It didn’t matter how many times I came here. I would never get used to it. And now it had the added mystery of being the place that Dad had been when he wasn’t with us in our tiny terraced house. The two sides of his secret life couldn’t have been more different. I sometimes wondered which part he liked best, but if I thought about that too deeply it made me cry, so I tried not to.

Marlon edged the car a little further on until we were outside the slightly less grand door to Clio’s wing. She had fairy lights, too, but her wreath was made of felt with brightly coloured birds on little springs that stuck out at mad angles.

Her door opened and Clio appeared wearing a red dress with snowflakes on it.

‘Look, Nono,’ I said. ‘There’s your snow!’

Noah tutted, but he was so delighted to see Clio that he seemed to forget his disappointment. ‘Auntie Clio, Auntie Clio! Look what I brought,’ he said, thrusting his gloves under her nose.

He’d insisted on calling her that after I’d explained how we were all connected. I wasn’t keen on it, but Clio was thrilled to bits so I’d let it go. Poppy just stuck to plain Clio.

‘Are they new?’ Clio asked him. ‘Wait! I got some too. We can be Glove Twins.’

‘Glove Twins! Glove Twins!’ chanted Noah as he danced around her.

‘Shall we go in?’ asked Clio, stepping aside, and Poppy and Noah made their way straight through to the den where all the games were waiting. I was about to object, but Clio waved a hand.

‘Let them go,’ she said. ‘They don’t want to listen to boring grown-up talk.’

In Clio’s lounge there was a tray already laid out with loads of nibbles and a bottle of champagne cooling in a silver bucket. The room was lit with lots of candles even though it wasn’t dark outside. Her Christmas tree was more of a twig than a tree, but it was elegant and tasteful without any tinsel or children’s doily-angels to clutter it up. Simple glass baubles hung from every branch. Everything just oozed class.

Marlon did the honours with the champagne and soon we all had a tall slim bubbling glass in hand.

‘What are we drinking to?’ he asked.

Clio looked from me to him and then back to me.

‘To new beginnings,’ she said, and I could hear in her voice a silver thread of determination that sounded very familiar.

Lunch was a buffet, a mixture of things carefully selected so that no one felt awkward and everyone could find something they liked. Then Clio announced that we all needed to play a game.

‘It is Christmas, after all,’ she said when I groaned. ‘What shall we play? It needs to be something that Noah can manage.’