One week before Christmas, in a show of seasonal goodwill, and after eating enough humble pie to stock an entire patisserie, I was finally invited back to work. My first assignment? A front page scoop on dog poop – a dream come true! At first the staff were so surly towards me they made Vlad the Impaler seem helpful. But by day three things were back to normal. I tried to be interested in conversations about gazebo extensions and the merits of kidney-shaped pools over rectangular, the pros and cons of buying a boat and cricket scores, while all the time bleeding inside. Bleeding? It was more of an emotional haemorrhage. I couldn’t believe that people I knew were talking about house prices and cricket scores and whether Harry and Wills would patch things up after Megxit, completely oblivious to the fact that my world had imploded. The only thing that even vaguely amused me was the office party, where at least my colleagues could admit they were drunk and not getting any work done.

I was looking forward to Christmas with the same enthusiasm as a turkey might, but with five days to go and my fairy lights still not strung up, the tree lying at half mast, I suddenly went into a frantic Yuletide frenzy of holly-bedecking and eggnog-whisking, contracting chronic hand cramp from the penning of two hundred Christmas cards. It gives new meaning to ‘cardiac arrest’, I messaged my sisters. Emerald joked back that Christmas had been cancelled. Apparently you told Santa you’d been good and he died laughing.

The very thought of gift-wrapping made me want to garrotte myself with a string of tinsel. ‘Comedy rapper’ does not refer to Ali G but to a description of my present wrapping technique, I messaged them once more. Amber sent an emoji of a terror-stricken face, but had no time for actual words.

Still, I was more adept than Harry. When wrapping my present, he laid out the wrapping paper on the table, then accidentally cut straight through an antique tablecloth given to us by his mother. Which made me wonder via our sisters Messenger group how Christmas had ever really caught on. I mean, three wise men? Yeah, right. But they were both too busy to banter – or possibly still pissed off with me. I wasn’t sure.