‘RUBY!!’

He doesn’t really want anything. I know that tone of voice. He’s walked into the kitchen and found Bunty doing her impression of the Martyred Wife (she should have taken it up professionally) and he’ll be so irritated by this that he’s looking for the nearest person to take it out on. Me.

Although it’s cold in the bedroom – there is no heat in any of our bedrooms – I am warm after having just completed a vigorous hula-hooping session in the rather confined space between the beds. Now I’m curled up happily on my pink candlewick bedspread with an old copy of Gillian’s Judy. My bedspread is the exact match of Gillian’s on the other side of the room, except that Gillian’s is peach because she got the first choice of colours. I have to share Gillian’s bedroom nowadays because Nell has left her house in Lowther Street and moved in with us. This is because, according to George, she’s ‘not the full shilling’, a phrase I don’t entirely understand although you only have to spend a couple of hours in her company to see that she is undergoing a metamorphosis of some kind. She gets very confused (so do I but not about things like what century it is), not confused enough to be ‘put away’ (which is what George wishes for when it’s his turn for the wishbone), just serious enough to get on Bunty’s nerves all the time. But then what doesn’t get on Bunty’s nerves?

As you can imagine, Gillian is furious about this new arrangement and in order to placate her I have to creep around pretending I’m not really here. I spend a lot of time placating Gillian and yet Patricia (a teenager now!) spends no time at all on this task. But then Patricia isn’t really in the same space-time continuum as the rest of us any more (if this is what being an adolescent’s like then I do not want to be one).

‘RUBY!!’

He isn’t going to forget about me, is he? Guiltily, I unruffle the candlewick. Lying on the beds after they have been made is strictly against Bunty’s domestic rules. I think life would be tidier for her if we didn’t sleep in our beds at all. She can hardly wait to get us out of them in the morning, yanking back the curtains and tweaking us out from under the covers so that she can eradicate our warm shapes from the sheets as quickly as possible, like an odd form of child cruelty.

Our bedroom (Gillian never uses this plural pronoun. ‘My bedroom,’ she says pointedly. As if I could forget.) has a carpet on the floor and pink flowers growing on trellises on the wallpaper and a narrow oak wardrobe that smells like the inside of old suitcases. The most important piece of furniture is a kidney-shaped dressing-table with a frill round it that matches the curtains. Gillian regards this as hers as well, even though it was bought for ‘us’, along with the candlewick bedspreads, after I moved into the bedroom. One of the (many) reasons that Gillian loathes having to share a room with me is because I still walk in my sleep and she’s petrified that I’m going to do something nasty to her when she’s fast asleep and unable to defend herself. Hah! If only.

I check my face in the dressing-table mirror for signs of guilt, not just over the bedspread – who knows what else I might be doing wrong? You never can tell, not with George and Bunty who have all kinds of unwritten rules; sometimes I think they’re running some kind of secret society of Masonic complexity, although not always in full agreement with each other – just to make it even more difficult for their poor children. Some of these rules are well known, others less so, and I’m constantly being trapped unawares by the more mysterious ones. These are revealed haphazardly – only yesterday I learnt that girls shouldn’t sit with their legs crossed (this from George) and that the Labour Party is more dangerous than the Catholic Church (from Bunty).

‘Ruby! Come downstairs and give your mother a hand!’ I bet a ‘hand’ is the last thing Bunty wants. I go down the stairs very reluctantly, especially the last flight down to the kitchen, where the more truculent of the ghosts plot and conspire their come-back. There is a faint sound of puppies whimpering and kittens snoring in the Shop and underneath that a different stratum of quiet noise as the ghosts get ready for their festival celebrations. These are the last days of living Above the Shop – Bunty already has her eye on a ‘nice little semi’ out on the wilder suburban shores of Acomb and our progress thither is considerably accelerated by Gillian’s death which is the prime cause of the Great (and truly terrible) Pet Shop Fire. So some good will come out of Gillian’s death for Bunty. And for me, of course, because I will take full possession of the kidney-shaped dressing-table (slightly smoke-damaged).

