She went down another step, and another. Clinging to the banister because the weight of her body was all wrong now, and she was so afraid all the time, afraid of falling, afraid of hurting the baby, that it was like walking around with a bomb strapped to her. The panic hadn’t dissipated. Moving downstairs, Jodi noticed the back door, the one that gave out to the woodland path, was off its chain. Strange. She moved through into the kitchen, strewn with dirty dishes and half-drunk wine bottles, corks and foil crumbling on the worktops. It would take hours to clear this. The front door was open and something made her move out, her feet in her Uggs hot and muffled. Someone was on the swing seat – she saw the white oval of a face. It was Mike, his eyes closed and mouth open. Out cold. She tutted again to herself. They were too old to behave like this. She and Ali were the only ones who seemed to know it, the ones who thought about meals and dishes and locking up the house before they were all robbed in their beds.

There was movement on the lawn. A sensation of figures moving, as if dancing or wrestling. Her heart fluttered in her chest. She stopped at the edge of the lawn, feeling the damp seep into the edge of her boots. She would have called out, but who was it? ‘Karen?’ Her voice was low. ‘Are you OK?’

The movement stopped. There was an impression of shaking free, of someone lumbering back over, zig-zagging like a drunk. She shaded her eyes for some reason, as if this would help her see out of the light and into the dark. The person approaching wore a red jumper. Mike’s jumper. But Mike was in a polo shirt, bare arms stippled with goosebumps. Why was Callum wearing his jumper?

‘What’s going on?’

He couldn’t meet her eyes. He was horribly drunk, not the worst she’d ever seen but bad, his face piggy with it. ‘Jod. S’OK. S’OK.’

‘Was that Karen? What’s going on?’ She looked past him – Karen, or whoever it was, seemed to be lying on the ground, unmoving.

‘Nothing. Nothing, nothing. Go back to bed.’