If I could’ve stayed there over Christmas I would have, but I knew I had to go home, if for no other reason than I wanted to see my grandparents. That was the hard part of staying away.

A bit of distance had maybe mellowed me. That and I was eighteen and could see a life free from reliance on Joe open up in front of me. My phantom text-message stalker had given up after about eighteen months of messages. They tapered off at the end. Just like everything. The abuse had become a thing of the past. The nasty messages.

Yes, I still carried my scars – physical and emotional – from what I’d been through. I still had times when it all felt too much, when I’d wake screaming, a nightmare having put me back in my room, scared and defenceless and still a child. There were times when I still had to score at my skin. But slowly, I believed, I was healing. I believed that I could heal. I even started to think that maybe one day I would be able to find a partner. To take a chance on finding love. To consider being physical with someone. To believe that I deserved to be loved and cherished properly.

It was hardly surprising that my nerves were in flitters by the time I got back to the house. I refused, even at that point, to call it home.

Joe was in a jovial mood. He had made a half-hearted attempt to put up some Christmas decorations and there were a handful of presents underneath the tree.

‘I want us to have a nice Christmas,’ he said. ‘Do you think we could manage that?’

There was something in the way he spoke that led me to believe that he thought I was the problem. I was the troublemaker. He took no responsibility for his own actions. The hell he had put me through.

But I didn’t want to let him drag me down, not then. Not yet.

‘I’ve invited Ciara over for dinner on Christmas Eve,’ he said. ‘You’re both adults now. Maybe we could start moving on. I’ve asked Marie too, and your grandparents.’

I could think of nothing that would be more awkward, but I consoled myself that at least Granny and Grandad would be there.

‘I’ll do all the cooking,’ he said. ‘You just have to show up. Do you think you could do that?’ he said. ‘I’ve missed you, Heidi. I just want things to be better between us.’

He looked so earnest. His eyes were sad. I could almost convince myself that he was feeling sorry for what he’d done. But maybe he was just feeling lonely. People may have talked to him on the streets. He may have been able to hold court at the library, but when he closed the door to this house, the house that should never have been his, he was all alone.

Still, I agreed because I was tired of the constant warring, too. I even spent some of my money on presents. Silly little things. A brooch for Marie. An ornament which, in hindsight, was ugly as sin for my grandparents. A hand-made notebook wrapped in delicate tissue paper for Ciara. I wrapped them, along with a bottle of red wine for Joe, and added them to the pile under the tree.