Marianne turned toward the kitchen. “Did you hear this, Phillip? Joanna isn’t coming for lunch. So it’s just you and me. No children this year. No children! On Christmas Day.” She turned off the hallway, stumbling slightly as she disappeared from sight into the lounge. Jo would have bet her life that the champagne glass her mother was sipping from had been given a good fortification from the vodka bottle.

In the kitchen, her father was intent on a huge half-cooked bird, peering through steamed-up glasses, doing something with juices. “What a shame you can’t join us. We’ll have so much left over. Plenty for four, and now only the two of us. Oh well. Did something come up?”

The turkey was wedged into the biggest oven tray her parents owned. Plenty for a hundred and four, more like.

“Sorry Dad. I know you’ve made a real effort. What time did you have to wake up to get this beast in the oven?”

“Oh, not too early. Sixish. I’d have been up anyway,” he said, waving away her apologies. “What’s happened with Amy? You haven’t broken up, have you? I liked her.”

Dad actually had liked Amy, and Amy adored Phillip. They’d bonded over a game of sevens and a mutual love of true crime podcasts. Joanna felt sad all over again that the two of them wouldn’t get to hang out again. Then she felt relieved all over again that she wouldn’t have to force Amy to endure any more visits with her mother.

“It’s fine, Dad. We’re spending some time apart. You know what I’m like. Hard to take, sometimes. I don’t blame her.”

“You’re lovely, Joanna. Just a little bit … independent, perhaps. For a girl like Amy. She’s a bit of a homebody, maybe.”

“You don’t have to say that, Daddy. I screwed it up, that’s the truth. She deserves better.”

“No, no, I don’t believe that. She was a darling, but not right for you. You need someone a bit more outdoorsy.”

Joanna filled the kettle and set it to boil.

“Maybe.”

“It must be a big case for you to go in today, right? Tell me about it?”

“Oof, it’s a bit messy. Do you really want to know?”

“Of course.”

She spooned coffee into mugs, added milk and boiling water. There was no need to ask what her dad was drinking because it was always the same. Instant coffee, black, a mug of it on the go constantly until twelve noon. Then, tea with milk until bedtime. Never alcohol. That was Marianne’s department.

“We found a man in a bit of a bad way. He’d been attacked. We weren’t altogether sure he was going to make it, actually, but then he woke up.”

“Oh, that’s good, right?”