The chill sunk even deeper into my bones: Christmas had been an elaborate trap, and I’d walked straight into it. My fury about the drugs spurted up again – my suspicion now was that the bitter tea she gave only me before my turn was laced with something – but I pulled back before the accusation could spill out of me. If I thought about how large and sprawling Amber’s trap really was – all of us running down invisible tunnels she’d spent years crafting – I wasn’t sure I’d be able to reach the end of the story I so desperately needed to dig out.

‘Esther’s still young,’ I said. ‘She’s still got time to make a good life for herself. Have a family.’

It’s so ridiculous the way we try to make sense of an unfair world by creating happy endings for even the bleakest of stories. By now, I of all people knew it was fantasy to suggest we can just magic our wounds away, and Amber’s look of contempt reminded me of that fact.

‘Your family broke her. She can’t hold down a job, she can’t hold down a relationship. She’s still obsessed with your dad, even if she lies about it. By the time she found out I was her mum, it was too late…’ For the first time, her voice broke. ‘It was too late for me to heal her.’

Was that what she was doing? Trying to create her own happy ending by finding surrogate daughters – me, Hannah, countless others – and sticking them back together with the glue she hadn’t had the chance to use on Esther? In some cases, perhaps, but in mine the story was far, far darker.

I forced myself to ask the inevitable question. ‘Are they still… My dad and her…?’

Amber shrugged. ‘She says not. She says she’s just back there for the money. But she’s never let him go, however much I try to tell her it’s a delusion. He’s her lost youth – she can’t face up to the fact she’s never getting those years back.’

Acid lurched up my throat again. Hearing that, it was hard to know if it was more tragic if she was still his mistress or if she wasn’t.

‘And on top of that, your mum left herself in a nasty fix,’ Amber said, that grim, mirthless smile back on her face. ‘She said she’d take care of her if she did what she asked. And she can’t have your dad finding out what she persuaded Esther to do – he’d know what a monster she is. So Esther reappears when she’s desperate.’ Her head shook with disgust. ‘Your dad’s too weak to say no to her and your mum can’t say a word.’