Then another thought occurred to Liv. What about Eddie and Anya? What had changed? Had the gloss gone off their relationship once the cold reality of having to find somewhere to live had set in? Eddie would have surely laid it all out for Anya. They couldn’t stay together in Liv’s flat, so her only option was to move back in with Pete. Had she gone round there while Liv was at work and wheedled and cajoled him into taking her back?

Suddenly, here in the glaring light of the staff kitchen with the hum and clatter of the ward behind her, Liv felt a dark cloud descend on her like she’d never known before. It was the last day of the year, a day when she should have been making a plan for a much better year ahead, and she felt nothing but completely distraught.

She wanted only to curl up into a small foetal ball and… what? Die? ‘God forgive me,’ she said. She’d seen what too many families had to go through when someone came into A&E and had decided that the only way out was the finality of death. She couldn’t do that to the people she loved and anyway, she knew, deep down, this would pass. This had to pass. Even if it felt as if things would never be right with her again, as if she’d somehow missed taking a vital step in some badly signposted direction to her future happiness, she had to keep on going.

But, oh God. She closed her eyes, scrunched them down as tightly as they could go and tried hard to imagine what her sister would say to her. She would tell her everything would be fine, she just had to hang in there. And somehow it felt as if Rachel was very near.

She shook herself out; of course that was utter nonsense. She was completely alone here in this busy, crowded city and maybe more than she’d ever been before, because it felt as if even Pete had left her side.

She checked her watch, rubbed the tears from her eyes. The pain down her right side didn’t seem to make any difference to her anymore. It was time to get back on shift. She needed to wash away this feeling of misery that had engulfed her. She picked up her phone, switched it off for now. No-one would be ringing her and that just added another layer to her misery that she didn’t need reminding about every time someone else’s phone pinged with a message of New Year wishes. At midnight she’d ring her parents and Maya, wish them a happy New Near and try her best to convince them that she was fine.