They left the station below a thousand tiny lights, like fairyland, glittery without being glitzy. Isaac drew level with Lily, swapping sides to take her good hand as an old-fashioned red tram covered in lights and stars and full of children rattled past. Although Lily caught a couple of interested looks directed their way, the hand-holding seemed quickly accepted, especially when Franciszka and Neil followed their lead. Carola cast both couples wistful looks.

It was close to a perfect day. They went uphill in a little old funicular called the Polybahn, also red, which left from a tiny station decorated with stained glass, and they gazed out over Zürich from the front of the university, admiring slender pointed spires and the mountain backdrop. Emily was particularly entranced by golden lamp posts in front of which she took so many selfies the boys photobombed her, making her dissolve into giggles.

They rode the trams past massive adverts for Lindt chocolate and painted buildings and found a fantastic tea room, decorated with curly gilt plaster and red velvet furniture, drenched with Christmas decorations, and ordered hot chocolate and selected their ravishing cakes, enjoying every crumb and sip, despite the bill at the end.

They worked the calories off by climbing the tower of the sixteenth-century Grossmünster Church to look out over the city and Lake Zürich, Lily marvelling that a graffiti artist had been allowed to paint what looked like stickmen in one of the chambers halfway up.

Another Christmas market, this time outside the opera house, more bratwurst and waffles. They bought glühwein too but only Carola, Franciszka and Isaac really seemed to enjoy it. Lily thought it tasted like cough medicine. Warwick drank his and Eddie’s, feeling that, at eighteen, he ought to drink alcohol when it was offered, but he felt sick afterwards.

It was while they were enjoying the repast at rustic wooden tables that Lily’s phone rang. She read the caller ID in surprise. ‘It’s Tina,’ she told Isaac. ‘Maybe she needs to know when I’ll be able to work again.’ But when Lily answered, she discovered Lily wasn’t who Tina wanted at all. ‘Is Carola with you?’ Tina asked in her usual unflappable way.

‘I’ll pass you over.’ Wondering, Lily said to Carola, ‘Tina at the pub wants you.’

Carola looked surprised as she took the handset and said hello. She listened, frowning. Then shock rippled across her features. ‘Really?’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Oh!’

‘What’s up?’ Charlotte was jolted out of her conversation with Eddie and Alfie.

Carola gave her daughter a watery smile. ‘Nothing to worry about. I just have to take this call.’ She unwound her legs from the wooden bench, stumbling in her haste to rise, and turned her back, phone clamped to her ear.

Charlotte and Emily looked at each other, faces slack with apprehension.