‘No, Marco, thank you,’ she said. Everyone in the circle looked deeply moved. I slid across the floor towards the box of tissues: Hannah was crying in earnest, scrubbing at her cheeks with her sleeve. I landed almost at Amber’s feet. She looked down at me, eyes searching me, and just for a second, I couldn’t read her face.

‘Toxic Mummy’s Daughter,’ she said. ‘Are you volunteering?’

‘Um…’

She laughed.

‘Either way, I think the universe just volunteered you.’ She clapped her hands authoritatively. ‘We’ll take a break now, discharge some of that beautiful energy. Then it’s back here for Toxic Mummy’s Daughter’s liberation!’

Everyone cheered and grinned, and I tried to return their enthusiasm. I wanted this, I really did, but a worm of fear was crawling around my stomach, eating me from the inside. Amber would keep me safe, though, surely?

LILY

‘Where did you even find Amber anyway, Mum?’

Josh’s pomposity was unbearable. Once he’d realized he couldn’t keep pretending the situation with Rachel was no more than a minor festive blip, he’d decided it was time to ‘take control’. He was pink in the face, demanding answers, his face not unlike the one that used to look up at me as he strained on the potty. He’d insisted on ringing Rachel himself, personally outraged by the way her phone went straight to voicemail, just as it had for the past forty-eight hours for the rest of us. ‘Rachel, you need to call home right now,’ he’d snarled. ‘Where the fuck are you?’

It was funny how easily my pride in my son – in his confident masculinity, the way he’d cut a swathe through the legal profession without breaking a sweat – had curdled into something close to repulsion. Like his father, he was so ill-equipped to find a path when life didn’t cleave to his will. I’d made both of their lives far too easy for them – now we were all paying the price. Nick had driven to Rachel’s flat to ‘double check’, even though we all knew perfectly well she wasn’t there.

Sophie was still snivelling into a Kleenex, and I absently rubbed her broad back.

‘Stop shouting at people, Josh!’ she said. ‘It’s not helping. She needs us to love her. How can you still not understand that?’

I was grateful for the distraction. I was tracing back in my mind how I actually had found Amber. It was as if her name bubbled up from the ether, passed from mother to mother as the last resort. It was one of the old school mums, Deborah Madden, who’d ultimately given it to me.

Josh snorted.

‘Tough love, not fucking handouts and aromatherapy. Amber must have a fucking website; she’s a therapist.’