‘Oh, I just came home to eat and sleep. I’m exhausted; honestly, I could sleep for Ireland.’ Liv shrugged. No point telling them that she had beans on toast for her Christmas dinner since she’d hardly the energy to open the fridge door after tidying up the mess Eddie left in his wake.

‘And will Eddie not go back and keep you company?’ her father asked from somewhere beyond the camera.

‘Ah no, Dad, there’s no point. I’m only coming home to sleep. He’s better off down there spending Christmas with his mother.’ It would be a lonely time for Barbara if her only son didn’t show up for the holidays. ‘And anyway, with a bit of luck, I’ll be down in Ballycove in a day or two and then we can have our own, low-key Christmas. How does that sound?’

‘As long as we’re not inviting that awful Barbara Quirke again,’ her father mumbled, but he was too close to the camera for Liv to miss it.

‘So now, we’ll be sending you on pictures of the lambs,’ her mother said loudly and darted a reprimanding glance towards where Liv assumed her father was standing. ‘So you can help us think up names for them, okay?’

‘Lovely.’

Liv shivered when she ended the call and pulled her dressing gown tight about her. The flat was cold, although she’d turned the heat on when she came home from the hospital; Liv had a feeling that it had more to do with the emptiness of the place than with the actual temperature. It had felt like this after Rachel died. An emptiness that she couldn’t sweep or dust or scrub out of the fabric of the place. Of course, she knew then it was coming from deep within her own heart, but now, today, was it just because she felt so lonely knowing that Christmas was going on for her family in Ballycove without her?

She turned the heating up to full blast. She hadn’t put on a real fire here in years, not since Eddie had moved in probably. Funny, but it was the open fireplace that had been the clincher on her and Rachel buying the place at the time. There were other flats in much more modern buildings at a much lower cost, but when they had thought about sitting before the open fire on long lazy weekends, there really hadn’t been much of a choice.