First, she joined Main Road. Two men were outside the pub, putting Christmas trees in tubs, a tangle of fairy lights lying on the floor nearby. They all exchanged friendly nods. She marched up on into the Bankside Estate, which Grady had called ‘the new village’. She knew from Rea that it was also known disparagingly as ‘Little Dallas’ because the bigger houses had porticoes. The really new part, the affordable housing, was called ‘Toy Town’. These nicknames were generally applied by those who lived in the older part of the village in the stone cottages, like The Nookery, or red-brick Victorian houses.

When she’d left the village, Bankside Estate had comprised only Great Hill Road and New Street. Now Laurel tramped along a whole host of other streets of modern houses and felt she could have been anywhere – not Middledip at all. A woman busy stringing lights around a tree called, ‘Christmas mad, me. Can’t wait to get everywhere twinkling. Me and my neighbours are all having a crazy push with outside decorations, this year.’ She gestured to where a woman clinging to a ladder hung glittering plastic snowmen on a wall, while a man swathed a porch roof with lights.

As it wasn’t possible to be anonymous or unfriendly in Middledip, Laurel called back, ‘Can’t beat plenty of twinkle.’ She walked on, slowing to listen outside a big house where a choir was practising ‘White Christmas’, their voices rich with the mixture of hope and wistfulness the song demanded. After completing her tour of the estate she exited onto Port Road, back in the original village again, passing the school where cut-out snowflakes adorned the windows. She paused there, too, gazing at a silver tree outside the gates covered with the clear baubles you could buy ready to fill. Children had filled them with coloured paper, drawings or models. The result was charming. When she’d attended the village primary school they used to make a big snowman with a white cotton wool body and a real carrot for his nose.

Further down Port Road she waved to Angel Sissins hurrying along the opposite pavement. Angel was eight or ten years older than Laurel but their mums had been friends and she’d hung out with Rea.

‘Hello, stranger,’ Angel called across. ‘How’s your sister?’

‘Hanging in there,’ Laurel returned, not wanting to go into her sister’s anxiety disorder across the street with someone she’d glimpsed only occasionally in the past two decades. ‘How’s your family?’ She knew from Daisy that Toby Sissins was in the year above her at school. He and his little sister would be two of the village kids on the bus with Daisy every day.

‘Great, thanks!’ Angel tossed back, then hurried on her way.