I sat up for a minute, reluctantly breaking the contact with Arthur. Amber held out an aluminium flask, and I took a gulp. It tasted more bitter than I expected, unlike the comfortingly sweet brew I’d had earlier. Tim grinned at me, catching my face scrunching up at the taste, and I smiled back at him, comforted by his easy warmth. I lay back down again, relieved to feel Arthur’s hands wrap themselves back around my head. My focus softened and sharpened all at once.

‘So I go upstairs,’ I said, my voice loud in my ears now. ‘And I’m thinking, she’ll shout at me, but at least we’ll get it over with. And anyway, there was a weird kind of satisfaction in annoying her, and not respecting all her – stuff.’ A sob escaped. ‘I wasn’t a very nice teenager to be honest.’

‘You were doing your best to navigate a deeply disturbed family,’ said Amber, cutting in. ‘We can all see that, even if you can’t see it quite yet.’

The answering chorus of support from the circle was my rocket fuel. I was on a roll now, words tumbling out.

‘I get to the landing, get to their room, and I think she must be watching TV in there. There’s noise. And I don’t know why, but I just open the door.’ Even then, nearly twenty years later, the shock still reverberated through me, time sliced thin. ‘And Dad’s in the bed, and she’s in there, and she’s got this little blue wool dress on, but I can tell she’s just pulled it over her head. I’m thinking, You’ve got no knickers on, have you? She was blushing bright red. And Dad starts covering, saying how he’s got flu and Esther’s brought him Nurofen, but I just ran out of the room and down the road. And…’

My gaze caught Amber’s, the naked fury on her face catching me off guard. Her blue eyes were like chips of ice, her jaw clenched tight as if she was swallowing down something disgusting. At first it frightened me, but then I reframed it, just like she’d taught me to do. Her twisted face was a snapshot of how much she cared for me, how much my pain had become her pain. And that, I believed, was love.