She crashes back to the present.

‘Dom? New Year? Plans?’

‘Oh, nothing. I’ll probably go to bed early.’

Emma’s getting ready for a neighbourhood street party and Dominica can tell she’s excited.

Dominica’s never been one to celebrate New Year. Before she met Chris, she was often travelling over Christmas. Then, in recent years, Chris was often on call. The paramedics were always in short supply, and they needed someone with his experience. So this particular date on the calendar shouldn’t be a thing. Except that it is. Because what will it be like when the clocks turn at midnight and she faces a new, virgin year without Chris? It feels like an awful milestone.

‘I just wish …’ she begins, but she stalls. She’s full of wishes that feel very akin to regrets.

‘I wish he was here too,’ Emma says and her voice cracks.

There’s a moment laden with silent emotion. Dominica imagines Emma sitting on the stairs of her North London terrace house fighting back the tears. It’s an awful thing, but Emma’s pain makes her feel less lonely. Chris had been her big brother, her sponsor, and her parents wrapped into one and whilst Emma has a lovely husband, Jack, and her kids, Dominica knows there’s a huge Chris-shaped hole in her life too.

‘I wish I could give you a cwych. I can’t bear it that you’re on your own,’ Emma says.

The word has a sweet sting to it: Chris’s Welsh word for a cuddle, although his were more like all-consuming bear hugs. ‘Me too.’

‘It was such a weird Christmas. Nobody brought anything annoying or impractically large.’

‘You remember the voice-activated fish?’ Dominica can’t stop a smile forming at the memory of the present Chris had insisted on buying Emma years ago, back in the days when they’d thought his younger sister was going to be single forever and they’d scooped her up from her digs. Chris had put the fake fish on its board on the wall and it had frightened the life out of Emma the first time it had gone off, flick-flacking with its stupid song.

‘And when he brought that musical floor keyboard,’ Emma reminds her of the plastic contraption that had filled the entire lounge. ‘And we got drunk and tried to do the scene in Big when they play “Chopsticks”.’

Dominica laughs. ‘And you got a groin strain.’

The memories help and they chat until Dominica says she has to go. She’s joining Helga and Tor for a sunset swim.

‘It’s so good you’ve got them,’ Emma says. ‘Your Sea-Gals.’

Dominica agrees. If it weren’t for them, she doubts she’d have got it together to leave the house at all.

‘Next time you come up to town,’ Emma says, ‘maybe we could swim together in the pond in Hampstead? In the spring. It’ll give us both something to look forward to? Bring them if you like?’

Spring seems a long way off, Dominica thinks. She can’t seem to visualise it. She can’t seem to get a grip on the future when the past looms so large.