‘Lou, I—’ Lou held up her hand in a gesture so forceful and unexpected I immediately stopped.

‘Danny, please just let me get this out. I’m in grave danger of stopping and telling you it was all a big unfunny joke, so you’ve got to let me, OK?’

I put both hands up in surrender and zipped it.

It should have been my worst nightmare – and in the very recent past it would have been – but as I listened to my sister, I felt unusually composed. I imagined myself tucked up in my shed bed with a pile of letters on my lap, and the weight of strangers’ words held me steady as she spoke.

‘Things had been getting worse for a couple of weeks, longer probably. I just couldn’t seem to snap myself out of it. I was doing everything wrong, I couldn’t talk to Wolfie, and I felt like shit twenty-four hours a day. I mean literally all the time, from the moment I opened my eyes to the moment I closed them. I tried so hard to stop things from spiralling like—’ She was crying now. ‘Like they do. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t.’ She brushed her face roughly. ‘And then things went pear-shaped with another client I’d rehoused, who ended up reoffending within a week. It turned out I’d placed him in a room in a flat two doors up from a betting shop. He had addiction issues and he’d only just finished a two-year stretch for holding up a Ladbrokes, Danny – that’s bloody inexcusable.’

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault some guy on licence decided to veer left at his fork in the road, but I could see she wasn’t looking for excuses. And anyhow, maybe it was her fault. That’s quite some temptation.

‘I knew it was odds on I was going to get suspended.’ She shot me a quick look and I got it just in time. This wasn’t the time for a joke, even though that one was a bloody gift. ‘I got to work that morning and got sent home straight away while they made a decision. Jackie – my boss – has been so good to me, but I knew my luck had to run out sometime. When I got back to the flat, Wolfie was at school, so it was just me, sitting on my own staring at the walls with my life crumbling around me in slow motion.’ She made to clear her throat, and it turned into a small, hollow cough.

‘And then, out of the blue, I started thinking about Mum and the car accident and . . .’ I savoured the echo of the cough and tried to keep my head. ‘I just couldn’t stop.’

I stood up on the pretence of straightening the rake I’d left leaning against the back of the house, but really I just needed to move so I didn’t fall off the edge of the world. How. Did. I. Miss. This? As I passed Lou, I stopped and touched her shoulder gently. You’re OK. It’s OK, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t trust my voice, and anyway, Lou was still talking like she’d forgotten I was even there.