I pause outside the kitchen door and listen before going in. It seems peaceful enough. It’s important to me that everyone remains in a good mood because of the pantomime. I have been on outings before with George and Bunty when they were fighting, and it’s not pleasant, believe me. The fact that we were going at all on Christmas Eve is a source of some confusion. We don’t usually go until January but I think Bunty has got it into her head that it shows more style to go on the opening night – Christmas Eve. So really she’s responsible for Gillian’s death.

Cautiously, I open the door. The kitchen feels warm but it doesn’t fool me. Frost glitters everywhere, on the new English Electric washing machine, on the humming refrigerator and the Kenwood Chef mixer. You can almost see the atmosphere in here like thick, cold smoke spreading out from George and Bunty, figures of icy sovereignty in their Kingdom Above the Shop.

‘Your mother could do with some help.’

This is clearly an exercise of power on George’s part – he can’t get any over Bunty, so he’s wielding it over the most helpless member of the family – me. Ever since coming back from my mysterious exile in Dewsbury I have been the scapegoat in this house. It is quite obvious from the set expression on Bunty’s face that she is doing very nicely without any help, thank you. She is standing at the sink peeling potatoes with demonic fury, every arc and bone of her body stretched taut. (Sometimes I try to imagine Bunty as a child but for some reason this makes me unbearably sad – see Footnote (vi)). Raw undercurrents of feeling bubble and break on the surface of her skin. Sparks of bitter static fly from the tips of her baby blond hair. Something particularly horrible is happening between these two, something, we suspect, to do with The Floozy.

George is sitting at the little kitchen table shaking the icy rain off his moustache like a dog. I wonder why he has been out? He ought to be in the Shop at this time of day. Maybe he was buying last-minute Christmas presents for us all. Maybe he’s been having a secret meeting with The Floozy. The Floozy is a new addition to our family life. Only Bunty speaks about her as such, George never refers to her at all but behaves as if Bunty had invented her from an overheated imagination. For example, a typical exchange about The Floozy goes something like this:

It would be better for Bunty if George stayed in the Shop all the time – she could push his meals across the passage to him and he could push his washing back.

‘Any chance of a cup of tea, Bunt?’

George is trying to imitate the way he thinks happily married couples speak to each other. He often does this when Bunty is in a bad mood (or at any rate, worse than usual) and it’s so patently artificial that all it does is make her even crosser. If we all know this, why doesn’t he? Bunty stops peeling potatoes, wipes her hands and sighs noisily. Putting the kettle on the stove, she lights the gas with the same look on her face as the Virgin Mary has, standing at the foot of the cross in the painting in the Catholic church that my new friend Kathleen Gorman has recently introduced me to. (Nobody, not even Patricia, knows I have been in there.) I didn’t like it, it was full of dripping hearts and pictures of people doing horrible things to other people. Bunty would have liked the Catholic church if she had given it a chance.

‘The child can do that,’ George says, indicating the abandoned potatoes in the sink.

‘No, she can’t,’ Bunty snaps, much to ‘the child’s’ relief. Bunty looks like she’s willing to defend her potato peeler to the last King Edward. She pushes her hair back from her forehead in a centuries-old genetic gesture of suffering. The life of a woman is hard and she’ll be damned if anyone is going to rob her of her sainthood. There’s a tremendous battle of wills going on in the kitchen, in which I am clearly the hapless pawn. George keeps sizing up for a real ding-dong and then backing down because he doesn’t really want to risk the consequences of an argument. He’s been in Bunty’s bad books since we opened the first door on the advent calendar (or rather since Gillian did, as she has done nearly every day. Patricia has got round this by making her own personal advent calendar out of a cornflakes box). I haven’t discussed with anyone this new phase of the Cold War (more of an Ice Age really) between our parents but then Gillian and I rarely ‘discuss’ anything – she shouts, I ignore her. And Patricia, since entering adolescence, is incommunicado. I don’t have the right words anyway – I won’t have the right vocabulary for several years.

