She waits for the usual barrage of mental self-abuse about her inability to stick to her calorie count, but now it’s the last day of the year, she’s excited about starting on her new regime tomorrow. She has a whole stack of resolutions and she’s been writing visualisations. She felt a bit silly writing them down, but she was listening to a podcast about putting your wishes out into the universe and so she’s sent out a request for a whole new her. It’s worth a shot.

It’s been a bit dreary weather-wise – the long days stretching between Christmas and New Year are never her favourite – but now, as she wipes a porthole in the steamed-up kitchen window, she can see that the sun has come out.

She takes the phone out of her apron pocket and texts Jenna to tell her she’s almost ready and that she’s bringing mince pies. She tries to adopt a breezy tone as she writes and re-writes the text as if going for a swim is something she does every day. But a sunset swim on the very last day of the year feels symbolic and grand – two things in her life that have clearly been so lacking she feels rather giddy with excitement.

She bumped into Jenna when she came back from Aldi the other day and agreed to accompany her on a sunset swim today. Jenna is a Wim Hof evangelist and, having looked up The Iceman online, Claire has turned the shower to the cold setting for the past few mornings, although she can only stand such masochistic torture for a few seconds. But the sea? At this time of year? Can she really do it?

But then she thinks of the women she saw playing in the waves. How hard can it really be?

She presses send and puts the phone down, before taking some of the energy balls she made from her new clean-living cookbook Siobhan sent her for Christmas and wrapping them in greaseproof paper before putting them in a Tupperware box. Her phone pings.

Perfect. I’ll call for you.

Claire smiles, feeling vindicated that her baking session will now have a proper purpose. She goes to the airing cupboard by the ironing board, which is stacked with a to-be-ironed pile, and pulls down a towel.

She’s packed everything into her bag and is just making a flask of tea when Pim comes into the kitchen. He’s wearing stained grey jogging bottoms and a hoodie. Why hasn’t he put on the fresh ones from the pile of clean washing she put on his side of the bed earlier?

He waves a piece of paper he’s printed off the computer in her face. She’s about to comment that she can see he’s used the coloured ink mode (something he’s expressly banned the boys from doing) when she sees that, beneath his glasses, he’s frowning heavily.

‘Read it.’ His tone is ominous.

Claire wipes her hands on the apron and takes it. ‘What is it?’