I can barely remember the details of Hannah’s story, only my sense of shame that she – and the others according to her garbled account – had all managed such ecstatic rebirths whilst mine had felt like something closer to an exorcism. As her words washed over me, I had a visceral image of my siblings, of Sophie most of all, ringed around the kitchen table with our parents, wine glasses brimming and paper hats wonky and crumpled, Christmas gently seeping away. Would it always be me who prowled the edges of any group, pitiful and difficult?

How easily I tortured myself back then; it’s not surprising that I’d conjured up a cell when I’d been invited to let my imagination run riot. It would take a long time to set myself free.

LILY

Two hours elapsed before Nick finally came back through the door. We were trying to vaguely approximate Christmas by then – I was stirring gravy and drinking more white wine than was strictly advisable, all the time being sickly sweet to the children that I still had some modicum of control over to try to redeem myself for my earlier behaviour. Was this what it was like for Rachel? I thought, tipping another generous measure into my glass, hidden behind the door of the fridge that was so big it wouldn’t have been out of place in a morgue. I giggled to myself, unsure if it was funny or morbid, then emerged with a respectable inch left in the bottom. It turned out taking the edge off wasn’t such a bad option.

‘Where were you?’ I said as Nick stepped into the kitchen in his excessively youthful yellow puffer jacket, grim-faced. Lucky for him, my blunted edges were preventing me from imagining any lurid crimes he’d committed, the kind that would require silent punishment. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

‘She’s not there,’ he said.

‘I think we’ve already established that, haven’t we?’ I said, looking at Sophie, who had been nervously circling me all afternoon, finding jobs to do. Currently she was scoring a mound of sprouts like it was an Olympic sport. Josh had lost interest and retreated into his own nuclear family, who were gathered around the TV, watching ear-shatteringly loud American cartoons. At the sound of his father’s voice, he strode back through.

‘Yeah, I got that,’ Nick said tersely. I’d sent him an update after Sophie’s confession, but I hadn’t told him how low a blow I’d struck. It wasn’t as if I was without shame: I was aware of my own bad behaviour, not the psychopathic monster that I’ve been made out to be by some parties. ‘So I looked around the flat to see if I could find an address for where that silly cow’s taken her…’