This time of year brought with it memories so palpable, I could almost taste the nostalgia.

I sat down at the table in the kitchen and held Ben’s comfort blanket. I stroked the edge he had created over the years. Christmas carols were playing on the record player very low; the familiar notes flowed through into the kitchen. I clutched the blanket closer to me and remembered how he was nearly twelve years old by the time he gave it up. I remember because he was due to start high school. The day I told him it was time for him to give up the blanket I heard him weeping into his pillow. I took it, washed it and hid it from him in the highest shelf in my wardrobe. I forgot about it until I was having one of my massive clear outs a few months later. I found it in Ben’s room folded up inside his bed side table drawer under a pile of magazines. It smelled of him so I knew he had been using it each night. I left it there and said nothing more about it. The attachment to it was so fierce; if it kept him happy, what harm could it do? He only kept it with him in his bedroom, so no one would ever know about it.

When he left to live with her, he left it behind. He must have tossed it into the airing cupboard when he was packing. It was no longer needed. That item that bore so much significance in his life for so long was now cast aside just the way I had been. I wondered how it was he could have had such an attachment to something and then simply pretend it never existed. He had been brainwashed by her, that’s what had happened and I needed to make him see that.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before he would be sitting back where he should be, leaving his coat on the back of the kitchen chair and spilling coffee granules all over the kitchen surface. I could live with that, as I always had done. What I couldn’t live with was the fact that he had left me for her. A blatant liar.

And I knew by whatever means I had to get him back in my life.

With every ticking moment, Christmas Eve was coming to an end and Christmas Day was almost here. And then I would see Ben. And her. Such a manic contrast between anxiety and excitement were my feelings that I had to pour myself another brandy. It was doing its job nicely, taking the edge off.

By five o’clock the brandy had well and truly relaxed me. I went into the lounge and turned off the record player. I poked the fire as the last embers burned out and turned off the Christmas lights. I was tired and would head up for a bath and get to bed early, ready for their arrival tomorrow.