‘I was with this nineteen-year-old in court this week. Somali prostitute, oldest of six. Her brother’s disabled, her parents are dead. It’s no wonder she fell into the hands of a pimp. She had no options. Trafficked here and locked up in a brothel for nine months before they got raided. Now we’re fighting to let her stay.’ I looked out onto the oval, cobbled courtyard at the back of the building: its steely grandeur was the perfect backdrop to my brother’s lecture. ‘Mum and Dad gave us everything, Rachel. Why do you keep throwing it in their faces?’

Amber flitted across my mind, her calm gaze searching me out. The thought of her was weirdly comforting.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. There was nothing else I could say. He didn’t want to hear the truth, and I was still only groping for it. It would sound like a rambling excuse, pinned to teenage angst I should have long since left behind. Who knew if that really was why I was such a fuck up, anyway? ‘Sometimes it all feels incredibly hard, finding the point of it all. I know you can’t understand that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I do and don’t understand,’ he snapped, before his voice unexpectedly softened. ‘We care about you, Rachel. We just want you to stop this – this craziness.’ He paused again. ‘I was going to say it wasn’t appropriate for you to be Nancy’s godmother. That’s what we’d decided. But now I think it’s exactly what you need. Surely there’s a point to Nancy?’

He gave a dry little chuckle. I was dreading him telling me I was unfit, but the news that I was fit filled me with an equally violent tidal wave of dread. No skulking at the back of the church and quietly slipping away from the drinks.

‘Thank you,’ I said stiffly. Any exchange with my brother somehow seemed to involve a grovelling apology and a tugging of the sisterly forelock. ‘It’s a real honour.’

‘Don’t make me regret it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go back to court. See you next weekend.’

I stood there a few seconds longer, looking down at the ground. A gaggle of pigeons squabbled over a crust of bread, wind ruffling their feathers as their beaks pecked in a desperate frenzy at the ground. Then, before I went back to my desk, I made a call.

‘Lou, it’s me. What are you up to later?’ The words escaped my lips before I could swallow them. ‘I’m feeling Tigger-ish.’

LILY