Tara tried to smile. ‘Not as bad as I’d expected, although the bar had been set considerably low,’ she admitted. ‘Lily’s moods have been up and down, mostly down if I’m honest, and her last day at school was particularly traumatising. She’s starting the new term in Hale Primary, so she had to say goodbye to all her friends. It’s been a while since I’ve dreaded Christmas as much as I did this year.’

When the last order had been sent off for delivery before Christmas, Tara had sobbed with a mixture of relief and trepidation. It had been late afternoon, the shop was closed, and the only item left on her list was to make a perfect Christmas for her new family: but there was no recipe for that.

‘I was expecting it to go horribly wrong,’ she continued, ‘but on Christmas Eve I persuaded Lily to show me and Molly how to make her mum’s lemon drizzle cake using the Mary Berry recipe Joanna had sworn by according to Iain’s mum. Apparently it was close – nothing is ever going to be as good as her mum’s – but the two of them tucked into the cake while they wrote letters to Mike and Joanna. We set them alight in the garden and let their messages float off to heaven.’

‘That’s so lovely.’

‘It was,’ Tara said, still surprised. ‘And I’d wrapped up some books as little Christmas Eve gifts. Someone mentioned it’s an Icelandic tradition, and it did the trick. The girls hurried off to bed to read and, apart from the odd scurrying of feet and a few giggles, we didn’t hear a peep out of them for the rest of the night.’

‘Sounds like you’ve made a new tradition of your own.’

‘That’s the plan, although next year I might dispense with the bottle of wine I demolished when the kids were in bed.’

‘It must have been a tense time.’

Tara rubbed the side of her face unconsciously. She continued to grind her teeth in the night, and the queasiness she had attributed to a hangover on Christmas Day persisted. ‘It still is.’

‘How’s Molly been?’

‘A superstar,’ Tara said, watching her daughter skip down the road. Dexter had found a water bowl that one of the residents had left out for dog walkers and was splashing the girls as he shook his dripping mouth. ‘Although she was disappointed that there wasn’t a puppy waiting for her on Christmas morning, despite me telling her time and again that it’s too soon to think about pets. To be honest, I’m holding out hope that Dexter will send Molly flying into a muddy puddle and she’ll go off the idea.’