I’ve never stopped making my children stockings. Even now, if this whole situation was miraculously transformed, Rachel would find her polyester stripy sausage, with its scratched plastic Santa face stuck to the front, leaning tipsily against the end of her bed on Christmas morning, stuffed fat with presents.

I crept out of our bed in the darkness of Christmas morning, my body vibrating with a humiliated anger that had kicked in as soon as my eyes opened. Nick gave an angry grunt at being woken, a trail of drool garlanding his pillow.

‘Happy Christmas,’ I said softly.

‘You’re not still doing this, are you?’ he hissed. ‘No one wants their mum in their bedroom when it’s still dark.’

‘It’s important,’ I said.

‘You realize they could be fucking?’ he said with a grim satisfaction. ‘They’re adults. Hate to break it to you, Lily, but those grandchildren didn’t come down the chimney.’

He knew I hated that kind of coarseness. ‘Locker room talk’ should be kept in the locker room – our marriage certainly survived best that way.

‘I need this,’ I said, teeth gritted. ‘There’s enough missing for me as it is.’

He had the good grace to look sheepish, pulling himself upright and leaning back on the bank of satin throw pillows that I decorated our bed with. His chest was still taut, but the skin looked grey to me, like a plucked chicken. In a way, every day was Christmas for him, always gifted the powerful man’s privilege of wildly overestimating his own attractiveness.

‘Darling, she’s just having a hissy fit,’ he said, reaching a half-hearted hand out towards me. ‘She’s probably in her flat with her phone switched off, bingeing shit on Netflix. I wouldn’t be surprised if she turns up for lunch, all sorry for herself.’

‘She won’t,’ I said. ‘I know she won’t, I can feel it. She could be anywhere. With anyone.’

I hadn’t told him about ambushing Amber, because it had left me feeling like I’d failed. Nick’s confident grin didn’t waver.

‘I’ll drive round and check if you like. She’s not too big for a fireman’s lift.’

My teeth ground almost as far down as my gums. Another privilege he greedily took: letting me do all the parental worrying for both of us. Or was it more than that? I watched him taking a slurp of tepid water from the glass on his bedside table. Was he looking for the perfect alibi for a morning flit?

I’d retrieved the two stuffed stockings from the wardrobe by now, the absence of the third a lightness that felt more like a weight. It weaponized me.