By the time we’ve finished eating, it’s 7.15 am. I stand outside, mug in one hand, cigarette in the other, and try to imagine what Beau might be doing now. I’m not sure if he’ll know it’s Christmas, if that’s even something they acknowledge on the commune. Maybe Maria has made him a gift?

I wish I could tell him that the first Christmas without your mother is the hardest, and it’ll get easier – not better – that the pain will dull each year until it feels sad but normal she’s not there. I wish I could do the things for him that I’d wanted someone to do for me. I’d fill his day with activity and distraction, keep him moving, make him laugh. The worst thing is to be alone, sitting in the quietness with no escape from the ache of loss in your gut.

At four in the afternoon, when by rights we should be sleeping off lunch, Abby wedges the front door open to a pulsating flow of people who, one gush at a time, fill the house. Abby introduces them as ‘from the street’, ‘from Sarah’s school’, ‘from Mark’s work’. There are women who ask after the twins before anyone else, women who carry gifts of potted poinsettias, bowls of trifle, plastic trays of sandwiches, and know where they need to go, and men who seem befuddled about why they’ve brought their family to this house for more Christmas carry-on. Before even an hour has passed, the house resembles a zoo at feeding time. The air is filled with talk and laughter, with kids running and spilling.

I want to go back to bed, but Abby tells Dad and me to talk to the guests. I stand next to Dad as a man with a thick black moustache and puffy hair says he’s sorry to hear about his loss. He asks Dad how he’s coping. Dad still has no coherent answer to this question. The man drifts away, then one woman after another comes over to offer Dad more chicken, more coleslaw, more watermelon. He wants none of it. He’s hardly eaten in weeks. The rest of us ate our own body weight at lunchtime, and in this hot, crowded room the food smells swill in the air, mixing with sweat and cigarette smoke. Dad is jollied and talked at. I’m finding even a sideline dose of this exhausting, but I’m better than Dad at coming up with shut-it-down answers: ‘Yep, Bali’, ‘Soon as I can’, ‘No one special right now’, ‘Well, hey, it’s summer, it gets steamy, right?’ I don’t know how he’s coping with the ramped-up version. I head outside for a break, watching people socialise while I smoke.

As I squash my cigarette stub under my thong, Mark calls out to me through the back door. ‘Charlie, phone.’

I have no idea how he heard it ring but I go into the crowded kitchen, cover one ear with my hand and press the phone against the other.