Dad comes to pick me up and stays for dinner at Mae’s house. We have chicken wings with sticky sauce and rice and peas. It’s delicious. Dad looks a bit disappointed that there isn’t enough for seconds.

Mae’s mum notices. ‘Do you cook at home?’ she asks him.

‘A bit,’ he says. Then he pauses and adds, ‘I should do more. But I get very tired.’

‘This is an easy recipe,’ Mae’s mum says. ‘Ten minutes of chopping things, and then you just put it in the oven. And cook the rice.’

Dad looks down at his empty plate. For a moment I think he’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t.

‘I’ll have the recipe,’ I say. ‘I like cooking.’

Dad gets up abruptly and leaves the room.

We all stare at each other. I feel my cheeks get hot, and my eyes fill with tears. I do like cooking! I’ve cooked for Dad loads of times! Is he angry with me? Why?

No one is quite sure what to do.

‘Are you okay?’ Mae whispers to me.

I nod fiercely, not looking at her.

Mae’s dad starts talking about something that happened to him on the way to work last week. Mae’s mum listens and asks questions and laughs in the right place, collecting the plates and bringing a fruit salad to the table for pudding. Christopher complains that he doesn’t like fruit and starts picking his nose. Mae keeps sneaking sideways looks at me and although I know it’s because she’s worried about me, I wish she wouldn’t. It makes me embarrassed. I accept a bowl of fruit salad and stare at it.

When Dad comes back in, he says, ‘Sorry, everyone,’ and sits down at the table. But he doesn’t explain why he left the room, and he won’t catch my eye, so I wonder if he’s still angry with me for some reason. My throat feels too tight to eat.

There’s another awkward pause, and then Mae’s mum says, ‘Are you looking forward to Christmas, Calypso?’

I’m not, really. It’s just going to be Dad and me, like it always is, and I’ve never minded before. But this year the thought of just him and me, sitting in a cold house, reading books … it frightens me. It’s lonely, and sad, and Christmas should be about family … and we haven’t got any. Mum’s parents are dead, and Dad’s parents emigrated to Australia just after I was born, so I think I’ve only met them twice. And I have no aunts or uncles or cousins – not a single one. Can a family be just two people? Is that normal?

‘I …’ I begin, but then I don’t know what to add to the sentence. So I bite on my lip instead and poke at my fruit salad.

‘Can she come here?’ Mae asks suddenly.

‘What?’

Everyone looks at Mae.

‘They,’ says Mae carefully. ‘Can they come here? Calypso and her dad?’

My eyes dry magically, as though blown by a fairy wind. Christmas at Mae’s house! It is an overwhelming thought. I can’t allow myself to think of it too much. Surely …

I turn to my father. He looks like a hamster does when you reach in to pick it up. Not sure which way to run.

‘Er …’ he says. ‘Well …’

‘Oh, please,’ I say, my mouth forming the words without any air.

‘Well,’ says Mae’s dad, ‘let’s see how things go, shall we?’

After dinner, I go to get my coat and Mae follows me to the hall. ‘You must come for Christmas!’ she whispers. ‘It’d be brilliant! You have to persuade your dad!’

I grab her hands, my heart filled with fire. ‘I will come if it takes every breath in my body.’

Mae squeezes my hands even more tightly. ‘Come first thing in the morning and bring your stocking! We can open them together!’

I glance at Dad, but he’s busy talking to Mae’s dad. ‘My stocking presents are never very good,’ I whisper as quietly as I can.

Mae pulls me close and whispers into my ear, ‘Then you can have some of mine.’

That settles it. I have to be at Mae’s house for Christmas. I have to!