George stubs out his cigarette and makes a kind of snorting noise in his throat and settles back into his chair to watch Bunty making his cup of tea (well, this is 1959). He clears his throat and spits into his handkerchief just as Bunty puts the cup and saucer in front of him with a glazed expression on her face. This is the expression she wears when she picks up George’s socks, handkerchiefs and underpants (wearing rubber gloves) and drops them into a bucket of Dettol to soak before they are allowed to join the rest of our barely-sullied washing in the English Electric.

Bunty reclaims her peeler while I remain hovering in the doorway, uncertain as to whether I’m still needed in my pawn-role. They seem to have forgotten it’s Christmas Eve and, despite the mound of mince pies on the dresser, the kitchen is not carolling with the festive spirit. The Christmas cake, I notice, is sitting un-iced on the refrigerator, decidedly naked in its almond paste. This is a bad sign. The cake is a close relative of the Boxing Day trifle, both regarded by Bunty with the kind of reverence that Kathleen’s mother affords the Nativity Scene.

‘We are going to the pantomime tonight, aren’t we?’ I ask rather recklessly.

‘Why else do you think I’m going flat out like this?’ Bunty spins round, the potato peeler moving like a dagger through the air, indicating a panorama of mince pies, Christmas cake, potatoes, George.

‘And I haven’t had time to make a pudding.’ Her eyes narrow to slits as she looks at George and adds menacingly, ‘It’ll have to be tinned fruit.’ She advances on a tin of peaches, clawing them open with a tin opener and pouring them into a big glass bowl where they swim about like goldfish. George shakes out the evening paper and starts whistling ‘Jingle Bells’, softly, under his breath.

‘Haven’t you got anything to do, Ruby?’ Bunty asks sharply.

I haven’t. I didn’t think you needed to have anything to do on Christmas Eve.

‘Where’s our Gillian?’ George asks suddenly. Always Bunty’s favourite of course, Gillian has recently managed to make herself extremely popular with George. I suppose if you work hard enough at anything you’re bound to succeed in the end.

‘Piano lesson,’ Bunty replies, turning down the gas under the pan of potatoes.

‘On Christmas Eve?’ George says, a note of surprise in his voice. You see? I’m supposed to be ‘doing something’ but ‘Our Gillian’ isn’t. I seem to be dismissed so I go up to the living-room and switch on the television. Champion the Wonder Horse is just starting and although my heart thrills automatically to his stirring theme music I have to confess to being a little disappointed that there isn’t something more seasonal on. Don’t the television people know it’s Christmas Eve either? Still, the Christmas tree is beautiful; the lights are switched on and we have some new decorations – big silver glass balls with silver glitter snowflakes stuck on them – a company Christmas gift from a pet food traveller. And the coal fire in the living-room has just been lit so that the room is full of promising smells like coal-dust and pine needles and I begin to cheer up. Nell is asleep in an armchair next to the fire, a piece of tinsel wrapped mysteriously round her finger. Maybe it’s to remind her of something? Her personality perhaps?

Gillian bursts into the room, throwing her music case down and sprawling in an armchair, revealing her navy blue knickers. She sighs darkly and rearranges herself, crossing her legs and staring at a spot two inches above my head.

‘You’re not supposed to cross your legs,’ I tell her helpfully. Without speaking she slowly uncrosses them then recrosses them. I wonder if I were to say, ‘Listen Gillian, this is your last day on earth, lighten up, for heaven’s sake,’ she would take any notice? Probably not.

George puts his head round the living-room door. ‘Tea’s ready,’ he announces, glaring into the middle distance of Champion’s girth and stirrups. In one smooth movement, Gillian sticks her tongue out at me, uncrosses her legs and turns round and gives George a big, toothy grin. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she beams at him. If only she would teach me how to do that before she goes.

But no, nothing as simple as that for Our Lady of the Kitchen, who is pretending to dish out pork chops, mashed potatoes and carrots but is really shooting out steel tension wires from her fingertips. They make little noises as they hit the walls of the bedrooms, the living-room, the front of the Shop, the occasional Pet. Ping! Ping! Ping! Until the whole house is criss-crossed with the metal web of Bunty’s thoughts.

