She hadn’t expected that. Her own face crumpled in on itself. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been thinking and thinking if there were any signs I missed. That she was going to do . . . That. I – I’m just glad Benjamin didn’t find her.’

I shook my head, wondering how I’d find the strength to stand up. Looking up at my mother from the absurd vantage point of the floor. ‘You can’t really stop someone. If they want to.’

‘I think she was just in pain. Something happened with her boyfriend, was that it?’

‘Something.’ I couldn’t explain about the picture. For a moment, I saw myself strangling Aaron. Snapping his rugby-player’s neck. ‘She hasn’t told me everything.’ I was sure of it now. Something else had happened that night, the night everything unravelled in my hand like a cheap jumper. Cassie sneaking round the side of the house in her pyjamas. The blankness in her eyes when I asked what happened.

My mother took my arm and helped me up, like an old woman who’d fallen. ‘It’s terrible,’ she said, firmly. ‘With Michael, and now this. It’s alright if you need help, Alison. Anyone would.’

‘I do,’ I sobbed, wishing the opposite was true, that I was able to soldier on, instead of drafting in old crushes and my estranged mother to help prop me up.

‘Well, I’m here to give it,’ she said, in the same resolute tone. ‘It’s what I’m here for. So no more thanks. If anything, I should be thanking you, for the chance to know your children. They are – a credit to you.’

So many more things I could have said, like why had she let our contact lapse, why hadn’t she chased me down, so I could have spilled out how angry I was with her. But it was too late, and so I just cried some more, and for a brief second she squeezed both of my arms with her bony hands. The closest she came to hugs. ‘You’ll be alright, Alison. I raised you that way.’