I walk back home because there are no cabs and I don’t think I have enough cash for the New Year tariff anyway. The last hit of coke has worn off and it’s late. Five a.m. Where did the time go?

A lot of it was spent kissing Laura. It felt better than the cocaine and she wanted to go further but . . . well, I like her, so I didn’t want to rush. I wonder if we could date.

A girlfriend, a vocation, a future.

But as I walk, guilt hardens within me like frost: Mum has been alone for ten hours and Kerry has been working the dreaded New Year shift while I have been partying.

The lights are still on in Kerry’s parents’ house but our bungalow is dark. There’s a note stuck to the front door. DON’T FORGET FIRST FOOTING.

We don’t do much to mark my mother’s Scottish heritage, but this is sacrosanct, to avoid bad luck for the whole of 2001. On the ledge, Mum has laid a lump of coal – always the same one, shrinking over the years – plus a piece of bread, a teaspoon of salt and a crystal sherry glass half-full of whisky. I hold my breath as I put my key in the door, hoping I won’t wake her. But as I carry the items over the threshold, I hear her voice.

‘Tim?’

I go into her bedroom, fearful. Will she be able to sense what I’ve done? Her eyes are bright from the reading lamp. ‘Happy New Year, Mum.’

She reaches out for the gifts and I place them on the table. ‘You never forget. You’re a good boy.’

Relief washes over me. ‘Ah, I don’t know about that.’

‘How was your party?’

‘Brilliant.’ I say no more because I’m too tired to process the difference between the things she’d want to know, and what I should keep to myself.

‘That’s nice, son. I was worried when it got late and you weren’t home but I told myself: he’s with a bunch of doctors, what harm could come to him?’

I lean in to kiss her dry cheek. ‘That’s right, Mum. Everything is fine. 2001 is going to be our year.’

Chapter 19: Joel

1 January 2001

After the bongs and ‘Auld Lang Syne’, my bloody mother has another surprise in store.

‘Let’s sing “Happy Birthday”.’

I look around the roomful of neighbours and London production people she’s invited to her soiree. For the first time in a decade, she’s turned down a live outside broadcast somewhere on the other side of the world to spend the New Year with her family – and, I realized too late, with all the people she wants to impress.

I wait for her to single out the poor sod who was born on New Year’s Day.

‘Today my gorgeous son Joel is one year old.’

No.