She makes an entrance into the dining-room, singing, in a high, tuneless voice, a totally inappropriate Doris Day song (‘The Black Hills of Dakota’) that indicates that she is pretending to ignore whatever is going on between her and George. This is a special occasion after all – the pantomime, Christmas, not to mention Gillian’s death. Bunty circles the dining-table, with the plates held high, as if she is a waitress in an American film. She looks ridiculous.

‘Pork’s a bit tough,’ George says. Why can’t he just chew and swallow without comment like everyone else? I hate this. I hate these people at the table. I can see Gillian’s doing the same as me, rehearsing expressions of agreement and dismay in case George continues with his carping. Bunty, however, is not in a placatory mood.

‘Really?’ she says, slicing icebergs with her tongue. ‘Really?’ she says, daring him to continue. Her eyebrows have risen so far they seem to be hovering above her head. ‘Really?’ George falls silent under the pressure of Christmas.

‘What a wet night it is for going out!’ Bunty says suddenly, in a different tone, her ‘company’ voice. This is her way of letting it be known that she is a very well-behaved person with good manners, unlike the boorish man at the other end of the table, who unfortunately happens to be her husband.

Nobody replies. Everybody’s too busy chewing – George is right, the meat is tough, small charred chops that have been grilled by the flame of Bunty’s temper. What a shame for Gillian, her last supper and it’s a burnt offering. If we had known we could have had Christmas dinner a day early just for her.

Nell’s knife skitters off the table and onto the floor. George and Bunty exchange looks over her head as she makes a futile attempt to bend down and reach the knife. Finally, George sighs and picks it up for her, slamming it back down on the tablecloth.

‘Can I sit next to you at the pantomime, Daddy?’ Gillian asks, turning the full torchlight beam of her smile on George.

‘Of course, pet,’ he smiles. This is sickening. But George is soothed, so some (reluctant) admiration is due to Gillian, I suppose.

I’m sitting next to Nell, dutifully chewing and saying nothing, but that doesn’t make me safe. Bunty turns to me suddenly, like a frustrated cobra. ‘If you don’t hurry up, Ruby, you’ll still be sitting here when we’re all at the pantomime.’ She says this as if she’s pleased with herself for saying something clever. Is this my real mother? Why does she do this? What kind of enjoyment does she derive from idle threats like this? For one thing we have plenty of time. And for another thing they wouldn’t dream of actually leaving me here while they go to the pantomime. Would they?

‘Yes,’ George says unexpectedly. ‘Stop dithering, Ruby, you can’t spend your whole life being late, you know.’ He’s taking sides with Bunty either to mollify her or irritate her, it’s hard to say which. I start to eat as fast as I can, but stop in open-mouthed astonishment when Nell, slip-sliding in and out of lucidity, suddenly turns to me and says (in a foreign language, I notice) ‘Aye, frame thyself, girl!’ For a split second the entire family appears to be staring at me with the kind of look that sparrows give to their poor innocent cuckoo-babies.

Bunty, still chewing, starts whisking the plates away, ignoring the protests of Nell who hasn’t managed to start eating anything yet. I think Bunty would prefer it if she could wash up before we’d eaten. She waltzes back in with the cut-glass bowl containing the tinned sliced peaches that are like big smiles, like the enormous, manic smile fixed on Bunty’s own face. (An extreme version, this, of the smile of Footnote (iv).) She dishes out the peaches and when Patricia protests that she doesn’t want any, tells her that’s too bad because she needs the bowl for the Boxing Day trifle. Bunty is the only person in York who knows how to make a sherry trifle properly, and as its sacred properties are not to be interfered with Patricia takes her bowl of peach slices, but not without leaning over towards George and saying in a mock-confidential whisper, ‘They say discretion is the better part of valour, don’t they?’ George looks extremely uncomfortable; he has no idea what Patricia’s talking about but he’s pretty sure it’s got something to do with The Floozy.

George cuts a peach slice in half with his spoon, scoops up a little cream on it and raises it, delicately, to his lips.

