The strange, beautiful Christmas I spent alone

My parents gave up on Christmas altogether once I left home for university. They had never been people for celebrations and we were a household like Belfast in the religious sense – my father, the Catholic, went to midnight mass; my mother, Anglican, to the parish church at 8 a.m. I alternated, year by year, for the sake of fairness. It was a strained time.

As an adult, living in my own place the moment I could afford rent, I never returned home for Christmas Day, but went to various generous friends – the sort of normal friends who had proper festivities, puddings lit with brandy and paper crowns, the works – and I learned how things ought to be done. Once I was married with children, so they were. But in between those times, there came two strange and yet, especially now I look back on them, wholly delightful Christmases, one when I was alone but not quite, the second when I definitely was.

I had not felt well for a couple of days and when I went out to buy presents everything seemed grey and I was unsteady and had the odd sense that there was a sort of gauze between me and the rest of the world. I was due to spend Christmas with friends 15 miles away, driving over on the 24th, but I woke with a high-ish temperature and a blinding headache. Being out at all seemed perilous and I surely should not be in charge of a car, so before I retired to bed, I phoned to cancel. I was told to put my essentials in a bag and wait. A couple of hours later, I was lying between fresh sheets on cool pillows, the curtains half-pulled together, a glass of lemon and honey and two aspirin beside me.