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be no company at all. I wouldn’t inflict myself on you. Besides, I’d really rather get through the whole day alone. I’m not ready to do any more right now, I’m so sorry. Not this year anyway.’

      Dermot however is good at hearing rejection, claiming he gets enough practice at it in his sex life.

      ‘Offer’s always there if you change your mind,’ he says cheerily. ‘Just remember, this could be your one and only chance to see The House of the Devil on bootleg DVD.’

      It’s like he and Joy are in cahoots though, because that very night when I get home, she’s already there ahead of me and I can just tell by the look on her face exactly what’s on her mind. Time for the Big Chat, that is. The same one I try my level best to dodge my way out of every other year.

      ‘Tick-tock,’ she says, even pausing Netflix on the telly as I burst in and clatter down Tesco shopping bags, while peeling off layers of all my winter paraphernalia; multi-weather brolly/handbag/coat/scarf etc. Everything you need to survive in a country like Ireland, where we effectively have two seasons; winter and winter minor.

      I think the very fact that Joy has torn her head away from Netflix is warning enough that just there’s no dodging the Big Chat right now, try as I might. The giveaway being that she freeze-frames the telly on Breaking Bad, her all-time favourite US TV import at the moment. She’s an out-and-out Breaking Baddict and no matter who calls her in the middle of it, anyone from Krzysztof to her own Mammy, she’ll snarl at the phone and then at me, ‘Nobody calls me in the middle of Breaking Bad. NOBODY.’

      I play for time by asking her whether or not she wants tea and a sticky bun, but she’s well wide to me after all this time.

      ‘Now we’ll have none of your diversionary tactics, Missy,’ she says tartly, getting up from the sofa and following me into the kitchen while I stick the kettle on. ‘Come on, Holly, you know right well Christmas is only ten days away and you’ve got to make some kind of a decision here. You can’t just bury yourself away again this year, like you always do. You’ve got to make plans.’

      ‘And so I already have,’ I tell her, busying myself whipping milk out of the fridge and unpacking groceries I stopped off for earlier.

      ‘You mean hide out here, all alone with nothing but the duvet, the telly and a bottle of Pinot Grigio for company? Same as last year?’

      ‘Can’t think of any better way to mark the worst day on the entire calendar can you?’ I ask, face reddening a bit by now.

      But Joy’s having absolutely none of it.

      ‘Sweetheart,’ she says, softening a bit now. ‘I know. Believe me no one knows more than I do how Godawful it is for you. But staying here all alone, yet again? It’s just not good for you, it’s not healthy. I’d be worried about you.’

      I shrug lightly and act like I’m tossing the whole thing aside, though I doubt strongly that she really does understand. No one possibly could. And with no offence to Joy who only means well, particularly no one like her could ever understand, with two hale and hearty parents, three sisters and two brothers to eat with and drink with and row with and love. Just like family are supposed to at Christmas.

      Family.

      ‘I’m just saying,’ Joy goes on, eyes not leaving me, not even for a second. ‘You know you’re more than welcome to spend the holidays with my family, that goes without saying. My folks would be thrilled to have you, as would all the gang. And I know it’s always a bit boisterous and rowdy, but at least it’s better than being by yourself isn’t it?’

      But that’s the thing though. And Joy knows it by now as well as I do myself.

      ‘Like it or not,’ I sigh, ‘I am all alone.’

      There’s just the tiniest beat, like she’s weighing up whether or not she should say what’s really on her mind.

      ‘Not necessarily,’ she offers quietly.

      ‘Joy, please. Not this. Not again. And certainly not right now.’

      ‘I’m just saying, you can’t know that for definite.’

      ‘But I do know.’

      ‘You know I’d help you, if you ever decided to—’

      ‘Christmas,’ I interrupt her firmly, ‘is a time for family. If you’re lucky enough to be blessed with one, then good for you.’

      ‘But you could have … I mean you might still be able to find out exactly …’

      ‘Look. Whatever happened in the past, the fact is that now I’m alone.’

      And the surest and safest way to get through C-Day, I’ve long learned, is to suffer it out, try and not inflict my company on anyone else and take comfort from the fact that in twenty-four short hours, 26th December will roll around and it’ll be all over for yet another year.

      At least, that’s the plan.

      *

      Maybe it was the conversation with Joy and with Dermot earlier, but in bed that night, it was like the Ghost of Christmases Past came back to haunt me.

       25th December, 1990.

       Thank God we lived in a flat-roof bungalow, that’s all I can remember thinking when Mum got up to her annual festive ritual again. She did this, year in, year out and the seven-year-old me absolutely loved it, despite the whispers floating round the school playground.

       ‘… Everyone knows there’s no such thing as Santa Claus …’

       ‘But that’s not true! I’m telling you, I saw him last year! I waited up for him and about midnight, there he was, giant sack and all. He even took away the carrot stick I’d left out specially for Rudolf …’

       ‘Just listen to you, Holly Johnson. You’re off your head, that’s what’s wrong with you. Because there isn’t any Santa. It’s just your Mam and Dad doing it to try and get you to be good over Christmas. You should see what my parents do every year to keep us believing. Sure last Christmas, my Dad …’.

       ‘Shhh!’ I remember Sandy Curran, who we all used to nickname Sandy Currant Bun, hissing. Then an embarrassed silence while the penny dropped; that the words ‘dad’ or ‘parents’ were something not to be mentioned in front of me, as they all instantly remembered my own particular family situation. In fact, barring Jayne Byrne – a quiet-spoken girl in my class whose father had died the previous year, I was the only other girl who came from a single-parent family.

       ‘Sorry Holly,’ one girl grumbled reluctantly.

       ‘Yeah, me and all. I forgot.’

       ‘I didn’t mean to …’

       ‘It’s OK,’ I shrugged, realizing in the way that little girls of seven can, that my little family had been earmarked as different right from the get-go. Realizing it, though not having the first clue why.

       ‘Ho, ho, HO!!!’ was all I could hear from the roof of our little bungalow, in a woman’s impression of what a deep man’s baritone should be. Which were followed by footsteps but God bless Mum, because she was so svelte and petite, by absolutely no stretch of the imagination could anyone – even a seven-year-old – possibly confuse those footsteps with a rotund, fifteen-stone Santa Claus.

       The trouble she went to just to keep Christmas magical for me, her only child. And I loved her for it, even though I hadn’t the heart to tell her all the disturbing rumours that had been circulating the playground ever since Halloween. Or about Beth, another girl in my class who was openly laughed at and ridiculed for ‘still believing’.

       Then there were the snow prints on the living room carpet, leading a trail all the

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