‘I want to die. I want to lie on this toilet floor and never get up again. I have given him five years of my life,’ she cries bleakly. ‘How can I walk away? How can I leave? If I do, it will all have been for nothing.’

‘Oh, Lauren,’ I say. ‘You always knew that this could end in pain.’

‘He doesn’t love her,’ she sobs, slurring her words. ‘He tells me all the time. He has to stop himself from calling out my name in his sleep. Did you know that?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know that.’ But how can I tell my sister that it sounds like a terrible, clichéd line to me?

‘He will leave her.’

‘When, though?’ Perhaps this is the time for tough talking. ‘He’s been stringing you along for years with empty promises.’

‘What’s a few months, a few years when we’re planning to be together for ever?’

Then I hear the door open and my heart jumps to my mouth when I see who comes in.

‘Shut up,’ I say to Lauren and I try to get into the cubicle with her, but there’s no chance. This is a one-pineapple toilet.

Instead, I make myself as big as I can and fill the door.

Jude’s wife Georgia and her daughter come in. I remember Lauren telling me that the child’s name was Daisy and I think she’s eight. She’s certainly as cute as a button.

‘Oh,’ Daisy says when she sees me. ‘A pineapple.’

I give them both a big, fake smile and a pineappley wave and pray that they can’t hear the desolate sobs coming from behind me.

Georgia smiles sweetly at me. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

I shake my head frantically.

‘You look exactly like someone who works with my husband. If you don’t mind me saying.’

Damn being a twin! I try to shrug nonchalantly in my pineapple suit which may not translate that well. No matter how hard I try, I can’t find the words to explain our predicament to my sister’s lover’s wife.

‘Her hands are all sticky from the fruit juice,’ Georgia says, smiling at her daughter.

I nod. My voice still stuck fast in my throat.

Daisy puts her hands under the tap that her mother has turned on for her.

‘This is a lovely party,’ the little girl says.

‘It’s just like the Caribbean island where Daddy took us on holiday last Christmas, isn’t it, sweetheart?’

That would be the fifth Christmas that my sister spent alone.

‘Oh, yes,’ Daisy says with a happy sigh. ‘That was lovely.’

Georgia hands her daughter a paper towel to dry her hands. I try to block Lauren’s view.

‘You must be very hot in that costume,’ Georgia says sympathetically.