I reach into the back and snake my hand between boxes and bags until my fingers close around the soft edge of a Christmas blanket that Chelsea bought me last year. I pull it out inch by inch as the bag holds onto it tightly in the squashed space. I drape it over myself and wrap it around my face and breathe into it, trying to warm up my cold nose. I’m still unsure of what to say to Chelsea, so I let my phone charge for a bit and reach over to put the radio on instead. It’s still tuned to my favourite Christmas station, and the car is immediately filled with Mariah Carey singing ‘Miss You Most At Christmas Time’. I wish I’d stuck to my playlist. The songs on there are safe. They won’t remind me of my parents and how much I miss them.

I swallow hard. I should turn it off, but I sit and listen to it instead. It’s a song I’ve successfully avoided since the first time I heard it after they died and ended up having a breakdown in the middle of Debenhams while Christmas shopping in my lunch hour.

As if the universe knows this, Mariah is immediately followed by ‘Something About December’ by Christina Perri, a song about childhood Christmases and memories feeling closer in December, and I don’t even realise I’m crying until tears drip onto the blanket.

God, what am I doing here? How can I have made such an awful mistake?

I can feel panic creeping up my chest. I have nothing left and nowhere else to go. I look up at the dark house in front of me and the sight of its crumbling bricks and missing roof makes me cry harder. How can I have been so positive yesterday? Driving along sunny motorways, singing along to ‘Carol of the Bells’, glad no one could hear me because I haven’t got a clue what the words actually are, to this – sitting outside what was supposed to be my dream home, sobbing because Elvis is on now. This probably wasn’t what Elvis had in mind when he sang ‘Blue Christmas’.

My phone beeps again.

LEAH! Will you answer a flipping text, please? I’m starting to get so worried that I broke out the capital letters. Send me a picture of the place or something! Is the dwelling better than we expected?