‘Thank you,’ I said, taking it from her. ‘What are you going to write in it?’

‘Nothing,’ she laughed. ‘I didn’t mean I was going to write it to you, I meant I had saved it for you to send.’

‘Oh,’ I said, looking at it again. ‘I see.’

‘You will send it, won’t you?’ She frowned. ‘To your parents.’

‘Oh Dolly,’ I said, feeling even more confused as Rose’s talk of family mingled with Beamish’s insistence that I shouldn’t waste time and Jonathan’s not surprisingly negative reaction to the idea. ‘I don’t know. I still haven’t made up my mind.’

‘It’ll be too late soon,’ she said, wagging a finger. ‘And then you’ll be wishing you had.’

Would I?

‘Look,’ she said, pushing a pad of Basildon Bond notepaper across the table, ‘why don’t you write them a letter?’

‘What?’ I gasped, aghast. ‘I don’t think I’d even know what to put in a card, what makes you think I could write a whole letter?’

‘I bet, if you put your mind to it, you could come up with a hundred and one things that you would like to say to your mum and dad.’

‘Not quite a hundred and one,’ I admitted once I had given it some thought, ‘but perhaps a couple of dozen.’

‘So, write it all down,’ she said, handing me a pen. ‘You don’t have to send it. I bet that just writing it will make you feel better, get it clearer in your head and by the time you’ve finished you’ll know whether or not posting the card will be the right thing to do.’

I wasn’t sure that what she was suggesting made much sense, but once I had got over the first few sentences the words began to flow and before I knew it the cramp in my hand matched my legs and I had filled almost four sheets of paper.

‘There now,’ said Dolly as I sat back and rubbed my hand. ‘Cathartic, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ I shrugged.

It was too early to tell. My eyes flicked over the pages again. I hadn’t planned to hark back to old hurts but I knew that if we were going to end up making amends before I moved, then it was important to bring everything out into the open.

‘Did you write about, David?’ Dolly asked.

‘Yes,’ I said huskily, ‘and the baby.’

Dolly nodded.

‘Thank you for helping me through all of that, Dolly,’ I whispered, remembering how she had insisted that I kept the channels of communication with my parents open after my world had been blown apart and I had moved into the hotel.

‘I only did what any friend would,’ she said gently.