‘Oh, I don’t know. To go to some really neat place for Christmas, like Mexico or some place, the way Carol always has, and come back with a winter tan and make everyone else jealous. But even Carol can’t do that any more.’

‘Can’t she?’

‘No, her dad had to take early retirement, but at least they don’t have to sell their house. Ann’s parents are going to have to sell theirs, even though her dad’s still working. They have to move some place cheaper. I’m really glad we live here.’

‘I’m glad you are.’

‘Patsy said at first it made her feel funny, to be living where all the really special things happen, as if every day should be somebody’s birthday or Christmas. I wouldn’t really want to be any place else for Christmas.’

‘Why don’t we do some rummaging around in my drawers together and see what we can see?’ David suggested.

‘Sure, why not?’

David opened one drawer after another for his grandaughter’s critical inspection. She was uninhibited in her methods, undoing rolled up socks to check the heels, inspecting the collars of shirts. Patricia had taken such good care of his clothes that he had not had time, in a year and a half, to become a disgrace, but Christine did suggest pitching a thing or two, and he submitted to her judgment.

‘One thing’s sure,’ she said, when she had satisfied herself with the range of his wardrobe, ‘you haven’t got anything that really goes with that new jacket. It’s brown and practically everything else you have is blue.’

‘I suppose it is,’ David said.

‘That’s enough to be going on with,’ Christine decided.

Satisfied with herself, she went back upstairs to report her success to her mother.

It was not just in the supermarkets where baskets invited contributions to the free food banks or downtown where the unemployed lined up to receive the donations; it was in this relatively affluent neighbourhood where the children could feel the recession dogging at everyone’s heels, where more and more parents were facing a new truth, that they had taught their children to want what they could no longer have.