‘The cream’s off,’ he pronounces, hardly tasting it at all. His spoon remains suspended on the way down from his sandy moustache, which is the colour of peaches. He stares at Bunty, daring her to contradict him, all thought of festive goodwill abandoned.

On the other side of the table from me, Patricia eats a spoonful of cream and peaches and gags. She nods at me and mouths the word ‘Off’. Nell, fearful of starving probably, has already finished hers.

Bunty licks her lips with the fastidiousness of a cat. ‘Tastes all right to me,’ she says quietly. She’s being very brave, rather like Deborah Kerr in The King and I.

George pushes his plate away. ‘You bloody well eat it then,’ he says, leaving Gillian in a bit of a dilemma, her cheeks stuffed with rancid cream and slippery peaches, not sure which parent to suck up to. She is able to spit her dilemma back into her bowl when Bunty and George’s attention is diverted by a loud snore from Nell. She is as sound asleep as a dormouse with her head in her empty dish.

The absurdity of this statement is not lost on Gillian who can see the whole theatre is in uproar as the witch, an elf, a panda, a cow and a plucky village youth rush about the stage while Hansel and Gretel hide under a pile of leaves. (Why is there a panda? Perhaps to make Patricia happy – she nudges me and says, ‘Look! A panda!’ a note of rare happiness in her voice.) Undeterred, Gillian continues to shout at the top of her voice. Make the most of it, Gillian, I say.

When they ask for volunteers from the audience to come on stage I sink into my seat as far out of sight as possible, and Patricia has rendered herself completely invisible, but there’s no holding Gillian back and before you can say, ‘Oh yes she is,’ she’s kicking up her white kid heels and layers of petticoats and is on stage, charming the panda and singing her heart out.

‘Well, really,’ says Bunty self-consciously to the woman in the seat next to her (I am in the middle of the Lennox sandwich – George on one end, then Gillian, me, Patricia and, on the other end, Bunty. Nell has been left at home). ‘Really, she is a one, our Gillian.’ Not for much longer.

When Gillian returns to her seat you can see that she’s flushed and irritable (her mother’s daughter) at having to step out of the spotlight. ‘All good things come to an end,’ Bunty says, smiling stiffly, keeping her eyes on the stage.

If Hansel and Gretel had stayed lost in the forest for ever, we could have remained trapped with them and forgotten about The Floozy and sour cream and un-iced Christmas cakes. And Gillian wouldn’t have died either. But the plot’s unstoppable – the witch is burnt to a heap of charred rags and ashes, the wicked stepmother’s pardoned, children reclaimed. Hansel and Gretel discover the witch’s treasure chest, overflowing with emeralds, diamonds, opals, rubies (!), sapphires, glowing like the bag of boiled sweets Gillian and I are sharing. The Good Fairy sends a shower of glitter from her wand so thick that when I put out my hand I can touch it.

‘Well, that’s over for another year.’ George is out of his seat before the house lights are even up and while we are still applauding he’s already standing in the foyer, lighting up a cigarette. Bunty is behaving like a frantic rodent, jumping up and down at the end of the row, urging us to hurry up, while we fumble desperately with hats, scarves, gloves, programmes. Why does she do this? Why does she induce a sense of panic commensurate with an earthquake when it’s obvious that we are going to have to queue for ages before the exits clear. Gillian, who is transfixed by the sight of the empty stage, suddenly bursts into tears. Bunty moves along the row, mouthing simpering things to the people crushed in around us, ‘very tired’, ‘too much excitement’, ‘children, you know’, while she secretly pulls viciously on Gillian’s hand, hissing under her breath, ‘Why don’t you just bloody grow up, Gillian!’

I feel it’s unfortunate for Bunty that these are her last words to Gillian. Not only is it a futile admonishment – the one thing that Gillian is clearly not going to do is ‘grow up’ – but it’s not a very nice note to finish on. However, this is Bunty’s problem, not mine. My last words to Gillian are – as I hand her a jewel-like sweet – ‘Do you want the last red one, or can I have it?’ Fairly neutral in the circumstances, and luckily she takes the last red one (this is Gillian, remember) so I won’t have to feel guilty about it afterwards.

