She walks to the end of the path with Luna, noticing there’s a tent at the end tucked between the far gravestones. It’s shocking that someone is camping in a corner of a graveyard in January. But Maddy has started to see helpless people everywhere. People with slumped shoulders and haunted eyes. Any of them could be Jamie. If he’s homeless, that is. Because is he? For all she knows, he might be living in a mansion, on his way to being a tech billionaire. Isn’t that what he once declared he was going to be?

But somehow, she knows, just knows that that’s wishful thinking. That his dreams never did come true and that it’s up to her to find him and try and put that right.

On a whim she walks over to the tent, wondering how one knocks on a fabric door.

‘Hello,’ she calls. ‘Is there anyone in there?’

She waits outside the tent. There’s no answer. Luna comes over and snuffles at the zip.

There’s some rustling inside the tent. A very sleepy man opens the zip and peers out. His gums are blackened, several teeth missing.

‘What do you want?’ There’s confusion on his gaunt face as he takes in Maddy and Luna.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she says. ‘It’s just … I’m looking for my son.’ As the stumbled words come out, she realises how pathetically posh she sounds. How needy and uninformed.

The man’s weariness comes at her along with an atrocious smell. He’s ill. Really ill. He slumps back down as if he’s been expecting a fight. Now she looks inside the tent, she can see an empty cider bottle and a jumble of clothes and bedding.

‘This is him.’ She takes out a picture of Jamie, but her stomach is curdling with the thought that Jamie might been reduced to this state. She shows it to the man, but he shakes his head. He sways slightly and Maddy realises he’s swooning with hunger.

‘Can I help you at all?’ she asks, but as the man meets her eye, it takes all she has not to look away in revulsion.

‘You got any spare money?’ he asks.

‘Some. A tenner, I think.’ She remembers the cash in her jeans at the same time that she remembers that it might be the last bit of actual money she might be able to get her hands on. She’s liquidated an ISA to pay Manpreet and her living expenses, but it’s not going to last her long. With her and Trent’s joint account still ominously empty, she’ll have no choice but to use her credit cards to get by. She’s always found comfort in having a little safety net of her own savings, but now they’ve gone, it’s scary that she’s going to have to start budgeting and thinking about money in a way she hasn’t had to for years.

He nods and she fumbles, taking the cash out of her jeans, thinking that he obviously needs it more. The man grabs the crisp note. Then he juts out his chin in thanks and she takes it as her cue to leave.