I’m sat hunched on the bottom stair chatting on my mum and dad’s landline. We’ve had this thing, ever since we stopped living with our parents in our early twenties, that whenever we both happened to be back home, we would always call each other on the landline, for old times’ sake.

‘I’m at me niece’s birthday party in the morning,’ she goes on, ‘and I’m taking me grandad to the botanical gardens on Sunday. Babes, don’t make me spend a Saturday wearing the bowling alley equivalent of ski gear when I’ve brought Diane Von Furstenberg with me.’

‘But we can get a hot chocolate with whipped cream and little marshmallows.’

I’m hit by that image of Florrie on Facebook.

Bet that was taken in a fancy Alpine chalet. Was Jack with her? Did he take the photo?

Stop!

‘Or hot wine?’ I suggest. ‘What do they call it; vin chaud?’

‘It’s not Christmas. It’s August, for fuck’s sake.’

‘We can go to Nando’s afterwards.’

‘Have you forgotten who the fuck I am?’

She wants to go to some posh place in town and have a one-to-one dinner with me where I’ll be forced to eat tiny crumbs of food that cost a bomb. She’ll order wine that pairs with the dishes perfectly, too. But I don’t want a one-to-one with her. I don’t need a therapy session or to be asked how I’m feeling about Jack. I still haven’t caught up with her since the whole Thailand and Vietnam fiasco and it’s not something I want to indulge in now. You see, Beth will one hundred per cent want to indulge. I’d rather not think about how wrong it went – I want to focus on what can go right. If I can get on a pair of skis, it would make Jack so proud. Who knows, maybe I’ll want to book a second lesson. Or a holiday.

‘Beth?’ I ask. ‘Please. I need this.’

She unleashes a long, deep-throated sigh. ‘Fine.’

Neither of us has a car though. Beth came up to Liverpool on the train and I sold mine when I moved in with Jack – there’s nowhere to park it at the flat and I don’t need a car in London anyway.

‘We’ll Uber,’ Beth says when she arrives at my mum and dad’s house.

‘Lalalalala!’ my dad sings, his fingers in his ears.

I lean close to her and mumble, ‘Don’t mention the U word. Touchy subject.’

My dad’s about to start a shift, otherwise he’d take us willingly. My mum offers to give us a lift instead, which is a small miracle. She can’t stand driving; even gets a lift to work from Carol.