Life is better now I’m clean. Even lying alone in this cold bed, there’s a purity about my doubts and fears. Perhaps now, with the right help, Zoë will realize it too: that however tough things get, drugs just postpone the moment of reckoning, when you have to face your responsibilities.

Kerry helped me realize that love is stronger than addiction. Maybe Zoë’s baby will help her feel the same way.

Chapter 36: Joel

25 December 2004

I’m in Love Actually overdrive, counting the hours till Kerry’s overnight shift finishes.

My backpack is ready: a bottle of alcohol-free champagne, luxury crackers and cheese, plus festive lingonberry garlands my mum got in return for hosting an interiors photoshoot at Curlews in the summer. At the time, Dad and I were united in our mockery. Not anymore.

In the movie-version of today, I’m going to present them to an earmuffed, rosy-cheeked Kerry as the snow falls photogenically on the seafront.

In reality, as I wait outside the ambulance control room, there’s no snow, just mizzle, and the morning’s still dank. But I get one bit right. At just after seven, Kerry steps out of the building with a colleague. She looks up and when she sees me, her eyes widen and her cheeks turn the deepest pink.

She says something to the woman she’s with, but her eyes don’t leave mine and she runs towards me. We kiss as though it’s been weeks, not less than twenty-four hours, since we last saw each other. In the nine days since I took her to the Coasters party, we’ve been meeting in secret whenever we can, making plans. It took me saying I might leave Brighton for her to realize she wanted to be with me.

‘Hey, you two, get a room!’ her colleague calls out, laughing. ‘Merry Christmas, Kerry. See you tonight if you can drag yourself away . . .’

Kerry ignores her colleague and kisses me. I don’t know if it’s for two minutes or ten or . . .

She draws away and my heart seems to stop. Fucking hell, she’s beautiful.

‘I don’t want to go home,’ she says.

‘Good, because you don’t have to.’

OK, she will have to, later. Tim is planning a ‘surprise’ festive lunch: she saw the bottle of Co-op Buck’s Fizz and microwavable turkey dinners he’d hidden in the garage. Even though she’s decided to leave Tim, she didn’t want to do it before Christmas. Too cruel.

To me, it doesn’t seem any less cruel to tell him on Boxing Day, but Kerry won’t be swayed. The kiss in my car after I took her to the Coasters Christmas party broke through our pretence that we can live without each other. No more denial, no more lies.