24 December 1984 (six years old)

I’m not sure I like the idea of Father Christmas. A man with a big, puffy cloud of a beard pouring himself down the chimney and sneaking into my bedroom while Mum and Lorcan snore away next door. Mum promised me – crossed her heart and hoped to die – that there was nothing to be scared of. I wanted to hang up one of Lorcan’s stripy cotton socks, but she pointed out the holes in the toes, told me it had to be a stocking so it could fit all the presents. She’d bought one specially, and now it’s pinned to the end of my bed, all woolly and hopeful. I hope he really is coming. But also I hope he’s not.

Lorcan doesn’t really like Christmas. He keeps going on about the ‘comm-er-shall-ization’, which means that Moneybags Men have stolen the idea and turned it into something else, and saying he doesn’t want any presents. I made him a card at school, with stick-on stars and a flock of cotton-ball sheep: Miss Harper couldn’t understand me putting ‘Lorcan’ in glitter pen, not ‘Dad’, but she doesn’t understand about stuff like ‘comm-er-shall-ization’ and why you have to keep watching out for it. I did try to explain it to her. I was a bit scared of giving my card to him, but his face lit up like the pilot light in our noisy boiler. ‘Thank you, petal,’ he said, scooping me onto his knee and squeezing me against him so hard I could feel his skeleton. It made me feel full of happy, like a balloon blown so big it pops.

To fox the Moneybags Men we’re having a Continental Christmas, which means that instead of boring old lunch tomorrow we’re having dinner tonight, and I’m allowed to stay up until at least nine, which is ages past my bedtime. Mum’s downstairs roasting a chicken, the radio blaring out the kind of carols that are sung by posh boys with high-pitched voices, her lovely, tuneless voice trying and failing to hit the high notes along with theirs. Lorcan can’t be home yet. He can sing for real, it’s his job, and if he was here, he’d tease her enough to make her gradually turn herself down to silent, like turning off the radio when The Archers has finished. I stop staring at my stocking, imagining how fat it might become, and run down the narrow corridor to find her.

She’s pulling the glossy brown chicken out of the oven, her pretty face all flushed and shiny. I think she’s prettier than other people’s mums, even though she doesn’t bother with lipstick. When I’m a grown-up I’m going to wear make-up every single day, even if I’m ill in bed. She’s wearing a flowery red dress instead of her normal jeans, and her hair is pinned up on the back of her head, with little bits trailing downwards like vines that princes climb up to rescue fair maidens.

‘There you are!’ she says. ‘Why don’t you get out three knives and forks, and start laying the table?’

‘Is it suppertime?’

‘Yes,’ she says, even though she’s making a big tin-foil tent for the chicken and turning the oven down low enough to push him back in.

‘When Lorcan gets home?’

‘Yes,’ she says again, not looking round. Her ‘Yes’ makes a flat sound, like something heavy being dropped. The posh boys are starting on their next carol: I want her to sound happy and sing-y again.

‘What’s this one, Mum? I heard you singing “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” with them.’

‘Could you hear me upstairs?’ she says, a smile back in her voice. ‘Did I sound like a cat being strangled?’

That’s what Lorcan always says.

‘No!’

‘Is that a big fat lie, Mia?’

And then we hear his key in the lock. I can’t help looking at where the little hand is on our kitchen clock: it’s well past eight, and I wonder if Mum will be cross, but she rushes across the room and throws her arms around his neck.

‘Hello, sex bomb,’ he says, kissing her on the lips for ages. She pulls away in the end, and he comes over to me, my hands still full of knives and forks. He picks me up by my waist, swings me around, and the knives and forks go flying like confetti but it doesn’t make him stop.

‘Hello, petal,’ he says, loudly kissing each of my cheeks. I’m squealing, feeling sick and happy all at once, and Mum’s telling him to put me down right now, but she’s laughing too much to make the words come out properly. He sets me down, looks at the scattered cutlery, and drops to his knees.

‘Quick, it’s a treasure hunt,’ he says, crawling under the table and pulling the cloth across his face, peeking out at me. I crawl straight after him, but he’s already hidden the knives and forks. Every time I find one, he sings, ‘We are the champions,’ and when I find the final knife he tickles me so hard I think I’ll explode.

‘Come on now, supper,’ says Mum, voice firm, and Lorcan makes his naughty face, but he does crawl out from our hidey-hole, his hand extending back to me. I perch on a chair, my legs swinging beneath my dress, just watching him.

‘Are you getting excited about Father Christmas?’ he asks me.

Mum gives him a look I can’t quite decode, even though I’m so good at codes I could be in the Famous Five – I’d solve far more clues than useless Anne. Perhaps Mum’s thinking I’ll get scared again.

‘Yes!’ I say, in an extra-excited voice, so they won’t worry. ‘I’ve asked him for the Famous Five omnibus and a glitter pen.’

‘That guy is quite a dude!’ says Lorcan, and Mum gives him another funny look. I don’t know what a ‘dude’ is, but I nod slowly like I do when I’m pretending I understand. Meanwhile Mum pulls the chicken out, telling Lorcan to make the gravy, and Lorcan produces a bottle of champagne from his rucksack even though I’m sure we can’t afford it. It’s what posh people – like Lord Snooty in the Beano – drink. Lorcan is very good at singing but people don’t appreciate him enough and it means that we don’t have many new things. Most of my clothes have been worn by other children, apart from when my grandparents decide they need to dress me (‘Like rags!’ said Granny, yanking at my blue corduroy pinafore, and my cheeks felt like sunburn), and my toys come from jumble sales. I don’t really like toys anyway; they’re for babies. I like books. My reading age is eight even though I’m six. I heard Miss Harper saying to Mum that I’m very ‘mature’, which means I’m like a grown-up trapped up in a child’s body.

Mum produces a box of crackers, bright green foil ones, and puts one next to each plate with a flourish. Lorcan looks at his for a few silent seconds, then asks me to pull it with him. He pretends it’s very, very hard – like we’re having a tug of war – then falls off his chair as the cracker springs in my direction. Inside there’s a red plastic ring, a shiny pretend diamond stuck to the front. I screw up my face to show that I know it’s a bit yucky, but Lorcan picks it up.

‘Princess Mia,’ he says in a Lord Snooty voice, dropping suddenly to his knees. ‘May I kiss your ring?’

I nod, giggling, a bit scared, and he gives it an extravagant smack of the lips, pushing it onto my middle finger. I look at it, glittering there: now it seems like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t take it off once, all Christmas holidays, even when I’m in the bath or in bed. Every time I see it, it reminds me how big and puffy I got with happiness.