Is this what they’ve become? she wonders, as she takes the plates to the kitchen: reduced to conversations about future meals and sandwiches? She hears the echoes of Christmases past, the ones full of relatives, the laughter, her brother’s kids and Jamie careening around on new bikes or trikes, the din of new voice-activated toys, George Michael playing in the kitchen, as she and Trent juggled serving up Christmas lunch, whilst getting sloshed. But now, it’s like they’ve turned into her parents.

Things will get back to normal once Trent’s property development business is back on track and the deals start rolling in rather than evaporating into thin air, she tells herself. Who hasn’t had a difficult year? In the general scheme of things, however, she has an enviable roof over her head, designer clothes on her back, embarrassingly expensive highlights in her glossy blonde hair. Really and truly, she doesn’t have very much to complain about.

What she needs is to put her feet up on the sofa, with a large gin, she decides. In days gone-by, Trent would have already been on it, making sure she had a drink. She knows he’d pour her one if she asked, but the fact she has to ask spoils it. Like everything else, it’s best to do it herself.

She opens the kitchen cupboard, annoyed to see that the Sipsmith gin bottle is almost empty. She’s noticed it more now that she’s not drinking so much, but Trent has been hoovering up the booze for most of December. Pre-loading, he says, before the promise of a dry January. She waggles the bottle, holding it up to the light, but she’s going to need more gin than that to relax properly. She walks out into the utility corridor to get another bottle from her huge walk-in larder by the back door.

A tiny flashing red light next to the rarely used home phone catches her eye. That’s odd. Someone has left a message. She quickly scans through the possibilities as to the caller’s identity, but she’s spoken to everyone. Her parents are having lunch in their gazebo with their neighbours in Shropshire, her brothers are all with their families.

How has she missed a call on the home phone? Or Trent, for that matter? He’s been here all day.

She picks up the phone and presses the message button. She doesn’t dare to wish it, but who else would call on Christmas Day?

Apart from him?

Apart from Jamie …

‘Mum,’ she hears, and she lets out a yelp. It is Jamie. Her eyes fill with tears as she waits, listening to him breathing, but he doesn’t say anything else. The silence seems to stretch with all the words he can’t say. She knows what Trent would want them to be: that Jamie’s sorry, that he regrets their terrible row, that he’s stopped taking drugs and has pulled himself together.

But Maddy can’t help hearing other words in the silence: That he’s in trouble; that he needs her; that it’s Christmas and he’s homesick and weary; that he doesn’t know how to come back to her.