‘Right you are then. I’ll see you in the pub.’

Annie sloped off to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. She was waiting for the kettle to boil when the doorbell rang.

She wasn’t expecting anyone, and she hoped that Royal Mail wasn’t about to deliver another unwelcome gift that was too big to slip through the letterbox.

It wasn’t, thank God. But she got quite a surprise nonetheless.

‘Hello there, Annie,’ her visitor said. ‘It’s good to see you after all this time. It’s been eighteen months, by my reckoning.’

Her jaw dropped, and there was a moment’s hesitation before she was able to conjure up a smile.

‘Uncle Bill! What are you doing here? I didn’t expect you until the twenty-second.’

‘I decided to come early because I feared that if I left it any later the bad weather would make it impossible for me to get here.’

He was standing on the doormat with a scarf around his neck and his hands buried in the pockets of a thick overcoat. Annie looked over his shoulder at the road.

‘So where’s your car? And why haven’t you got an overnight bag or case?’

‘Look, can we please save the questions until I’m inside? I’m so cold my teeth are chattering.’

She stood back to let him in, and the first thing he did when the door was closed was to encase her in a hug. He reeked of sweat and tobacco, but she didn’t mind because the gesture was welcome and it caused an ache to swell in her chest.

They hadn’t spoken since the bust-up at her mother’s wake – it wasn’t for want of trying, at least on Annie’s part – because every time she’d phoned him, he’d told her that he didn’t want to talk to her. She eventually gave up and accepted that he was set in his stubborn ways and a reconciliation was out of the question. Which was why she was so surprised when he accepted with alacrity her invitation to join her and James’s family for Christmas in Kirkby Abbey.

‘It’s good to see you, Annie,’ he said, pulling back from the embrace. ‘I’m here because I believe it’s time we put the past behind us and got reacquainted. I’m sorry I waited so long.’

She felt tears well up as they stared at one another. She thought he looked much older than his sixty-eight years. The lines in his face were deep and unforgiving, and he had pale, bloodshot eyes that were rheumy under dropping lids. Patches of slate-grey hair clung to his shiny scalp, and his skin had a yellow tinge.

He broke eye contact with her and thrust his chin towards the kitchen.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a brew, my dear,’ he said. ‘And you can tell me why you decided to move back to the sticks.’

Annie made the teas and they settled in the kitchen to drink them. She started off the conversation by saying that she was meeting James in an hour and invited Bill to join them at the pub.