‘Happy Christmas, Reg,’ I whispered. And as an afterthought: ‘Happy Christmas to you too, Mum and Dad.’

I’d woken up in hotel rooms or tents on the majority of my Christmas mornings. In the first few years after leaving my aunt’s hotel to work for Reg, Christmases were usually spent in different countries: from the Antarctic to Russia to Alaska and Norway. I loved it, even when I was climbing a snowy hill with Reg’s camera strapped to my back in a blizzard so intense that I could barely see. I felt like I belonged: to Reg, to his crew, to people I’d grown to see as a family of sorts. When I began getting camera jobs myself, Reg and I sometimes managed to find each other around Christmas: in London at his flat, where he let me stay sometimes, or even on shoots when he’d make a trip out to see me, or me him. There’d be the annual exchange of practical gifts – a windbreaker, a lens cleaner, one year a book on the mating rituals of polar bears. It didn’t feel particularly festive, more a comforting nod to tradition.

Reg didn’t have his own family. He hadn’t had children and his parents were long gone. I liked to think he found some comfort in our little Christmas meet-ups when they occurred, not that he ever told me that. Even when he suggested I rent the room in his flat as a ‘base’ to save me paying for storage in London, it was delivered in his usual no-nonsense practical voice. ‘I figured out you’d save four hundred pounds a month so pay me two hundred and it’s yours. Throw in brewing coffee on the mornings we’re both here and we have a deal.’

That was five years ago. Looking back, maybe he was aware of his age – eighty-five then – and the need to have some kind of presence there. Or maybe I’m doing myself a disservice, maybe he just liked my company. Two years ago, we spent Christmas in the flat. I got a turkey, some potatoes, made a simple Christmas meal. We drank wine and I even convinced Reg to pull a cracker and put one of those silly hats on. In the back of my mind, I was aware it was ten years since I’d spent my last Christmas with my parents. Maybe that was why I’d made the effort, an attempt to prove to myself life goes on when your parents turn their backs on you.

And now here I was, in a strange family’s vast house in the middle of nowhere. What would Reg say? Would he say I was imposing? I think he’d be more interested in the wildlife that could be found in the mountains.