We have drinks in the drawing room, which is a complete mess of presents, wrapping paper, scissors, packs of batteries, teenage boys, used plates, gift-containing carrier bags, Sellotape, empty mugs, one laptop opened to MySpace, Maisy’s sizeable pig-pink pop-up tent, which she has ignored all year and chosen to erect ‘for Christmas’ as a cool place for the reindeer to relax in for a while, a couple of school projects, half-started, and this morning’s newspapers, not in an orderly stack. Treading gingerly over these – Pat immediately sets about tidying up, until I tell her to leave it – we arrange ourselves in a little huddle near the tree, which is nine feet tall and shining like a beacon, bedecked with white fairy lights, the red baubles I bought when I left home and lugged about with me from house to house over the years, and a manageably scant number of child-made decorations (sweet but often hideous, let’s be frank). The tree is beautiful. It’s blazing magnificently by the window, with an obscene pile of presents already underneath.
