Jasmine beamed and nodded and Lily noted everybody else’s wants briskly. Her hair today was plaited down the back of her head and looped in a shiny band. ‘I’ll bring your drinks right over.’ And she whisked away, disappearing through the counter flap in the direction of the kitchen.

‘Nice girl,’ observed Ray. Isaac was glad to hear him volunteering even such a short comment. He spent so much time inside himself, zapped by chronic fatigue. Generally, he reserved what energy he had for fighting his latest health crap.

Isaac turned back to Stef. ‘This may be my last Christmas in the licensed trade. I’m looking for a more fun career.’ And he told them all about the courses he’d booked to open the door to jobs in the fresh air.

Stef listened with visible interest. ‘Will it mean you being home next Christmas?’

Isaac laughed. ‘I will if I can.’

The drinks arrived, Lily wielding her tray as if it were a part of her. Jasmine and Jeremy dropped the crayons they’d been beginning to bicker over and fell on their Fruit Shoots with cries of, ‘Yeah!’ and ‘Yummmmmmm!’

After a couple of appreciative sips of white wine, Stef turned back to Isaac. ‘So all we need is you to settle down and give us more grandkids.’

Isaac refused to be ruffled. He gave Jasmine and Jeremy a pointed look. ‘You have the best grandkids in the world already.’

Stef regarded them fondly, gently easing the Fruit Shoot bottle from Jasmine’s hand. ‘Don’t drink it all at once, lovie, or you won’t have room for a lovely burger.’ She turned back to Isaac. ‘But we need some more to carry on the name. Jeremy and Jasmine’s surname is Scrivens, like their dad.’

‘But there must be plenty of O’Briens in the world,’ Isaac objected. As he was neither on duty nor driving tonight he’d ordered a pint of Amstel and he took a long draught of it.

‘But not our family,’ Stef pointed out. If she’d stopped there then Isaac would happily have let the conversation drift onto other topics and felt that things were going OK. However, Stef obviously couldn’t resist harking back to exactly what had caused discord between them for the past several years. ‘Trouble was,’ she said, ‘you spent all that time with Hayley and kids weren’t on the cards, with her being a decade older than you.’

Lily had returned to the next table to serve drinks, chatting as she did so.