At seventeen, Roma was the oldest of Shirley and Arnold’s grandchildren, and she felt she had a duty to set an example for the younger ones at family events, because God knew the adults wouldn’t.  Over the last few years, Roma had started to notice that Christmas lunch went pretty much the same way every year, right down to the arguments.  Gran would always tell Granddad off for not helping with the cooking.  Grandad would always tell Uncle Nicky not to get too drunk, even though him and Gran had started on the Bucks Fizz at around nine in the morning.  Mum and Uncle Nicky would always needle Uncle Simon about being uptight (Roma had never seen much evidence of that, so she assumed it was one of those things that brothers and sisters decided about you one day and never, ever changed their minds.)  Then the crackers would come out, and there would be tantrums galore until Roma put on the paper hat, even though her hair was so thick and curly that it would split the thing in half before she’d had it on for five minutes, so really, what was the point?

And now Gran was telling stories about when Sandy was born.  Mainly the ones about how Sandy’s dad’s family had inconvenienced her.  “It’s caused no end of trouble, her having a different last name.  But it’s what her mother wanted.”  Gran let out a snort.  “And you can imagine the kind of fuss Caroline would have put up if we’d tried to change it.  Queen Caroline who washed her nose in turpentine.”

Sandy herself wasn’t paying much attention.  In fact, she’d been in a funny mood all morning.  Lost in her thoughts, or something.

Mum took a sip from her glass.  “I thought about going back to my maiden name after the divorce.  Then I remembered that my maiden name was ‘Copstick’.”  And she collapsed into giggles.  Gran (alias Mrs Shirley Copstick) gave her a dirty look.

When they’d been opening the presents, Sandy had smiled and thanked everyone, but she hadn’t seemed excited about anything.  Sparkly sequinned skirt, novelty fridge magnets from BHS, inappropriate video from Keeley… barely a flicker.  OK, maybe some of that was to do with getting older, but one of her presents had been a packet of chocolates in weird shapes, and she hadn’t eaten even one of them.  She’d just put it to the side and carried on thinking.

“Are we doing sambucas?” asked Uncle Nicky.

“Not after last time,” said Gran firmly.

Sandy was moving her fork mechanically, shovelling the turkey and veg into her mouth as if she wasn’t tasting any of it.  (“Come on, Gran’s cooking isn’t that bad!” was a joke you’d only make around here if you had a death wish.)  Her mind was somewhere else.  The only clue they had as to where it was involved something Gran had said earlier.  “Do me a favour and don’t mention the carol concert.”  If that even had anything to do with it, and wasn’t just Gran not having liked the songs.

Sandy?  Are you feeling OK?  The moment Roma thought about asking that, she realised that it wouldn’t make any difference.  If she’d wanted to talk about it, she’d have brought it up herself, and if she didn’t want to, then she definitely didn’t want to at a crowded dinner table where most of your words would be drowned out by someone starting an argument about what year “Stairway to Heaven” was released.  Sandy would probably just say she was fine and refuse to say anything else.  If anything, it would probably just embarrass her to know that it had been so obvious.

Roma decided to stay quiet.  It was probably about time somebody in this family did that.

(To be continued)