‘Beatrice,’ I finished for her, the ache of grief burning behind my eyes. Nana Joy was eighty-seven. She’d first starred in a West End show at seventeen, and had gone on to appear in movies, record chart-topping albums and enjoy the well-earned accolade of National Treasure. Since retiring from the spotlight aged seventy-five, she’d moved to Charis House and taught drama, dance, and music until she started to forget pupils’ names and get muddled about the timetable. While she could still sing every word of Guys and Dolls, she spent most of her days lost in memories of a more glamorous time. I felt a stab of shame that I’d left it so long. She seemed so much smaller than last time I’d been here, in every sense of the word.

I bent over and gently gave her a hug. ‘You look beautiful,’ I whispered, pressing my face against hers.

‘Well, yes, I’m quite the talk of the town, don’t you know,’ she tittered, arching her eyebrows suggestively. ‘That young man is quite taken with me.’

She nodded across the table, and for the first time I realised that there was another person here.

It took me three thumping heartbeats to recognise him. By the fourth, everything made sense.

‘Hello, Beatrice,’ he said, with the same frown he’d used to address me the handful of times we’d unfortunately been forced to converse thanks to our parents being best friends.

‘Um, hi.’ I continued to stand there, behind Nana Joy, waiting for someone to tell me why Henry Fairfax was at my family pre-Christmas dinner.

‘Well, I was expecting a warmer welcome than that for one of your oldest friends,’ Mum said, having entered the room with a large dish of steaming vegetables. She took a step closer to Henry, lowering her voice to the kind of whisper that people can hear from several feet away. ‘I think she’s a bit flustered. Give her a moment.’

Flustered? That was not how I felt. Annoyed? Embarrassed? Already driven to banging my head against the wooden panelling a few times?

She plonked the dish on the table. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to take a moment to freshen up?’ Her eyes slid over to Henry and then back to me.

‘Yes. I’m sure.’ I reiterated my point by moving around Dad’s place at the end, past Henry to where a crayoned place card indicated my seat.

‘Uggghhhh!’ Frankie groaned. ‘Can we please eat now?’

The obvious thing to do would have been to offer Henry a few polite pleasantries, then become fully engrossed in conversation with the person sitting on the other side of me. As if anticipating this tactic, the person sitting on my left was my mother.

‘So, Henry,’ her initial onslaught began. ‘Why don’t you tell Bea why you’re here?’