She pours a large glass of white wine and reminds herself that Trent is probably spending tonight with Helen and bile rises in her stomach. This flick-flacking of emotion is like being constantly seasick and she wonders when it’s going to stop. She longs for peace.

To distract herself, she trawls through her phone, seeing that Elise, one of Jamie’s former best friends, has just got engaged. Right at the stroke of New Year – in Hong Kong.

Maddy already knows from her posts that Elise is living in a fabulous apartment. She posted about being stuck when Corona first struck, but now she’s out and about and seeing her smiling face in a restaurant, the tables crowded with cocktail glasses, balloons and streamers, Maddy is struck by how grown up she looks … how together. So different to the scrawny tomboy of a girl who left with Jamie for their year off after school.

She worried at the time that Elise and Jamie might get it together romantically in Thailand, although Trent was more of the view that Jamie might come home with a Thai bride. Not that there was anything wrong with Elise, but Maddy secretly had an altogether different scenario for her golden boy. With his A levels in the bag and three unconditional offers from his university choices, including the coveted place at Oxford, she knew that the right girl would be waiting for him once he followed his path and she told him as much. All he needed to do was to stay safe and have fun.

When she drove them to the airport, she was confident that, with enough money in his pocket and with sensible Elise by his side, Jamie would have the time of his life.

She’ll never know what really happened that night in Thailand at the full moon party. She only knows from Elise that Jamie had got in with some bad boys at one of the hostels and gone on an all-night bender, followed by another. He always was competitive and was absolutely at his worst at that age.

Maddy will always remember the tearful call Elise made at three in the morning, telling her that Jamie was in serious trouble and that she didn’t know what to do.

Maddy flew out to Thailand herself the next day and, after a fraught eighteen-hour dash, found Jamie cowering in a hospital bed. She was horrified at the sight of him, tanned, yet gaunt, his eyes wild as he tugged the sheet up around him, his feet up, as if there was a monster at the end of the bed. He hardly recognised her.

She’ll never know what cracked his brain, but it must have been some kind of bad acid trip. The Thai doctors didn’t know or seem to care. Perhaps they’d seen it all before. The police were equally unhelpful.

It’s still a blur – that horrible week in Thailand and the dreadful trip home. She thought Jamie would snap out of his paranoia once he came down, but he didn’t and, soon, she and Trent were at their wits end. She’d never had to deal with any kind of mental health issue before and when their GP suggested a residential stay in a psychiatric hospital after evaluating Jamie, they reluctantly agreed.