotional. Ambitious. Someone who would do anything to feed her ambition.

There’s a blurred cameraphone picture of her cutting a line, fishnet tights and garter, legs crossed over, white of the kneecap captured by the flash. It’s grey and white, pixelated, almost, but apparently it’s definitely her.

Here is one of Amber and Ollie in a car together, trying to shield themselves from paparazzi flashes. The piece that accompanies it asks questions about calling time on ‘anonymous sources’ and goes on to list dozens of whispers about Amber. If it means to defend her, it just ends up looking like a compendium of Amber’s worst hits.

Matthew is spinning Amber, Becky thinks – twisting and rolling her and leaving her to hang by her threads, a dancing skeleton puppet tangled in its own strings.

‘What are you reading, Mum? They’re going to be here soon, have we done everything on the list?’ Maisie is flitting around the kitchen, stirring this, poking that. She looks up at Becky, trying to understand her inaction, frowns. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Matthew’s released a statement calling into question Amber’s mental wellbeing,’ Becky says.

Maisie looks confused. ‘But she probably is a bit unstable. You even said …’

‘And now everyone’s jumped on her as someone who is messy and …’

Maisie can’t see the spark of the touchpaper as it lights within Becky. Her mother has been tipped back into a past where she is unable to get out of bed, toggling between tears and panic, unable to take prescription antidepressants because of the baby growing inside her. Her mother is diving between that memory and the image she most feared: Amber’s life arrested. Unable to get out of her own bed.