Octavia

      Jonathan usually loved choosing the Christmas tree. He would spend hours in the local garden centre, debating with the children until they found the perfect specimen, the one and only Norwegian spruce that could grace our lounge. Then he’d haul it into the right place, the exact spot between the fireplace and the dresser. Immi and Polly would decorate it according to Jonathan’s rigid spacing and ornament eking-out rules, with Charlie chucking the baubles on willy-nilly.

      But this year Jonathan had come up with ‘I haven’t got time/the girls don’t want to go today/the trees will be cheaper nearer the day’ until the one ritual I could delegate without guilt had plopped back onto my plate. The result was spindly and lacklustre. Instead of the usual good-natured banter over whether to have the fairy or the star on top, the kids had argued over who was going to hang up the bloody glass reindeers and who got stuck with the crappy old snowflakes. Resentment had sliced into my fantasies of a cheery household floating about singing angelic bursts of Once in Royal David’s City, and lingered right through to Christmas Day itself.

      Mum had arrived at eight o’clock that morning as though we would need five hours to prepare a roast lunch for six people. She stood in the kitchen hovering but not actually ‘doing’ until the hairs on my neck were quivering with irritation.

      I managed to shoo her out to play Scrabble with Immi, which meant I could slosh industrial quantities of Chablis into my glass without copping the fourteen units a week speech. This year’s project of knocking our lounge and dining room together to make one big living space was beginning to look like a mistake. Instead of being tucked away with the XBox, Polly and Charlie were right under Mum’s nose. As Mum thought anything more hi-tech than a landline was the path to all evil, it was only a matter of time before she decided to deliver the ‘Give a child a cardboard box and they’ll be just as happy’ speech.

      Normally, Charlie would laugh and say, ‘Oh Nanna, get real,’ but this year, a huge bellow of ‘Jesus Christ, we’re not in the 1950s’ came echoing through to the kitchen. A door slam followed.

      I poked my head through the hatch and saw my mother rear up like a meerkat on its look-out mound, turning from Jonathan faffing about with the precise angle of the serviettes, to me, waiting to see how we were going to deal with – shock, horror – God’s name being taken in vain on Christmas Day.

      Jonathan rolled his eyes and went back to straightening the knives and forks that Polly had thrown down in a slapdash manner. I tried Roberta’s New Age bollocks of visualising lying in a hammock in Barbados, but discovered that only a hiss at the husband would do.

      ‘Jonathan, do you think you could go and deal with Charlie, please, while I finish off lunch?’ I probably sounded calm to the casual listener but sixteen years of marriage had taught him to recognise the meaningful ‘—CCCHHH’ on the end of that sentence. With one last tweak of the table mats, he made his way upstairs.

      I shouted through to Polly. ‘Come and take through the cranberry sauce for me, love.’

      No answer. I shouted again.

      ‘In a minute.’

      ‘No, now, we’re nearly ready to sit down.’

      ‘I’m just finishing this game.’

      I bit back a bellow of ‘Come now!’ Never mind a flipping virgin birth, my kids doing what they were told the first time I asked them would be the true miracle of Christmas.

      Instead of Polly appearing, Immi came into the kitchen instead. ‘My tummy hurts. I don’t want any lunch.’

      Honestly, next year I’d just do beans on toast.

      ‘It’ll make you feel better if you have something to eat. I’ve made your favourite, cauliflower cheese.’ I stroked her strawberry-blonde curls.

      ‘I’m not hungry. I already ate all my selection box. Do you want to know what I had? I had a Curly Wurly, a Mars bar, a Milky Way, a Twix – I’ve got one stick of that left – and a packet of jelly babies.’

      At this rate, we’d need an appointment with the emergency dentist. ‘I thought Dad said you could only have one thing.’

      ‘He did, but then when I asked him if I could eat the rest, he just went “hmm” and carried on reading his book, so I thought it was OK.’

      I could feel a bit of a Jesus Christ incident coming on myself.

      ‘I gave the Maltesers and Revels to Stan, though. I wasn’t that greedy.’

      ‘You shouldn’t give chocolate to dogs. It’s bad for them. Anyway, never mind.’ I turned back to stirring the gravy, which had now gone all lumpy.

      I took a deep breath and called through to the front room. ‘Mum, it’s ready. Can I pass you these things through the hatch?’

      Mum scurried over and busied herself with the food, just as Jonathan reappeared.

      ‘Charlie won’t come down.’ There was something pathetic in his tone, a waiting for me to get it sorted.

      The food was getting cold, which made me want to have my own tantrum. It was definitely early-onset middle age – more bothered about chilly carrots than my son having a Yuletide meltdown. Not for the first time, I mourned the era of spending every holiday backpacking on a diet of beer and crisps. I trudged up the stairs, shouting ‘Start serving’ in the general direction of Mum and Jonathan in the hope that between them they might summon up the initiative required to get a few Brussels on plates without me.

      ‘Go away.’ Charlie was nose-down in his pillow.

      ‘Please don’t spoil the day, darling. I know Nanna’s irritating. She irritates me as well and no doubt, when I’m old, you’ll bin my false teeth so you can’t hear what I’m saying either.’

      ‘I hate Christmas.’

      ‘So do I.’ And I really meant it.

      That made Charlie sit up. ‘How can you hate Christmas?’

      ‘How can you?’ I smiled, trying not to think of my gravy getting a skin on it. ‘Come on, love, help me out here.’

      He got to his feet, torn between wanting a hug and wanting to be bolshie. ‘OK. Sorry.’

      I squeezed his hand, or rather the cuff of his sweatshirt. At fifteen, Charlie didn’t seem to have hands any more. He scuffed down the stairs, still my little boy under that gangly mini-man.

      In the dining room, I jollied everyone along, praying that Mum wouldn’t choose right now to need an apology. ‘Let’s pull the crackers.’ Polly snatched the fat end of the cracker from Immi, claiming ownership of some plastic earrings. Immi burst into tears and slid under the table, refusing to come out even when Polly handed them over.

      As I slopped the chipolatas wrapped in