Ever since we did our guitar performance, school has been ace. I’ve signed a million autographs (okay, two) and one of those was on a plaster cast on the leg of a girl in Year Four. She said she wasn’t really allowed to have it signed but when I was famous it would be worth something. (Only then she added the cast will be whipped off soon and she couldn’t help it if I ended up in the hospital bin.) Christopher got asked for his autograph too and he did this amazing lightning flash instead of a dot over his “i”. So I asked him if I could autograph his stomach and when he pulled up his shirt I drew my “a” around his belly button and then chuckled all the way to class. There’s nothing like permanent marker to give you a laugh on a Monday morning.

Jo is our official groupie. When I tell Christopher Jo likes him now that he is a rock star and they could pair up, he tells me he’s off girls – apparently they’re too much like hard work. “Anyway, there’s no way I could compete with saints even if I wanted to,” he tells me, before running off to play football, weaving around a star-struck Jo, and firing the ball between the goalposts.

We’ve signed a deal with Kevin to be our agent/bodyguard. We’ve said that if he lines up all our fans, we’ll sign autographs for fifty pence. Kevin then gets ten pence commission per customer. Unfortunately, we only make one pound in the whole deal and Kevin takes his twenty pence commission and then takes the other eighty pence which he says is his retainer fee plus tax. As for his bodyguarding duties, well, they don’t amount to much more than him chatting up any girls who head in our direction.

It’s not just at school where things have changed. Big Dave, Christopher and Boo have moved into 10 Paradise Parade. Christopher and Boo are in my bedroom and Charles Scallybones is equally fascinated and horrified by the furry creature that keeps running around on a wheel but never gets anywhere. From time to time he thinks about eating Boo’s food but ends up furious at not being able to get his teeth through the cage bars.

By Christmas Day we’re one big happy family, plus Ninja Grace, who hasn’t said a thing all morning. (Not that anyone is complaining.) Mum says we’re going to have the best Christmas ever. At lunchtime she spreads the table with a white tablecloth and puts fake tea lights on top. We’re not allowed to have real candles since Grace burned down Big Dave’s bedroom. We’re also not allowed to talk about it. It is referred to as the-incident-that-cannot-be-mentioned.

When Mum asks Grace to put out the cutlery, Grace says, “Yeessshh,” and then Mum asks if Grace has sneaked some of the Christmas sherry. “No,” Grace says, placing knives and forks on the table. “It wooks wotten.” Mum stares at her and then shoves a spoon in a bowl of steaming sprouts. There are so many they could create enough wind to work the turbines in the fields beyond the Paradise estate. When Big Dave sits down, he says sprouts are the devil’s food but he’ll eat them and be damned.

“I wussed to fink they were fairwy cabbwages,” says Grace.

Big Dave’s jaw drops open, which isn’t pleasant since there’s clearly a squashed fairy cabbage on his tongue. Grace goes red and passes a bowl of roast potatoes in his direction. Big Dave says they’re also the devil’s food and it’s his duty to eat them to protect us all from their dastardly deliciousness. He proceeds to pop one in his mouth. Steam bursts from his pursed lips and he has to quench his mouth with a whole can of beer, downed in one.

After lunch, Mum brings out the snowy-peaked Christmas cake. I make a mental note to encourage Mum to give Grace the piece with the reindeer on top.

In our house it’s traditional to open our presents after dinner. What’s not traditional is Grace opening her mouth to thank Mum for the perfume and Mum screaming, “Why, in God’s name, is there a chunk of sprout still stuck to your tongue?” It isn’t a sprout. It is a stud. Grace looks wounded (more wounded than having her tongue stabbed with a needle and a silver ball inserted). She says she got it done on Christmas Eve as a treat to herself. Mum says she needs a lie-down as a treat to herself and we’ll have to open the rest of our presents without her.

Mum has bought me a new mobile phone and when Grace offers to put some more of her glittery stickers on it I offer to get a magnet and see what effect it has on metal tongue studs. That shuts her up. Well, that and the swollen tongue. Christopher gets a huge new hamster wheel, which is like the London Eye for rodents. Big Dave bought me a new book on Sherlock Holmes and a sky lantern set and tells me I can make my own super-duper deluxe version now. Grace gets an envelope from Big Dave and looks disappointed until she realizes there’s a piece of paper inside offering her ten driving lessons. That’s when I wonder if I should have given Big Dave an envelope offering him trauma counselling instead of a book on repairing cars for idiots. He thought it was hilarious – the book, that is – but it wasn’t meant to be a joke. It was all I could find in the bookshop for the amount of money I had. Signing autographs doesn’t pay much these days.

Grace spends the rest of Christmas Day picking food out from under her stud and I spend it wondering if Dad is, at this very moment, eating Christmas pudding with the beefy boy. I did break my promise not to bother with Dad by dropping a Christmas card through his letter box. It had a load of beans in Christmas hats on the front. It’s the best Christmas there’s ever bean, it said. I didn’t write my name inside. I chickened out and tried to content myself with the fact that something I’d touched landed inside Dad’s world, even if he didn’t know it was from me. Dad didn’t send one to me but then I didn’t expect one – even though I sort of thought if I let him go he’d come back. Incredible things don’t happen, even if you’re mates with Saint Gabriel.

That’s another thing – I think about giving Jo her medal again, but something holds me back. I don’t know if it’s the Dad situation that’s preventing me feeling truly happy. Everything else in my life is going well. It’s just this one thing – one thing that can’t be perfect. Jo hasn’t asked me for the medal back either. She’s moved on to making her own rosary beads from the tears of baby unicorns. Actually, I think she’s making them from broken necklaces she bought at the charity shop but, whatever, she hasn’t remembered I’ve got Saint Gabriel.

So Saint Gabriel has decided to live with me, where I think he’s quite happy as a castaway on the pirate island. Charles Scallybones tried to eat him once but I managed to grasp him from the jaws of certain death. Instead Charles Scallybones ate a monkey and a palm tree and I was happy that I saved Saint Gabriel’s life. That means I could be a saint myself. Saint Daniel of Hope has a ring to it.

Another thing – I’ve stopped having those Dad dreams, the ones where I’m buried under leaves and Dad’s hand reaches out. And I don’t think I miss them.