‘You’re right.’ He took a final swig of coffee and stood up. ‘We need to get you home. First, though, I got you a present.’

I followed him back inside, assuming he must have found something at the service station the day before and feeling relieved that I’d thought to grab something for him, too.

‘It’s in the bedroom.’ Henry had a strange smile on his face that caused me to hesitate. ‘There wasn’t room to hide it down here.’

Baffled at what he’d been able to sneak out of the service station and up the stairs, I approached them with no small sense of trepidation.

‘Hang on, wait!’ He then made things worse by squeezing past me and rushing into the room, closing the door until he called out, ‘You can come in now,’ with what I could only interpret as unbridled glee.

I slowly opened the door, finding the poky bedroom veiled in shadow, and what appeared to be Henry, crouching down in the middle of the room holding out one hand. For a second I thought this was some horrifying proposal, until the light suddenly clicked on. There was an unearthly squeal, as the light revealed a hideous grin, mismatched eyes rolling about in different directions and an outfit even worse than Henry’s.

‘Aaagh!’ I jumped back onto the top step, almost tumbling down the whole staircase until Henry dived out of the doorway and grabbed me. Several uneven breaths later he pulled back to examine me.

‘Sorry,’ he managed once he’d ascertained that he’d not caused a stroke. It was hard to accept the apology when his eyes were shimmering with laughter and he was unable to stop his mouth twitching.

I shook his hand off my arm and went to examine the elf more closely. ‘When did you pilfer this?’

‘I thought it was a good candidate for worst ever present.’

‘It would have won worst ever Christmas accident if I’d broken my neck on the stairs.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry doesn’t count if you’re laughing while you say it!’

‘Does this help?’ He came to join me by the elf, whose eyes were still rolling about accompanied by the horrible squealing sound. Henry pointed to a small box bouncing in the elf’s hand as it jerked up and down.

‘I’m not touching it. If that’s for me you need to give it me yourself.’

He turned off the elf using a switch at the back and then retrieved the box, which was wrapped in a sheet of A4 paper tied with a shoelace.

‘Can I open it away from this abomination?’

‘I think you’d better go downstairs before you hurt his feelings.’

Once back in the main room, I fetched the present I’d wrapped in the cover of a Christmassy magazine and we swapped boxes.