Sean jumped in, ‘Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies ...’ He had a croaky voice, but Tess said, ‘Tch!’ because it wasn’t an old song. He carried on anyway, ‘Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly ... a girl with kaleidoscope eyes ... ‘ Manus had joined in and they both knew the words, ‘Cellophane flowers of yellow and green ...’ By the time they got to the duh-duh-duh bit, Connor and Paul were standing up playing drums and the guitar with sticks and singing along, ‘Lucy in the sky with diamonds, Lucy in the sky with diamonds ... ‘ Nana was roaring out laughing with her yellow drink held up away from her and her glasses bouncing. Only Busola and Carmel weren’t moving, Tess had her hand up shielding her eyes and my mum was nodding her head along to it. I looked round at my dad, he was just watching. I couldn’t see Uncle Eamon, he’d gone inside.

He came out wrestling two giant logs he threw on the fire so sparks flew up into the sky, and everyone settled in to the warm, with my dad bringing up two chairs for him and Uncle Eamon. I stopped listening to what people were saying and looked at the fire. Paul and Connor had their knees tucked up facing each other over by the dogs, swapping Arsenal football cards of Charlie George, Bob Wilson and Eddie Kelly. My mum was chanting ‘Football crazy, football mad’ but they couldn’t hear. Even the dogs looked bored, ‘Charlie George, I’ll give you a gob-stopper’, Paul said. ‘2-1,’ said Connor. It didn’t even make sense. I stopped, and listened to the fire crackling.