She made herself a half-cup of tea – any more and she’d be up half the night pacing back and forth to the loo – and she treated herself to a digestive biscuit. She decided she’d read a bit more of her book and had just sat down when the phone rang. He didn’t say much. She could tell he was crying, poor lad. He gave her his address and within a few minutes she was in a taxi.

She’d only got sketchy details from Tom. But from what she could make out his father had been taken ill and Tom had thought he was dead. Maggie’s heart went out to Tom. She had grown incredibly fond of him. Losing someone you love was a terrible thing but to have lost a parent at such a young age cut a wound so deep it rarely healed.

Maggie could remember the last time she’d been driven in a car. It was in the funeral car to her husband’s funeral almost ten years ago. She remembered thinking that a hearse was most likely the poshest car most people would ever ride in and yet they’d not get any enjoyment out of it. The time before that she’d got a black cab across London when they’d gone to the theatre sometime in the 1990s. Now Maggie was more of a bus person. She liked the train but had no call to go further afield anymore. But she definitely wasn’t a car person, she thought as she sat on the back seat of the cab. She always thought sitting in the back of a car on her own reminded her of how Hitler was chauffeured about – she wasn’t sure why.

The taxi pulled up outside an ordinary terrace and she paid the driver. The small garden was part wobbly paving and part overgrown shrubbery. There was one light on at the front of the house and everything looked decidedly normal. Was this the right place? Why was there no ambulance? Maybe she was too late.

She walked up the path and the front door opened. A wretched-looking Tom was standing before her. He was wearing one of the tops she’d found for him and it was soaked in vomit. His eyes were red and puffy and he held his head low. He didn’t speak, merely sniffed a bit.

‘Did you call an ambulance like I said?’ she asked, stepping inside and closing the door.

Tom shook his head. ‘Dad said not to.’

If he was talking that was a good sign. Tom pointed into the living room and Maggie took a look. A man in his forties was sitting in a puddle of sick and leaning against a stained sofa with his head tilted back, eyes closed and breathing steady. The stench of whisky and vomit dominated the small room. The empty bottles and heavily fingered glass told their own tale.