I’m struggling to get away from Bunty but I can’t pry her fingers off my hand, she went into a kind of rigor mortis when she saw Gillian flying through the air. People are milling around making a lot of noise but after a while a space clears and we can see George sitting on the edge of the pavement, one of his trouser legs inexplicably rolled up, exposing a beige woollen sock. He’s being sick. Then Bunty starts screaming, loud at first, and then the noise seems to get thinner and higher until it rises up, bat-like and starts bouncing off the sodium street lights, the gargoyles on the theatre, the blue light flashing nearer and nearer.

One of her thick, wrinkled sixty deniers lies across the bottom of George and Bunty’s eiderdown, looking faintly obscene in the dim winter dawn-light and certainly untouched by the hand of any North Pole elf. I know Father Christmas hasn’t put it there because he doesn’t exist. Gillian disabused me of this possibility last year, debunking the Tooth Fairy at the same time for good measure. What an iconoclast she was.

The bed gives off an unsettling odour composed of both Bunty’s sickly-sweet face powder smell and George’s tobacco-and-fish smell and I tentatively nudge Patricia and say, ‘There’s a Christmas stocking.’

‘I know,’ she says flatly and I realize that it is she, rather than Nell, who has been playing Santa Claus. Good old Patricia. It must have been doubly difficult for her to undertake this role, for although she’s thirteen years old and arguably the most grown-up member of the family, it is Patricia more than anyone who mourns the way magic has drained from our world. No Father Christmas, no Tooth Fairy, no Fairy Godmother – no fairies at all. Our childhood is over, yet we’re still waiting for it to begin. I was lying next to Patricia’s stiff little body last night and know how desperately she was listening for the clatter of unshod hooves on the roof and the jingle of approaching sleigh-bells.

My stocking for Christmas 1959 contains (in reverse order from the toe upwards) – a sixpence, a walnut, an orange, a pack of Happy Family playing cards, a bar of Fry’s Peppermint Cream and a cheap, rather pink, doll wearing a knitted vest and knickers. I’ve had better.

We lie back on the parental pillows and share the chocolate while we play a rather desultory game of Happy Families. The irony is not lost on us as we survey the families of Mr Bun the Baker and Mr Haddock the Fishmonger, all considerably more complete than that of Mr Lennox the Pet Shopkeeper.

Eventually we go up to Nell’s room and kiss her on her leathery cheek. A faint whiff of urine rises up from her sheets. She’s wearing an enormous pale-pink bedjacket that dwarfs her. The hands poking out from the ends of the sleeves have purple veins that stand out like wires. She looks at us both warily through rheumy eyes.

‘Merry Christmas, Grandma.’

‘Merry Christmas, Patricia.’

‘Merry Christmas, Grandma.’

‘Merry Christmas, Ruby.’

‘Merry Christmas one and all!’ The tinkling cry goes around the house, like glass bells, as the household ghosts feebly carol and wassail and raise a glass to Christmas.

We make an effort. I switch on the Christmas tree lights and Nell puts an apron on. Patricia makes a brave attempt to clean out the grate and lay a new fire. But when she tries to set a match to it the fire peters out as soon as it’s burnt up all the kindling. She hauls through the electric fire from Nell’s bedroom and we huddle round the one element that gives off the unpleasant acrid smell of burnt hair. We light the candles of the Angel Chimes so that at least we have some kind of flame to light the festivities.

All three of us look doubtfully at the pile of presents under the tree. ‘May as well open them,’ Patricia says at last, shrugging her shoulders in that way she has of suggesting she couldn’t care less about anything, although of course, she cares terribly. About everything.

