It was the blog audience that really completed everything. Jenny was special, she was brave. She was extraordinary. David said the same in his infatuated emails and rare phone calls, as did Freddie in their heart-to-heart chats, and Cheryl in their counselling sessions. Andreena prayed for her, and all that was great, but all that was behind closed doors. When Sal got sick, and Jenny moved back to look after her, You Can’t Go Home Again assumed a new importance. Her readers said the same things her friends did, with a crucial difference – they said it in public.

They lapped up her posts about the stresses and strains of caring for an invalid. While training to be a counsellor too? How did she do it? At every stage, they were there to tell her how brave, honest and inspirational she was. They competed with each other to give her the most compliments, they vied for her attention, shoring up her carefully crafted image of gutsy sweetness. The appreciation was so strong, the approbation so addictive, that soon, very soon, You Can’t Go Home Again became her main outlet, her greatest delight.

But, as always, fate intervened, complicated things. And the complication had a face, a voice and a name: Sal.

It wasn’t all lies, Jenny sometimes reasoned to herself. After all, Sal had suffered a stroke, but it was very minor. After a few weeks she was mobile again and her speech was just fine. She could eat solid food. She needed no help getting in and out of the shower. In fact, Sal became so inconveniently not ill, that Jenny was running out of excuses to stay with her. And she had to stay. If she left, Freddie, Cheryl, Andreena and David would know she’d left, and if they knew, then she wouldn’t be able to carry on with the blog – the best bit of her blog – the ‘caring for a sick mother’ bit that got her all the sympathy, and if she wasn’t Saintly Blogger ‘Jay’, then who was she? Just another, ordinary twenty-something part-time student, juggling jobs? How could she go back to that?

The stronger Sal got, the more irritable and vicious Jenny felt towards her. And the nastier Jenny was, the more Sal, after years of relative sobriety, relied on alcohol to cope with the discomfort of living with her daughter. And she began having accidents – genuine, drunken accidents – slips in the bathroom, a tumble down the stairs, a sprained wrist, a bruised hip, which Jenny, on her blog and to her friends, packaged as stroke-affiliated injuries. Some of the accidents weren’t accidents though. Sometimes Sal would… act up. Push back, and Jenny would be forced to restrain her a bit. Nobody came to the house; Jenny made sure everyone knew that Sal was too frail for visitors, and nobody had any reason to question Jenny’s version of things. On the rare occasions she allowed Sal out of the house, they were always together – Jenny gripping Sal’s arm firmly, telling her, loudly and often, that she was doing very well, but she was still sick so-we-should-go-home-now. Back at home, Jenny hid the keys, disconnected the phone, and kept Sal weary with sleeping pills, but that couldn’t go on for ever. She knew that, even as she willed it to.

In phone calls with Freddie, sessions with Cheryl, at lunch with Andreena, she allowed herself to be comforted, mothered. It was just so good to talk. It felt so wrong to be moaning like this when Mum was so sick. She didn’t know how they put up with her!

‘Oh darling, don’t be silly. Can I help? Maybe I can look after her at the weekends? Give you a break?’ Freddie would say.

‘No, she’d be too embarrassed. She needs help on the commode and… she couldn’t do that with you. She doesn’t even want to see anyone. Thanks though,’ Jenny told him, blinking back tears of gratitude.

‘You’re like a daughter to me,’ Andreena would tell her.

‘I’m blessed,’ Jenny would answer.

‘You have the power,’ Cheryl intoned. ‘Remember that, to access your strength centres, you have to believe. You can get through this! You are a Strong, Beautiful Soul.’

‘Do you think so, am I really? Really?’

‘The strongest soul I know!’

And David? David was simple. She barely had to lie to David at all. He was only concerned with Jenny; her friends and family held no interest for him. On the rare occasions he asked after Sal, she downplayed The Stroke and highlighted The Drinking Problem, sensing that, as a carer himself, he might be able to see through some of her tales. The quiet but palpable antipathy she detected in his voice was particularly gratifying because, well, in a very real sense, she was almost telling him the truth. Almost. And it was such a relief, almost telling someone the truth.

No. David was very straightforward. She’d broken him in like a horse. He’d believe anything she told him. He’d do anything for her; he told her that. He’d said that many times.

On the night the snow fell, she gave him the opportunity to prove it.