‘We can’t allow that, Miss Caulfield,’ the detective says in a stern voice. ‘If she’s under sixteen …’

‘Oh, come on! We have to try something,’ Amber says. She’s deteriorating before our eyes, she wants to add.

‘We need to have faith in the people treating her,’ the detective says. ‘Look, I have to go. But rest assured we’re doing all we can. Have a good Christmas if I don’t speak to you before.’

‘Yeah,’ Amber says absent-mindedly. She stares at the phone after she puts it down then she sinks back into her sofa. She couldn’t do anything for her daughter … and now she can do nothing for this girl. She stares at her injured hand.

‘I’m useless,’ she whispers.

Later that evening, Amber goes to her mother and aunt’s for dinner. They live together now in the townhouse they’d inherited from their parents, the same house Amber had grown up in. It has a vast garden leading out onto some fields. Her aunt Viv had tried to continue to live in the cottage she’d shared with her husband but there were so many problems with it that it eventually got too much for her. So Rita had invited her sister to move in. It was half hers, after all, as was the cottage. Amber liked knowing they were together.

As Rita cooks, Amber paces up and down, biting the nails of her good hand.

‘Any more of that and you’ll be drilling a hole in your mum’s carpet,’ Viv says.

Amber looks up to see her mum and aunt watching her with concerned looks on their faces. ‘Fine, I’ll sit down,’ Amber says. She sits on the sofa and starts jiggling her leg. ‘I can’t just leave Lumin in there. You should see her. Every time I go visit her, she seems to just fold into herself.’

‘She’s in the best place, love,’ Viv says, leaning over to stroke Amber’s arm.

‘Is she?’ Amber asks. ‘She’s just having her mind poked and prodded, it must be so stressful. It is so stressful, I can see it.’

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Rita says gently as she stirs a pot. ‘This is not your battle to fight.’

‘Why isn’t it?’ Amber says sharply. ‘What the bloody hell else have I got to fight for?’

The two older women look at each other in surprise.

‘Jasper’s right,’ Amber continues. ‘I’ve been so dormant these past few years. Just living one day to the next, battling memories, trying to pretend like I’m happy this is how my life has turned out. I detach myself from everything, from caring and wanting and needing, because it reminds me how it felt to care and want and need my darling Katy.’

Amber starts sobbing and her mum and aunt gather around her.

‘Oh, darling!’ Rita says. ‘What’s brought all this on?’