‘Addams Family Christmas?’ Gavin said, turning his ruddy face around to grin at me. Suddenly I didn’t want him to leave me here. Surely he had a couple of beloved brothers he could describe to me for an hour or two?

‘It is a bit,’ I agreed.

As the cab crunched to a halt, the door was flung open and I saw Amber framed perfectly in an oblong of light. It was almost like a snatched paparazzi shot – her beautiful face lit up by her wide lipsticked smile, her lithe body sculpted and kissed by a long jersey dress in a deep red. Gavin didn’t even attempt to hide his gawping.

‘Rachel!’ she cried. ‘Here you are!’

Gavin busied himself pulling my case from the boot as Amber enveloped me in a tight hug. Her perfume was so familiar to me by then: it seeped into my nostrils, and I felt my whole nervous system start to loosen and relax. It was the kind of subtle change in emotional temperature I’d never have been able to detect before she came into my life: I could have stayed there forever.

‘Have a lovely Christmas, ladies,’ said Gavin, heading back around the car to the driver’s seat. He gave a mischievous smirk as he climbed in. ‘And may I say, you don’t look old enough to be her mum.’

I flushed scarlet with shame, but Amber didn’t skip a beat.

‘Why, thank you,’ she said playfully.

As Gavin drove off, I tried to cover my tracks.

‘I don’t know where he got that idea from,’ I said, grabbing the handle of my case, hiding my flushed cheeks behind a curtain of hair.

‘I’m flattered!’ said Amber, peeling my fingers off and gripping it herself. ‘And please, let me; you’re a guest.’

‘Thanks so much for inviting me,’ I said gratefully, point-blank refusing to engage with the large bank transfer that was a condition of said invitation.

‘Thanks so much for trusting me with your Christmas,’ she said, as if I’d had a glittering selection of options – St Barts put on ice in favour of rural Devon. ‘I’m honoured, I really am. Come and meet the rest of the gang.’

The gang. I jacked a smile across my face, even though I was feeling an odd sort of jealousy. Amber was mine, wasn’t she? Or at least more mine than this ‘gang’ she was about to reveal. I tentatively followed her into the house, guilty about the way the wheels of my case scraped through the gravel as she awkwardly dragged it for me.