The interchange brought her own mum’s trials sharply to her mind. Roma had told Lily to ‘just let us get on with our own disasters, darling,’ but Lily was still having trouble taking in the fact that her parents’ relationship, volatile as it had been from time to time, was in tatters. Patsie had feelings for another woman. Lily had to admit to herself that if either of her mothers had strayed she would have put money on it being Roma rather than Patsie … She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, hoping this wasn’t some long-delayed tit-for-tat over the affair Roma had had with Marvin, stirred up again by Lily wanting to know her half-brothers.

With everything that had happened since Saturday evening she’d hardly had time to absorb the magnitude of the disaster of her parents splitting up, but sitting here as the miles passed beneath their wheels was providing her with plenty of time to think. And it hurt. Were you ever too old not to mind when this happened? she wondered. If you were, she hadn’t reached that age yet because despite the happy atmosphere and the bursts of ‘Frosty the Snowman’ currently emanating from behind her, sadness weighed her down.

She put up her good hand to cradle the injured one, which seemed to be pounding in slow, heavy beats, just like her heart.

‘Are you OK?’ Isaac asked in a low voice.

Lily blinked. ‘I need my painkillers.’

Isaac flicked on the indicator. ‘Here are the services so you can get a cuppa to go with them.’

After they’d pulled into the service station and climbed out Lily called, ‘Back at the minibus in fifteen minutes, please! Buy your lunch if you haven’t brought it with you because we won’t necessarily stop again before we get the train.’ They’d been on the road about an hour and a half and even if their journey continued to be trouble-free it would be a similar length of time before they reached the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone.

Carola checked that her daughters were OK and then fell in behind them as they made for the service station building. Lily hooked her backpack awkwardly over her right shoulder but Isaac promptly took it from her. ‘Are you going to manage?’ His eyes looked particularly dark in the hard winter sunlight.