As she took the tray of sizzling potatoes from the oven, Kathryn’s face was flushed and damp. Through the oven door, I could see the bird cooking in its juices.

‘Lay the table for me?’ she said, turning the potatoes in the hot fat.

I arranged the table as I usually did, but when she saw it she frowned. ‘No placemats?’

We only have placemats at Christmas and birthdays. We do have a full set – a wedding present; the transfers depict birds of the British Isles.

I spent a moment wondering whether to give Paul a blue tit or a magpie. I eventually decided on a magpie.

Kathryn came in and eyed my work approvingly. ‘Won’t be long,’ she said, ‘I’ll just make the gravy.’ I knew that today she wouldn’t be pouring boiling water on granules.

‘Anyone would think the queen was coming,’ I said in a voice I thought she might not hear, but she stopped in the doorway.

‘It’s important to him.’

As we stood looking at each other, Robert poked his head over his mother’s shoulder.

‘Have we got time to go out?’ he asked.

‘You stay here,’ I said. I looked back at Kathryn. ‘Why don’t we have some wine, then?’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not?’

‘Why not?’ Robert chimed in.

It was a new thing for us, having wine in the house. I liked the brown bottles of Riesling with their elegant, tapered necks and gold writing on the labels. That writing always reminded me of the lettering on the flyleaf of Mum’s old Bible. I used to read Genesis sometimes, thinking that if I could read the whole book it would make me a better person. We were never religious, but Mum kept the Bible on her bedside table, along with a framed photo of Dad and me in the river at Darvington, a porcelain ballerina, and her teeth in a cup. Whenever I opened that book I smelled the mustiness of good words written on feather-thin pages, but I could never read much beyond the first few chapters.

Robert tilted his glass towards me. I half-filled it. Paul also tilted his glass, and he got the same amount.

I stood at the head of the table. The crisped roast potatoes had their own warmed dish; the peas and carrots steamed under a sliding knob of butter. The gravy sat in its jug, next to a jar of cranberry sauce, unopened since Christmas. A ring of chipolatas surrounded the bird; each was pink on one side, deep brown on the other.

‘Want to carve, Howard?’ Kathryn handed me the knife and three faces looked up, waiting for their meat.