My dad does a little drum roll on the table with his hands. ‘Who wants another bevvie?’

‘In The Pheasant?’ my nan asks, as if ‘pheasant’ is a swear word.

‘Can we just go home?’ I plead.

Problem is, I don’t even know where home is any more.

25

Beth’s up north this weekend and it’s coincided with something I believe she will be able to help me with. Other than Jack, I can think of no better person. In fact, she’ll be better.

It’s to do with the small matter of learning how to ski.

I know, I know, if there was one decent thing to come out of Jack’s death, it was my lucky escape from attending the lesson he’d booked as a surprise. Let’s face it; it was more of a bloody shock. I’d have been more comfortable with a bungee jump. So there’s no rhyme or reason as to why I’m going to the lesson he booked, other than because, well, Jack booked it. It feels right to go.

Or, more specifically, it feels wrong not to go.

You see, earlier in the week, I went to Matalan with my mum. She was tricking me into buying some new clothes, since I’d shown up in Liverpool with a wardrobe suitable for trekking around Southeast Asia. I’ve had to forfeit my personal style just to stop her going on.

‘I get in from work, Chloe, and you’re watching that Jessica Sarah Parker again,’ she’d said, through tight lips like an amateur ventriloquist, flicking through the rails of multicoloured plain t-shirts.

‘Sarah Jess—’

‘And you’re never dressed. It’s gone five o’clock. And you’re never, ever dressed.’

‘So stop barging into me room.’

‘You should stick to plain old-fashioned sleeping in your room. Oh! And that stuff you were doing in the garden. Don’t. Save that for your room, too.’

‘You mean yoga?’ I’d motivated myself twice to do a twenty-minute YouTube workout.

‘It looks a bit voodoo-witchcraft. Imagine what next door’ll be making of that. Now, this is lovely. It’ll show off your legs. You’ve always had fabulous legs.’

She hands me a little black dress with long lace sleeves.

‘I can’t imagine one place I’d ever go to and wear this,’ I’d told her.

‘You’re impossible, love.’

And thus went my new norm.

So at the Matalan checkout, when I received an email reminding me of my forthcoming ski lesson, my reaction was not how I’d predicted. I suddenly had something to do this Saturday that didn’t involve my mum and Carol, or our Kit’s wedding, or watching my old DVDs braless. It was something planned by Jack, for me. Going keeps us alive.

‘This is only going to work if you can ski,’ Jack had said to me on our third date. February.