Concludes today. Scene 1 can be read in last week’s post

My phone buzzes and I glance down at a text. It’s an update from our sixteen year old babysitter, who lives two doors along. Baby Rosie hasn’t stirred and she’s managed to get Lulu off to bed but Connor is proving more resistant and has yet to succumb. I send a quick message with ideas for threats then finish my last, sublime mouthful of salmon. I want to delay our return until we’ve finished pudding, at least. I’ve chosen creme brulee, which is what I would always choose if it’s on offer. Gary is having sticky toffee pudding. My mother is a devotee of meringue and has pavlova. Saintly Melissa has passed on the pudding.

‘We can’t stay for coffee’ I tell my mother and she frowns. ‘Sophie the babysitter will need rescuing and I said we’d be back before midnight’.

‘What about the cheese and biscuits?’ she says. Gary gives me a sidelong glance.

‘Perhaps you can get them to box up some for us to take?’ I say.

As we prepare to leave them, Mum tells me that James and Melissa are going on holiday to Mauritius in a couple of weeks and she and Dad will be looking after their house and garden, as well as the two rabbits. Perhaps we’d like to bring the children to see the rabbits? I murmur something non-comital, as I imagine their neighbours would like to come home and find their rabbits in good health, or alive at least.

Months go by and life continues in the usual chaotic fashion. I’ve begun negotiating the customary, delicate timetable of Christmas visiting, juggling Gary’s parents, my parents and various obligatory dropping in to friends and relations. In reality, I long for Christmas here, amongst the comforting mayhem of our own hovel, where sticky messes, broken items, noise and squabbles don’t matter.

My mother phones, ostensibly to discuss Christmas but I can tell she has other, more pressing news to impart. She begins slowly then speeds up as she tells me the tale of woe.

‘Sarah- I thought I should tell you because you’ve met James and Melissa and you know that we’ve got to know and like them so much. They’re having a terrible time.’

‘Oh?’ I wait, wondering what I feel; not joyful or triumphant [as in the carol], not desperately sad. I feel a sense of detachment, rather like hearing the news on the radio about folks I’ve never met.

‘Well,’ she continues, ‘you know Benji was doing so well at uni? It seems he’s been arrrested on a drugs charge.’

‘Oh dear,’ I murmur.

‘Yes and not just that. He’s dropped out of college and shacked up with some girl and got her pregnant!’ There’s a catch in Mum’s voice as if she might burst into tears. ‘Melissa’s been coming over to ours every day, so upset. James is furious, of course and talking about disowning and disinheriting Benjamin. It’s so distressing for them. We don’t know what to do for the best!’

At this point, all kinds of suggestions pop into my head, none of them helpful to my mother, who seems to have forgotten that I, myself dropped out of uni owing to an unplanned pregnancy. When I try to bring the conversation back to Christmas, she wails that James and Melissa’s Christmas will, of course be ruined and I’m proud of myself for saying that nobody in our family needs to have a spoiled Christmas because of it.

Schadenfreude is not an empathetic emotion, nevertheless when at last I have achieved three children’s bedtimes, loaded the dishwasher, prepared packed lunches and fallen into bed beside my snoring husband I’m not able to resist a small sigh of satisfaction. How the mighty are fallen…

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com