Grady had a couple of things to say but could wait till Mac was warm and dry.

Across the hall the sound of the TV blared from the sitting room along with the raucous laughter of Niall, Mac’s fourteen-year-old son, whose voice had deepened in the last months. Mac swung round and hissed at Grady, ‘I don’t want Niall to see me like this,’ then raced upstairs in his wet socks, two-sizes-too-small Santa pants looking uncomfortably strained in tender places.

Grady caught Tonya’s voice, high and worried, and Mac’s answering rumble, soothing yet frustrated. Grady winced. He loved his mercurial sister-in-law but explaining where your car was and why you were wearing Santa trousers? One thing Grady hadn’t missed since his relationship with Pippa ended last February was awkward questions.

About to stroll into the sitting room and hang out with his nephew to share an episode of The Mandalorian, Grady paused when he heard Mac hiss his name. Seeing his brother beckoning over the upstairs banister, he cast a longing look into the sitting room and the fire he could see blazing in the hearth, then altered course to trudge up the carpeted stairs. Rounding the top, he found Tonya, hands on hips. Her eyes were huge in her pointed face and she reminded Grady of a pretty (if confused) elf, pink hair spiked up from the sides to meet in the middle.

Mac, still huddled up in his coat and Santa pants, glanced at Grady and indicated his wife with a nod. ‘Tell her what happened. She thinks I’m making it up.’

Tonya jumped in before Grady could get the first word out. ‘I’m not accusing him of lying, Grady, I just don’t understand. He was late. I rang you both and no one answered. Then suddenly your phones and Mac’s car keys were lying on the doormat in the hall. I opened the front door and Mac’s jeans and boots were piled on the step. It was like a scary movie. I was about to ring the police.’

‘Our phones and the keys were put through the door?’ Grady repeated incredulously. He glanced at Mac. ‘That’s a relief. I presume we are going to ring the police, though, aren’t we? When you’ve got warm clothes.’ Then, realising he hadn’t reassured Tonya, he said, ‘We were coming home from watching Peterborough play and stopped to help some guys. They’d overtaken us a minute earlier and it looked as if their car had broken down.’

Tonya’s fair brows flew up towards her upswept hair. ‘You stopped in the middle of nowhere?’

‘They were teenagers,’ Mac put in. ‘It was precisely because it was the middle of nowhere that I stopped. It was snowing.’