For example: Would Irene Copeland rather know her son was a stalker who was killed unwillingly? Or is it better to think he was just a lonely man who ultimately took his own life? And here was another one: Adebayo’s family had had fifteen years to heal … if you ever really did after such a sudden and violent death of a loved one. Would knowing the truth help, or merely rip open wounds in places where scars had formed?

Quite the conundrums, these.

They were the thoughts that went round and round my head, often in the middle of the night while Anya gently snored beside me. She had a stuffy nose all the way through the pregnancy and the snoring was something new but kind of endearing all the same.

Then there was the flowers thing.

The Scandi Netflix drama we’d liked in the autumn returned for its second series. We settled in to watch it that evening, and the programme started with a recap of the last series.

The shock of the finale had been that the killer playing cat and mouse with the police detective had turned out to be one of her own team. The final episode had been from the killer’s point of view, and we’d seen them buying a large bouquet of flowers, which they then left to die before scattering over the body of the second victim.

Something sparked in my mind and I found myself glancing at Anya, only to find she was staring at me with the oddest expression, her eyes bright. She’d said that Copeland sent her dead roses. She looked away, wordlessly. Maybe this was bringing back painful memories.

A horrible thought thumped into my brain from nowhere.

Is that where you got the idea about the flowers?

No. It was a coincidence. This sort of thing was always happening in crime dramas, for Christ’s sake. Copeland probably got the idea from some equivalent back in 2003.

Instantly deeply ashamed, I reached over and rested my hand on Anya’s leg. She pressed her foot into my thigh with a satisfied little smile like a cat.

On Christmas Day, we exchanged our own gifts in the morning: a shirt, the Bob Woodward book about Trump I’d asked for and fancy noise-cancelling headphones for me, and for her, a silver bracelet she’d admired in a craft shop in Lathebridge, a cashmere scarf and some perfume. We were due over at Patrick and Julia’s at one pm.

As we ate thick slices of panettone and drank tea, we talked about how strange it would be for a brand-new human to share Christmas with us next year.