I have several presents. George and Bunty have given me a Girl annual, a white fur muff (new, not ex-Gillian), a pair of roller skates, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and some pretend jewellery. I think these are surprisingly good presents. Nell has given me a tin of Yardley’s Freesia talcum powder and Patricia has given me a brand-new copy of The Railway Children, bought from her pocket-money. Meanwhile, from beyond the grave, Gillian has sent me a brown Bri-nylon dog, with a purple ribbon round its fat neck, holding a green and purple bottle of April Violets cologne between its paws. ‘That’s disgusting,’ Patricia says, with no reverence for Gillian’s newly-dead condition – but then, although we believed she was dead last night, it’s almost impossible to believe that she’s still dead this morning. ‘Disgusting,’ I agree and stuff a whole segment of Chocolate Orange into my mouth.

Patricia and Nell open their presents but the remainder are left undisturbed under the tree, like offerings to the dead. I think Patricia and I should share Gillian’s presents but don’t say so because I know this isn’t the right attitude.

Some time later Patricia and I go looking for Nell and find her in the kitchen trying to do some very odd things to the uncooked turkey. Patricia takes the apron from her and ties it authoritatively round her own waist, telling me to take Nell away and play with her. Sensibly, Patricia does not attempt to cook the turkey, but instead makes a commendable attempt at mashed potatoes, baked beans and corned beef although only after all three of us have lacerated ourselves opening the corned-beef tin. Afterwards we have mince pies and Ambrosia Creamed Rice Pudding. We eat with our plates on our knees in front of the television and enjoy our Christmas dinner more than seems appropriate after the demise of a close relative. Nell recklessly drinks two glasses of rum and then Patricia and I pull the entire box of crackers between us while our grandmother sleeps in the armchair and I take the opportunity to relay to Patricia some facts about the Spirit World, as gleaned during my Dewsbury exile. Patricia is uncommonly taken with the idea of animal afterlife, but less so with the idea of Gillian wandering out there for ever and learning how to get rid of scratches on coffee-tables.

By Boxing Day we have settled into a kind of routine based loosely on television, sleep and mince pies. Patricia has even learnt how to make a pretty good fire. We’re grateful to Bunty for keeping her cupboards so well stocked with tinned food. Things look up a lot when we discover the Boxing Day trifle lurking at the back of the fridge, although Patricia is a little queasy about it as she says she distinctly remembers that Bunty hadn’t even begun to make it when we left for the pantomime. Who made the trifle? Ghostly cooks schooled in syllabub, flummery, and frumenty? Handy elves? Who knows. We put aside our qualms and devour it at a single sitting and feel sick all night.

They probably had to open a whole new zone in the Spirit World, just for Gillian. For several weeks afterwards, Patricia and I planned a trip to the Church of the Spirit in Dewsbury in the hope of receiving a comforting message from Gillian. Your sister says not to worry about her, that sort of thing. Knowing Gillian, she would have kept silent just to spite us (she would be furious at having missed Christmas). These plans faded abruptly after The Great Pet Shop Fire when the Spirit World received such a large new intake that it was easier to forget about the world of the Spirit altogether than to dwell on all those Spirit Pets wandering the astral plane, mewing and whimpering.

Bunty wasn’t the full shilling for a while. It was surprising just how much Gillian’s death had affected her. I used to see her through her open bedroom door, lying on her back on the bed emitting little yelps, her hands clawing the eiderdown. Sometimes she’d moan, ‘My baby, my baby’s gone,’ as if she’d only had one baby, which wasn’t very nice for me and Patricia. At other times, she’d set up a banshee wail of ‘Gilliaaaaaan,’ which should have been enough to recall Gillian from the region of the undead, yet it didn’t. Sometimes you could hear Bunty crying to the night, ‘My Gillian, my pearl,’ which I thought was very odd, because I’d never heard her call her that when she was alive. And anyway, surely it’s me that’s the jewel of the family?

She got better after a while. So did the Pets. Patricia and I had forgotten about them for a couple of days and it was only when the dogs started howling in the middle of the night that we realized they hadn’t been fed. Thankfully, none of them had starved to death although the knowledge of our neglect hung heavily on our consciences, particularly Patricia’s, needless to say. It is hard to look into the eyes of starving puppies and kittens, knowing it’s your fault, and not feel that you have been marked down for ever. The Parrot, in the short time left to him, never forgave us. The Great Pet Shop Fire expunged many things (although mostly Pets) but not the guilt.