‘Remember, you don’t have to look if you don’t want to,’ commanded Hannah from the front, but I could only ignore the relentless alerts for so long. Besides, I wanted to know if Arthur had missed me enough to message me. Nothing from him of course, just endless messages from my family. I tried to concentrate on the communication from Sophie, but the chain of texts from Mum was too awful to swerve.

They started out sweet – We miss you, please come home xx type vibes, but then the anger started to build. We KNOW you’re with Amber. We need you to come back. This cannot continue, read one. I felt sick to my stomach – had Sophie really betrayed me like this? I yanked off her scarf, which was still wound around my neck like it had been all of Christmas, and carried on reading. How can you let me worry about you like this? If you were a mother you would never do this to me. On and on they went, blaming and angry, full of poison. There were multiple messages from Sophie too – Mum had forced it out of her, she claimed, but please could I ring home? I read the final text from Mum, even though I knew it would fell me. Your relationship with Amber is over, it said. Nothing more.

‘Sorry, guys,’ I said, the hand that was holding the phone to my ear shaking uncontrollably. ‘I have to call my sister.’

She answered on the second ring.

‘How could you tell her?’ I demanded.

‘Rachel I’m sorry, but… we’ve all been so worried. I couldn’t keep lying to her. You know what she’s like.’

‘So you lied to me instead? I trusted you!’

‘Rachel,’ she said, voice sharper than I could ever remember it. ‘We’ve all had a shitty Christmas because of this. I’m sorry I told her, but if you’d been honest with them in the first place, it wouldn’t all be such a mess.’

‘This isn’t a fucking Christmas film, Sophie. It’s not like if I’d been honest, she’d have waved me off with a box of crackers. It’s Mum. She’s a bitch.’

I’d surprised myself with my own venom. I guess I was practising radical honesty, just like Amber counselled. I could tell Sophie – my sweet, soft little sister – was too shocked to reply right away.

‘A bitch who’s been bankrolling you while you have some kind of self-inflicted breakdown?’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t know – why don’t you try thinking about the way you’ve been treating all of us, rather than dishing it out?’

‘So you’re taking her side now?’ I said.

‘You’re the one who’s turned it into a competition,’ Sophie snapped.