“Well, it certainly did last year,” I say sourly. “You were so stressed after the shopping that you drank all the Christmas spirit and threw up in my wardrobe.”

Misha shrugs that off blithely, and looks around the room for a diversion. His gaze intensifies as it lands on my pyjamas. “What is on your shorts?”

I raise my eyebrows. “My penis?” I offer.

“On the fabric, you twat.”

I look down. “Little Father Christmas figures,” I offer.

“And you are wearing them because you’re actually five?”

I lean back against the cabinets. “I’m wearing them because I’m not a soul-dead banker who probably starches his underwear.”

“Only if I ever wore any underwear,” he advises me and winks cheekily.

We’ve both made these sorts of remarks before. They’re an established part of our banter. But as we stare at each other, the silence lengthens and thickens. The doorbell chimes, and we both jump. As it chimes again, we look over at the door as if it’s going to answer itself. I notice out of the corner of my eye that his chest is rising and falling rapidly.

“Who can that be at this time of the morning?” He sounds so much like an old lady that I want to laugh.

Instead, I cross over to the door and peer through the peephole. I look at the figures in the hall, blink and then look again. “It’s my dad and Aidan,” I say.

“Here?” he says incredulously. “At nine thirty in the morning?”

I bite my lip and try not to laugh.

“Oh shit, I need to get dressed. Let them in, Charlie,” he urges and whizzes past me, his buttocks bouncing tightly under their towelling covering.

I’m still looking after him even as I open the door and usher my dad and stepdad in.

My mum and dad were best friends and made me after a very drunken mistake at university. When my dad confessed to her that he was gay, the friendship never suffered. Instead, they decided to raise me together and moved into a house with my mum taking the downstairs flat and my dad the upstairs. When I was two, he met Aidan, who moved in with him. They’ve been together ever since and got married last year. My mum met and married a lovely man called Phil a few years ago, and they now live in Norfolk on his farm. I miss having her close, but she’s very happy.

“Hello. Earth to Charlie,” comes a dry Irish-accented voice. “Goodness, Sam, your son appears to have frozen. Do we switch him off and on like the help desk always suggests?”