Bernadette paid the taxi man without giving him a tip. She paid him and waited for her change, enjoying the feeling of having something over him. He pushed the change into her gloved hand roughly, giving her large house a final sneering appraisal as he drove away. She knew what he was thinking. Living in that place and not even a tip on Christmas Eve! She knew it would be his Christmas story up the pub with his mates, and at home with his wife and family. The house would get bigger with each telling until everyone thought he’d dropped her off at Buckingham Palace.

She walked up her drive, depressed, deflated, and more than anything ashamed of her actions towards the cab driver. It was Christmas Eve and she should have given him a tip. But it was Christmas Eve and she was forty-two and her husband was strupping a young girl.

That was the difference.

She opened the front door of her house to pandemonium. Rebecca and Delia were fighting in the hallway. Delia, always the volatile one, had Becky’s hair in her hand and was yanking it. Overcome by her day, Bemadette swiped the two of them with her large black leather handbag. She swiped them mercilessly, their tears and screams barely reaching her.

Holding the bag up menacingly, she shouted, ‘Get out of my sight now, the pair of you.’

Delia opened her mouth to argue and got another painful swipe from her mother’s bag.

Bernie took off her coat, hat and gloves and dumped herself into a seat. The tree was glaring at her and she felt an urge to get up and drag it from its pot and destroy it. Destroy it and everything in the house that was remotely connected with Christmas.

The dinner was nearly ready to be served and Briony and Tommy poured drinks for the assembled family. Everyone was there, and Molly, a subdued Molly, watched the black man, as she still thought of Evander, sitting with Liselle and chatting amiably to her. She shuddered every time she looked at him. It weren’t natural, she kept telling herself. But she kept her peace, knowing she was there on sufferance.

The twins chatted to Tommy and Marcus, business talk that seemed just about acceptable at the gathering as far as Molly was concerned. Kerry was drinking heavily and alone, barely bothering to answer Bernadette when she spoke to her. Delia and Becky sat on the floor like a pair of young foals, all long legs and ankle socks. Molly wished Abel was here, but he had to watch his mother. Mrs H was coming down to dinner the next day, but Molly decided she might go up for a visit before that. The drinks in this house were stingy this year. Hers was like cat’s piss.