Father Christmas crept round the children’s rooms, left pillowcases on the bottom of their beds (wind-up bath toys, crayons, chocolate pennies, spinning tops that played ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, Chinese flowers that you sprinkled over water and that blossomed into bright paper petals), drank a swig from the glass of sweet sherry she and Clem had left at the top of the stairs, then another, and poured the rest down the bathroom sink before replacing it empty on the landing; she lifted the mince pie out of its foil case and ate it standing in the hallway. She read a chapter of her book, sitting by the fire whose embers still gave out a dull glow and faint heat, then slid into bed beside Adrian and kissed him on the shoulder.

‘You’re lovely and warm,’ she said, laying a hand on his back and pushing her feet against his calves. ‘Happy Christmas.’

He grunted and muttered thickly into the crook of his arm.

‘Adrian?’

‘Mmmph.’

‘Things will get better again, you know.’

Adrian made an indeterminate sound.

‘We have to be patient.’ She waited and he didn’t reply. ‘It’s about the long haul, after all,’ she continued, not knowing if he could hear her. She wondered where that expression came from – was it just to do with pulling on a rope or something for a long time; or was it to do with a trip by boat, no longer hugging the shore but out on the open sea: blue water then slate-grey or tea bag-brown; a breeze and then high waves like buildings falling down on you, so you couldn’t see the horizon any longer and you didn’t know quite where you were heading; weathering the storms. Heave away, haul away.

‘Do you remember when we moved here?’ she said. A little snore came from Adrian. ‘Dragging the double mattress up here? Remember?’

They’d had almost no furniture – just the stuff she’d kept when her mother died, a rocking chair and a rickety chest with lots of small drawers in it, three paintings. They’d bought a small fridge, a vacuum cleaner and a king-size mattress that they’d carried along the street in the rain, and then hauled giggling up the stairs, getting wedged in round the tight corner, him pulling backwards and her trying to manoeuvre it forwards. And when at last they’d dragged it into their room, they’d laid it out under the curtainless window and, without a word, sunk down on it together, still giggling, pulling off each other’s wet clothes, tracing each other’s smile with their fingers. Joy like a bird.

‘Remember?’ she repeated, while beside her Adrian breathed rhythmically. ‘Remember?’

He grunted something; his mouth was half open and he smelt of wine and wood smoke.