I look down at my watch – the watch – which is somehow still ticking faultlessly after all this time. It’s not even eight yet, and we were out late last night. Well, late for us, anyway.

For the first time in ages, I’m hung-over – that eggnog brandy was lethal – but I just can’t sleep in these days. In my freelance years, I’d sometimes stay in bed until mid-morning, trying to summon the resolve to get up and get on with things. Now, though, I have to be up at 6.30 on the dot most days, and the routine has installed a sort of internal alarm clock within me. Not that I need it: starting the day is something I genuinely look forward to now.

These last few months have been maybe the happiest of my whole life, which is crazy, really, when I think back to how this year started. On Christmas Day 2020, I would never have imagined that next Christmas could look like this. Not for the first time this year, I’m struck by how incredibly lucky I am.

I pick up the trays. I’ll just go up and see if she’s awake.

I walk slowly out of the kitchen, trying not to spill anything, and as I pass the living room, I see the Christmas tree. It’s heaving under countless layers of multicoloured ornaments, and I can’t help smiling as I remember the chic, scarcely decorated tree that greeted me in that unfamiliar flat on Christmas Day 2023. If that was the Anna Wintour of Christmas trees, then this one is probably the Dame Edna Everage. And let’s be honest, Dame Edna is the look every decent Christmas tree should aspire to.

I tiptoe up the stairs, balancing the trays precariously as I go. Holly and ivy and tinsel have been draped at random around every photo or painting on the staircase, and right at the top, a combination of all three frames my favourite picture. It’s one I found recently while going through some of Mum’s stuff. It’s of me, Daphne and Mum, huddled up in coats and scarves, in Queen’s Park on Christmas Eve 2011. We’re all mugging cheerfully at the camera, our cheeks pink from the cold, arms flung around each other’s shoulders.

On the wall at the end of the landing, just outside our bedroom, there’s another picture I discovered in the same box. This one’s of Mum and her dad – Grandad Jack – on the beach at Whitley Bay. Mum must be about nineteen. She’s grinning, a towel around her shoulders, while Grandad stands next to her, beaming, his blue eyes twinkling. This photo always makes me smile when I see it.