Christmas Day at my parents’ house, as is tradition. As is also tradition, friends of my parents—roughly half the town—pop around during the day to pass on their seasonal greetings and to partake in a tipple or two, to get in the “holiday spirit.” They are mostly retired couples like Mum and Dad, with empty nests and children who live too far away to return home every Christmas. They are filled with stories about “how well Susan is doing in her top-earning, high-flying executive job,” and how “the children really like their new nanny.” She’s German, they think. Or maybe Swiss.

It makes me sad to think about it. But I can’t honestly say that if I was Susan, cancer free, in a great job and living the city dream, I’d make the effort to come home for Christmas either. You can read all the self-help books you like, but perspective only really hits when you’re running out of the time you need to put it in practice. Death tends to do that, though: rob you of time.

It is a wonderful day. A lazy, easy, carefree day. I have my village of people around me, except Amanda, who was apparently so drunk Christmas Eve she fell asleep on the roundabout in town and spends Christmas Day at her parents’ house comatose on the couch and texting me things like

Oh God, I think I kissed that guy Nate we went to school with. The one who used to eat worms. Remember him? With the weirdly straight side-part? FML.

The day is both unremarkable and memorable, for all the right reasons.

The week between Christmas and New Year is spent, as always, finishing off the ridiculously oversized ham my mother bought before it goes off, and sitting on the lawn with our feet in paddling pools complaining about the heat. Well, the others do. I don’t because I love summer. Everything seems easier when the weather is warmer. People are generally less miserable.

I do two more articles for the magazine. Nadia has taken to phoning for updates now instead of visiting, and James is happy to supply her with the photos she needs. He mischievously sends in the family Christmas awful-sweater photo, and none of us know until the issue hits the stand. I see the funny side but Kate is mortified. We might know it’s an ironic photo, she says, but the rest of the country doesn’t.

As soon as we get back to Kate’s each time I head for the beach. The curved shore is mostly private and empty, and I can sit with my thoughts and be hypnotized by the waves lapping the shore. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I laugh. I build a sandcastle, on an afternoon when the sky is the bluest blue you’ve ever seen and the sun is unbearably hot. Everyone else refuses to leave the cool shelter of the house, so I build it alone, decorating the walls with sun-bleached shells and little sticks of driftwood. I am ridiculously proud of it, so when the tide turns and gradually washes it away I feel sad. Nothing is permanent. Not feelings, not people, not sandcastles. I strip down to my underwear and float on my back in the sea, keeping a wary eye on the shore to make sure I don’t drift out too far. The memory of that dream is still with me.