‘Listen, it’s lovely to hear your voice, Neil, but don’t worry about me. I’m surviving. You and Brooks have a great day. Let’s talk soon.’ She wanted him off the phone. Crying pathetically from three thousand miles away on Christmas morning was not a fair thing to do to a dear friend.

Neil said a reluctant goodbye and Connie hurled her phone down onto the duvet, the tears that had threatened while they were talking evaporating in a blast of irritation at her own maudlin self-pity. She forced herself out of bed and into a hot shower.

Washing her hair, rubbing her skin with the ginger and mandarin moisturizer she’d found in the bathroom and dressing in a clean jumper and jeans, she applied a quick smudge of foundation, a smear of lip balm over her dry lips and began to feel more human.

She went downstairs and made herself a treacly cup of coffee with some scary-looking full-strength Panamanian beans she found in the cupboard. With no real idea as to when she had last eaten, she knew she should make something. But she wasn’t hungry, the thought, even of toast, knotting her stomach. She wondered what she should do now, as she sat at the kitchen table in the silence, hands circling her mug as the buzz of caffeine kicked in.

The clock, ticking so slowly it seemed like a fortnight between each tock, drew near to one o’clock. She was apprehensive about Melanie making another pitch to get her over for lunch. But the hour passed: no one knocked.

It was the sun shining in the bright blue winter sky – glimpsed through the window – that finally overrode her lethargy. It would be getting dark in a couple of hours, and then she’d be trapped inside for another long, lonely night with only Monty for company.

Wrapped in her coat and Tessa’s beret – Jared’s hat and gloves returned to the paper bag for delivery to the charity shop on the hill as soon as it opened again – she set off towards Hampstead Heath.

The air was sparkling with frost, the Heath crowded, families out taking advantage of the beautiful day. Connie walked quickly, keen to avoid the glances of people she passed on the wide paths round the ponds. She wanted them to think she was on her way to a gathering of some sort, not a lonely woman trying somehow to fill the day. Not that they were thinking about her at all, she was well aware. But she felt self-conscious, nonetheless. A woman surrounded all her life by friends and family, never giving much thought to what it would be like to be one of those who didn’t have her privileges, suddenly cast adrift. I will never take anything for granted again, she promised herself, as she turned onto the path that would lead her home again.