“Yes.” I try to sound casual. “Apparently he is. I wonder what brings him to the UK.”

“Fixie, darling …” Mum hesitates, brush in hand. “Be careful. I know he hurt you last year.”

Not Mum too.

“He didn’t!” My voice shoots out before I can stop it. “God! I mean, I wasn’t hurt. We had a thing, we ended … no big deal.”

Mum looks so unconvinced, I don’t know why I bother.

“I know Ryan’s always been there in your life,” she says, applying highlighter. “And we’re all fond of him. But there are lots of other men in the world, love.”

“I know,” I say, although a voice in my brain is instantly protesting, Yes, but not like Ryan.

“He may be nice-looking,” Mum continues resolutely, “and he may be a big success in Hollywood, but when it comes to emotional matters, he’s always been a bit—” She breaks off and her face creases in thought. “Oh, love, my head’s not working. What’s the word you all use? Crumbly.”

“Crumbly?” I stare at her before it hits me. “You mean flaky?”

“Flaky!” Mum meets my eye and starts to laugh. “Yes! Flaky.”

I can’t help dissolving into giggles too, even as I’m thinking: So maybe Ryan has been a bit flaky. People change, don’t they?

“Anyway.” Clearly Mum considers the lecture over. She closes up the highlighter and surveys herself without great interest. “Will we do?”

“Mascara?” I suggest.

“Oh, love. So fiddly. I leave that for other people.”

“Hi, Fixie! Hi, Joanne!” We both turn to see Hannah standing in the doorway, wearing an amazing clingy red dress. Hannah has the most sexy wardrobe in the world, which she says compensates for having the least sexy job in the world. When she tells people what she does, they goggle at her and say, “You’re an actuary?”

“Hiya!” I go to give her a hug. “I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

“Nicole was on her way out and she let me in,” says Hannah. “There’s a few guests here too, came in with me. They’ve all arrived early to help.”

This is typical of Mum’s friends. Maybe in some circles you arrive fashionably late. In Mum’s circle, you pop along early and ask if there’s anything you can do. All the women will be rolling up their sleeves and fighting over who should carry the vol-au-vents through. All the men will be drinking beers and smoking and telling each other what a great guy Mike was.

“Tim’s on his way,” adds Hannah, and I quickly say, “Great!”

I’m always careful to sound enthusiastic when we discuss Tim. He’s a good, solid, loyal guy. He’s got the same kind of logical brain as Hannah’s. But he’s missing her empathy. He always pursues the conversation a bit too far and says tactless things without even realizing.

I’ll always remember him saying, “But, Fixie, presumably you simply didn’t revise hard enough,” when I failed an English test at school. Who talks like that? (Tim, that’s who.)

Hannah doesn’t mind, though. She says she likes the fact he’s straightforward and doesn’t play games. (I can’t actually imagine Tim playing a game, except some super-high-IQ contest in which he’d keep correcting his competitor.)

“Did you get yourself a drink, love?” says Mum to Hannah, and Hannah waves back a glass at her.

“Grapefruit juice.”

“Ah.” Mum nods wisely. We both know all about Hannah’s regime for conceiving. She and Tim have been trying for four months, and Hannah is already a total expert on maternity-leave rights, cribs, and breastfeeding counselors. She’s also read a million books on child-rearing and has decided to bring up her children as Danish-French hybrids. Apparently then they’ll be super-relaxed, stylish, and eat their vegetables. (I said once, “Why not bring them up British?” and she stared at me and said, “British?” like I was nuts.)

“OK, so how can I help?” she says now. “What needs doing? Let’s break it down.”

Let’s break it down is Hannah’s favorite phrase in the world. Give her any job, from a client report to washing her hair, and she’ll break it down into smaller tasks. Her Christmas to-do list has 926 entries, beginning with Order wrapping paper on Boxing Day.

“We’re fine, love,” says Mum fondly, who was once given a color-coded organizational calendar by Hannah for her birthday and used it to doodle on during phone calls. Mum really isn’t into systems. She runs the shop out of a hardback notebook, where she writes cryptic messages like Forks—68 or just Greg? and always knows what she meant.

The doorbell rings, and my stomach lurches. Oh God, is that— It might be—

“I’ll go!” I say before I can stop myself. I’m aware of Mum and Hannah exchanging looks, but I ignore this and hurry downstairs, nearly tripping on my heels, rehearsing my greeting.

Hi, Ryan.

Well, hello, Ryan.

Hello, stranger.

But as I approach the front door my heart sinks. I can already see gray hair through the wavy glass, and as I swing the door open, a familiar cantankerous, raspy voice greets me.

