My heart starts pounding like a kick drum. She looks up at me, her mouth crinkling softly at the sides as she smiles. ‘I know I was … taken with him,’ she says, rolling her eyes at the idea of it. ‘He was very charming and talented and all that. But we hadn’t known each other long before we got married. Six months, something like that. And I suppose in the back of my mind, I did always worry that he was more interested in himself than he was in me. That his ambitions and his career meant more to him than anything else.’ She exhales slowly through her nose. ‘And he proved me right there, in the end.’

I feel my face getting hot, and that lump starting to work its way back into the bottom of my throat. ‘But what about you?’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘What about your ambitions?’

She swats my comment away with her hand. ‘I had ambitions too, thank you very much. I always wanted to teach, and that’s what I did. I love doing it. And I’m OK at it, I think.’

‘You’re brilliant at it,’ I say. And as I do, I realise that I’m exactly mirroring her comment earlier to Daphne, about my writing. She always supported me, without question, one hundred per cent. And in the real world, in 2020, she’s gone. At one minute to midnight, all this will disappear, and she’ll be ripped away from me all over again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle that.

God, I’ve missed her so much.

‘Ben? Are you … Oh, darling, what’s wrong?’

I swipe my hand across my cheek to stop the tears that are suddenly spilling down it.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum,’ I mumble.

‘Ben, don’t be silly! What’s got into you? You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.’

But I do – she just doesn’t realise it yet. I’m sorry for the awful things I’ll say to her before she dies. I’m sorry for the screw-up of a son that I’ll become. But I don’t know how to tell her these things, and it’s only making the tears fall faster.

I speak into her shoulder, my words coming out thick and muffled. ‘I’m going to let you down, Mum. I know I am. I’m going to let everyone down.’

She grips me even tighter and says, ‘Ben, you couldn’t let me down. It’s just not possible.’

I dissolve, then. Everything liquefies.

Some time passes, I’m not sure how much. But when we pull away from each other, Mum is red-eyed and damp-cheeked as well.

‘Look at the state of us,’ she says, wiping her face. ‘You’ve got me going too. This is hardly very Christmassy, is it?’

I laugh and sniff. ‘Sorry.’