When they finally arrived home, Daisy stepped over something lying on the doormat and said, ‘Whoops, Santa’s been again.’ She picked up a small parcel and passed it to Laurel.

As they’d all clustered around, Laurel didn’t feel she could race upstairs to tear off the wrapping in private. She parted the gold paper to find a jeweller’s box and, inside, a silver pendant in the shape of a forget-me-not, its petals of bright blue topaz and the centre of gold.

‘Is it from Grady?’ Daisy asked, apparently unaware of Laurel being unable to speak around the cricket-ball-sized lump in her throat. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t give it to you yesterday.’

Rea, obviously more sensitive to Laurel’s pain, hooked her arm into Daisy’s and steered her away. ‘Want to open the choccies?’

Daisy, who seemed to have received a bottomless stomach for Christmas, cried, ‘Yeah, awesome,’ while Rea and Terri left Laurel to take her necklace up to her room and put it on with shaking fingers, gazing into the mirror at what might have been.

She knew it didn’t take a topaz forget-me-not to ensure she remembered Grady.

Christmas dinner was over.

Grady’s face and throat ached from forced smiles and fake laughter. Slipping out to take Laurel her present had fallen pancake-flat when he’d discovered The Nookery empty. He could have hung on to his gift and tried again later but it had been small and he’d been pissed off at the unsatisfactory way he and Laurel had left things so he dumped it through the letterbox and trudged back to the festivities at Mac’s house.

He’d taken his phone out a hundred times to text Laurel and then put it back. Merry Christmas seemed a ridiculous thing to say, in these miserable, hopeless circumstances. Merry? Not much.

He stared out of Mac’s window at lights flickering along the rooftop of the house opposite. Usually, anywhere in the village was familiar and comforting, but today, for the first time, it wasn’t where he wanted to be. Mac came up to shove a Jamesons in his hand, glittering in a crystal glass.

‘OK?’ Mac asked. He knew Grady wasn’t OK, because Grady had told him Laurel’s decision, so Grady understood it was bro-code for, ‘Just how horribly gutted are you?’

‘Will be,’ he replied, taking a sip of the peaty amber whiskey. Bro-code translation: ‘I don’t know how I’ll get through this but she’s left me nowhere to go. I want to cry like a child.’

Mac slung his arm around him and hugged him so hard Grady’s shoulder cracked. Bro-code translation: ‘I’m so fucking sorry.’

Wordlessly, Grady hugged him back. Bro-code translation: ‘We’ll always have each other.’