A young lad she hasn’t seen before nods at her as he puts his empty food box in the bag.

‘You all right?’ she asks. ‘You got somewhere to go for the lockdown?’

Despite the PM, Boris, ‘giving’ everyone Christmas, the government has announced another lockdown. It’s awful for people who are homeless.

The young guy nods. He’s probably barely twenty, judging from his patchy beard, but his face is ravaged by familiar signs of despair, his hands shaking – possibly from withdrawal. Tor sees that all the time and her heart goes out to him. She knows how easy and alluring the drugs trap is – how young men like him are sitting targets for the scumbags who get the vulnerable hooked. She knows how impossible it is to escape. He shuffles back towards the street, and she wants to call after him and to say something encouraging, but the moment passes, and she feels the usual sinking feeling of not having done enough.

She knows these people can find shelter, although the rough sleepers like Vic baulk at what’s on offer. But, even with the best will in the world, the hostels and temporary accommodation hardly constitute a home, especially at Christmas. She feels deeply for these poor people who can’t put down any roots. It’s so exhausting having to move on all the time.

She smiles across at Arek now, who starts to dismantle the awning. He was in the army in Poland and is a wall of muscle. She doesn’t know what she’d do without his strong arms. He usually works on a building site but having been helped by the charity when he first came to Brighton and got clean, he now helps other people. He’s a genuinely good guy.

‘I have to go soon. Give my wife a break. The baby was up all night,’ he says. ‘What are you up to, Tor?’

‘Warming up. I’m freezing from my swim earlier. Then it’s the family Zoom.’

Tor is rather dreading the forced family chat and how it will undoubtedly make things awkward with Lotte. She promised Lotte ages ago that she’ll ‘out’ them to her family, as Lotte has to her parents in Amsterdam, but Lotte’s are a liberal bunch and the opposite of her parents in Tunbridge Wells. But as Tor contemplates dropping the ‘actually I’m gay’ bomb into the Christmas Zoom, she already knows she’ll chicken out.

Her parents still can’t understand the whole thing with Mike. Her ex’s parents are good friends of theirs and Tor knows that they used to plot and gossip about Tor and Mike’s imagined nuptials and shared grandchildren. The disappointment of Tor calling off their ten-year relationship is still raw – even now, all these years on. She regrets carrying on the doomed relationship for so long and for not coming clean. Of course she’d known all along she was gay – and for a long while suspected that Mike secretly might be too. Their relationship was hardly sexually charged. But then Tor had started to fool around in secret and she’d plucked up the courage to leave, grabbing an opportunity to work for a charity in Africa. She’d stayed in Burkina Faso for six years. When she’d moved back to the UK, she’d headed straight for Brighton and her single life had been a whole load of much-needed fun. But then she’d moved into their shared house and Lotte had dazzled her.