“Come on, come on, don’t keep me on the doorstep!”

Great. It’s Uncle Ned.

—

An hour later Ryan still hasn’t arrived and I’d quite like to stab Uncle Ned.

I pretty much always want to stab Uncle Ned at every family gathering. But I have to smile politely at him, because he’s Dad’s brother and the only one left of that bit of the family. More to the point, Mum gets upset if we slag him off.

We’re all in the sitting room by now and there’s quite a crowd of Mum’s friends, chatting away. Music is playing, people are greedily eating sausage rolls, and smoke is hazing the air, because Mum’s never believed in the whole “smoke outside” thing. Dad used to smoke inside, so even though she’s not a smoker herself, she almost encourages it.

“Shop doing well, then, Joanne?” asks Uncle Ned.

“Not bad.” Mum smiles back over her glass of Cava. “Not at all bad.”

“Well, I’m not surprised,” Uncle Ned declaims. “Mike was a master at what he did. He set you up for life, Joanne.”

“He did.” Mum nods with a misty fondness. “He lives on in the shop; that’s how I see it.”

“He had a knack,” Uncle Ned explains to Mum’s friend Pippa, even though I’m sure Pippa knows as much about the shop as he does. “He knew what people wanted, you see? Clever man. And now Joanne can simply carry on in the same pattern.”

I’m bristling inside. I know Dad set up the shop, but what’s Uncle Ned saying? That Mum’s been coasting along these last nine years?

“Bob’s very helpful,” adds Mum, gesturing at Bob, our financial manager, who is hovering over the buffet table with an anxious look on his face. He reaches for a little sausage, reconsiders, peers doubtfully at a quiche, then takes two crisps and places them on his plate. (Bob Stringer: Most Cautious Man in the World.)

“Bob!” says Uncle Ned as though this makes everything plain. “Fine man, Bob! Bob keeps you going.”

I feel another dart of indignation. Bob’s helpful—of course he is—but he doesn’t “keep us going.”

“Bob’s great,” I say. “But Mum’s in charge—”

“Every organization needs a ‘Man of the House,’ ” Uncle Ned cuts me off. “A Man of the House,” he repeats, with weighty emphasis. “And since poor Mike left us …” He pats Mum’s hand. “You’ve coped marvelously, Joanne.”

I can see Mum flinching slightly at the hand-pat, but even so, she doesn’t confront him. And although I’m seething, nor do I. I’ve tried in the past, and it doesn’t achieve anything; it only upsets Mum.

I got really angry last Christmas, when Uncle Ned started patronizing Mum yet again during lunch. This time, I challenged him. He instantly got red-faced and after-all-I’ve-done-for-you, and Mum soothed the situation by telling him I didn’t mean it.

Even then I didn’t give up. I dragged Mum, still wearing her paper hat, into the kitchen and listed all the ways he’d talked her down, finishing up with: “How can you just sit there, Mum? You’re a strong woman! You’re the boss of … everything!”

I was hoping to stir her up, but it didn’t happen. She listened, wincing a little, but then said, “Ah, he doesn’t really mean it, love. What does it matter? He’s been there for me when it matters, your uncle.”

“Yes, but—”

“He helped me sort out the new lease after your father died, remember? I was in such a state, and Ned stepped in to negotiate. I’ve always been grateful for that.”

“I know he did, but—”

“He got very good terms for us,” she carried on resolutely. “He beat them down. There’s more to Ned than meets the eye. He’s not perfect, of course he’s not, but who is? We’ve all got our funny little habits.”

Personally, I wouldn’t call being a total misogynist a “funny little habit.” But in the end I gave up, because it was Christmas, and who wants to upset their mum at Christmas?

And since then I’ve stopped trying to make the point. For her own reasons, Mum wants to preserve Uncle Ned in her head in the best possible light. She doesn’t want to fall out with him. She’s such a strong woman in so many ways—but this is her total blind spot.

And I know why. It’s because Uncle Ned is family. He’s the only bit of Dad she’s got left. And she values that more than most things.

“How’s the dating going, Ned?” she says now, changing the subject in that easy way of hers. Uncle Ned got divorced recently, for the third time. I have no idea what any woman sees in him, but the world’s a mysterious place.

“Oh, Joanne, these girls.” He shakes his head. “Nice-enough looking, some of them, but they talk so much. I need to take ruddy earplugs with me.”

Yet again, I wonder how he can be Dad’s brother. Dad was old-fashioned in some ways—he believed his role was to be the provider and he didn’t like bad language—but he respected Mum. He respected women.