Her dad sings tunelessly, happily, to the radio, banging the steering wheel to the beat, while her mother chuckles and tut-tuts and shakes her head. They are excited, on their way to visit their son, their granddaughter: grandparents at last.

She always used to sit on this side, on family holidays—Jim to the right of her, this exact view of the back of her father’s head. Often they would bicker. Once, she remembers, on the way to a campsite in Wales, her dad finally lost his temper and stopped the car, ordering them both out onto the grass shoulder. He pulled away and left them, and they were silent, horrified, for a full five minutes until he drove back around. Now her little brother is a father. Soon he will be driving on family holidays of his own.

They pull up outside a stone cottage on the edge of a village; it has thick walls and small windows. As they climb out of the car, Jim appears in the driveway to meet them. He is bigger than Hannah remembers—has put on weight, but it looks well on him. Somehow he manages to be everywhere at once—opening the door for their mom, carrying on a conversation with their father about Christmas traffic and the weather, and enveloping Hannah in a hug. “How are you doing, sis?”

His vowels. She always forgets how northern he is. She would like to shelter here, in his arms, in his vowels for a while. “OK,” she says into his shoulder. “I’m OK.”

He leads the way inside, carrying their luggage into a narrow hall, a Christmas tree in the corner. “The bedrooms are all up there. You and Mum are first on the right,” he says to their father, “and you’re at the end, Han. But Hayley’s up there napping with the baby.” He claps his hands together. “Right, then. Who’s for a drink before they wake up?”

He serves them all—gin and tonic for their mum, a glass of wine for Hannah, and ale for their dad, and she sees how proud he is, her brother, how proud to be witnessed by them: householder, father, host.