I look at my red-faced, angry child sitting on a pile of rags in this broken-down house and I feel tears pricking at my eyes. Maybe it was the song and the memory of happy times with my mum. And I realize I’m everything Mark said I was: a girl who never grew up, who never learned how to do what adults do. ‘For fuck’s sake, Lisa, you can’t even change a light bulb.’ I put my hands to my ears to drown out his voice as if he’s here in the room and not in my head.

When I take them away, Joe is still screaming. Why can’t he just be quiet for five minutes? Why can’t he just stop? Then I look at him and all my rage ebbs away, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of love, so powerful it feels like it might rip me in two.

Pull yourself together, Lisa, I tell myself. He’s a child, your child, who is miles away from home and all his comforts. He’s confused and hungry and cold. And even after everything, Mark’s still his dad, of course he’s going to be asking for him. I need to step up now and start being a proper mother. Wiping my eyes, I locate the shopping bags that are lying crumpled by the door and dig around inside, trying to find something that could constitute a healthy breakfast. I’m relieved to see that despite my manic state yesterday I still managed to put some fruit into the basket. I take a tangerine from its mesh bag and begin to peel the skin.

‘Look what Mummy’s got,’ I say, holding up the fruit for Joe to see. ‘Lovely tangerines.’

‘Father Christmas been,’ he says, staring at me with wide, watery eyes.

‘Not yet,’ I say, my stomach sinking at the mention of Christmas. ‘But he’ll be getting ready. The elves will be working round the clock to get all those presents finished in time.’

‘That,’ he says, pointing at the tangerine. ‘Father Christmas?’

And then I get it. I know what he’s talking about. He’s referring to something I thought was lost for ever, a memory I’d tried to resurrect. When I was young my parents would fill a long red knitted stocking with nuts and sweets, a small present and a tangerine. Then, when they were sure I was asleep, they’d tiptoe into the room and hang it on the end of my bed. All my big presents would be downstairs in the living room round the tree but that red stocking was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. It was the first taste of the magic that lay ahead that day, the promise of what was to come. I’d wanted to carry on the tradition when Joe was born but Mark couldn’t understand the idea of having fruit and nuts as presents, he dismissed it as ‘1980s North London hippy nonsense’, so Joe’s first Christmas had consisted of expensive, educational toys, all chosen by Mark. The next Christmas was the toughest of my life. I don’t know how I got through it. But despite my heartache I still made sure, with some help from a friend, that Joe got a stocking with a tangerine. Nothing, not even Mark, was going to stop me doing that. The fact that Joe remembers warms my heart. I did do something right, after all, I think to myself as I peel the fruit and feed him it, piece by piece. No matter what Mark says, I did do something right.