Possibly because my mum is alone, it’s tradition for both Fred and me to converge on Mum’s house every year, with Anna and Olivia alternating between her parents and our mum. This year Mum gets all of us.

I can’t tell if she actually likes this situation or not. She says she’s excited, but her actions tell us differently. The fridge is stocked with food, none of which we’re allowed to eat because it’s all allocated to a certain meal and a certain time. I had to bring my own snacks, just to be safe. She gets annoyed at all the extra shoes in her house, she doesn’t like the noise, and I’m pretty sure she takes the dog on extra-long walks to escape us.

The first couple of days are always the worst.

‘Bea, did you open the wraps?’

Oh shit.

She has her hand on her hip. This isn’t good.

I can see Fred looking at me, pretending he isn’t looking at me.

‘Erm, sorry, yes I did. I had one for lunch.’ It was actually a post-lunch snack. ‘I thought it would be OK. We don’t normally have wraps over Christmas, so I had hoped they’d be safe.’ I really don’t like confrontation. Had I known the wraps were off-limits, I wouldn’t have touched them.

‘Well, I bought them as an alternative to bread so we could have turkey wraps on Boxing Day instead of sandwiches, but you’ve opened them so badly that they’re going to be stale by the time we want them.’

A skill of mine is spotting the peel-and-reseal tags too late to actually use them, thereby ensuring the contents of all open packets need to be consumed within two hours or they’ll become stale.

I have no defence, so I can only try to placate, a tactic which sometimes works, and sometimes only succeeds in making Mum more irritated.

I stand up and go over to inspect the bag, as if being closer will make my vivid discomfort seem even more sincere. The proximity only makes me feel worse; I really did a number on the packaging.

‘I can go out and get more.’ If any shops are still open. ‘Or we could put them in a bag. Or we could heat them up slightly – I do that with mine when they go a bit stale and it perks them right back up! I promise. What do you think?’

She sighs and shakes her head. ‘I knew this would happen. I put a couple of back-up packets in the freezer, so we should be fine.’

There are twelve wraps in each packet. I’m bad at maths, but even I can figure this one out.

‘So even if we have to throw away the open packet, we still have twenty-four wraps to get through? I don’t think we need to buy more.’

Having spent the last six hours trying to avoid the angry puce face, I realize that I’ve just created the perfect conditions for one to appear. And appear it does. Along with the pulsating vein in her forehead.