Mrs Baxter murmurs, 'Daddy?' as if someone's just told her the improbable answer to a question she's long puzzled over. Then there's a little intake of breath from Mrs Baxter that makes me turn and look at her. She's staring, dumbfounded, at Audrey and the baby. It is obvious when you see them together, I suppose they actually look quite alike, not just the hair and the small features, but the whey-faced expression of misery they both tend to wear. 'Audrey?' Mrs Baxter whispers as big teardrops roll down Audrey's cheeks. Audrey really should have put on her catskin coat and fled as far as she could from Mr Baxter before we got to this dreadful state of affairs.

Mr Baxter meanwhile walks calmly over to the fireplace, takes his pipe off the mantelpiece and knocks the ash out of it on the hearth as if nothing has happened. I watch as if in a trance as he re-lights his pipe, sucking hard on the stem so that the tiny volcanic glow in the bowl heats and cools, over and over again, until Mr Baxter's encircled in a faint blue haze. How can he be so calm in the face of so much domestic mayhem? But then I expect that Bluebeard probably locked up his secret butchery and went and made himself a cup of tea afterwards.

I grow suddenly aware of Mrs Baxter in the doorway, standing perfectly still, like a statue. She must have left the room and come back in again because in her hand she's holding a carving-knife.

I have actually managed to find a scenario worse than yesterday's! Christmas in Sithean is like being trapped in a nightmarish game of Cluedo is it Mrs Baxter in the hallway with the carving-knife, or Mr Baxter in the living-room with a gun? Next it'll be Audrey in the kitchen with the candlestick.

Then Mrs Baxter starts to lumber towards Mr Baxter, in a kind of slow motion, a charging rhinoceros chugging resolutely towards its target. As she charges Mr Baxter, Mrs Baxter makes a dreadful noise, like the moaning wail of an animal in pain. 'What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Moira?' Mr Baxter says irritably, but as Mrs Baxter continues to charge his expression changes to one of disbelief. He looks round, perhaps for his gun, but it's too late Mrs Baxter has met her target, slamming into Mr Baxter (who makes a kind of whumph noise), sending him slumped to his knees on the hearthrug, so that for all the world he looks as if he's suddenly decided to worship Mrs Baxter.

His hands, clutching his stomach, are bright red. Not the red of holly berries. Not the red of poinsettias. Not the red of robins' b.r.e.a.s.t.s nor the red of tomato ketchup. The red of blood. The blood is oozing through Mr Baxter's fingers, the stain spreading across the front of his Fair Isle pullover, knitted by Mrs Baxter for his last birthday. Last in all senses of the word.

Mrs Baxter, standing over him, b.l.o.o.d.y knife in hand, is like some terrible figure from Greek tragedy, her face smeared with blood from her first kill. Mr Baxter looks up at Mrs Baxter in astonishment, then looks down at his stomach with equal astonishment. Experimentally, he takes one of his hands away and blood spurts in a thin red fountain, a little gusher so powerful that it sprays the wall.

I s.n.a.t.c.h a cushion from the sofa and push it up against the source of the blood fountain but almost as soon as I touch him he falls forward on to his face. I try to push him the right way up but he's too heavy. His eyes are nearly closed and his breathing harsh and shallow. And then suddenly there's no breathing at all. His eyes stare lifelessly at the carpet. Mrs Baxter has turned back into a statue. Audrey is sitting on the sofa smiling at the baby as if nothing has happened. Who is the maddest person in this room? Mr Baxter is certainly the deadest.

A low whistle from the doorway makes me jump out of my skin. Carmen is standing in the doorway. Eunice, a pile of presents in her arms, barges past her and kneels beside Mr Baxter, presents spilling everywhere, and feels the pulse in his neck professionally. 'Dead,' she p.r.o.nounces, like a detective.

Eunice looks around the room, a.s.sessing the situation. 'What happened here?' she asks (staying in detective character). I explain as best I can (leaving out all references to time this being my second disastrous Christmas Eve and so on as that will only confuse the issue).

'But how can that possibly be?' Eunice puzzles, looking at Audrey and the baby. 'He's her father, he can't be the father of her baby as well.' There are some things it seems that Eunice doesn't know. Carmen explains incest and abuse to her in a way that's remarkably lucid for a girl whose head is full of cheese.

I suppose it must cross all our minds at some point that we could call the police but if it does we never voice the idea. Not even Eunice.

'Perhaps we should all stick the knife in,' I suggest miserably, 'then we'd all be guilty.'

'Then we'd all go down for murder,' Eunice points out sensibly.

The three of us sit for quite some time discussing what to do (Audrey and Mrs Baxter are good for nothing). Carmen proposes that we take Mr Baxter to the casualty department of Glebelands General and say that he fell on the knife.

'While carving the turkey?' Eunice snorts with derision. If he'd been smaller we could have dragged him over to the hearth and immolated him on the fire. 'And say what?' Eunice says sarcastically. 'That he fell down the chimney when he was delivering the presents?'

I get up and switch the Christmas tree lights off, their winking and blinking is driving me crazy. Carmen shares cigarettes and in the extremity of the situation smokes two at once. 'I think we should bury him,' she suggests.

'Bury him?' I repeat in horror. Part of me is still waiting for Mr Baxter to get up off the floor and burial seems a bit of a final option.

Carmen pa.s.ses round a packet of fruit gums. 'For G.o.d's sake, Carmen,' Eunice says crossly. 'But bury him where?'

Carmen continues, warming to the subject now. 'We could get Mr Baxter's car, and we could take him somewhere, tip him in the river or bury him in a wood or somewhere.'

'But none of us can drive,' I point out.

'We could have a go,' Carmen says, always game for anything, 'or we could just bury him in the garden, that would be easier.'

'Easier?' I query doubtfully. 'And what would we tell people? I mean, how would we explain where he'd gone? People don't just disappear.' (What am I saying?) Carmen eats her way through a mince pie with an appet.i.te that does her credit.

By now the rain is lashing against the curtained windows of the living-room (now more of a dead-room really). 'Right then,' Eunice says suddenly and proceeds to come over all Girl Guidish, 'we're going to need gloves, a torch, some rope and ' She pauses, her clicking brain momentarily overcome by the circ.u.mstances it finds itself in.

'A spade?' I offer.

'A spade, exactly!'

We find two spades in the garden shed and Eunice devises a two-on/one-off rota system for digging. Our attempts at excavation are feeble at first but eventually we begin to get the hang of it. Once you stop worrying about the circ.u.mstances (murder) and the weather (foul) and the mud (disgusting) it's surprising how you can get quite a rhythm going. We're soon sweating with exertion and at the same time shivering with cold. 'How far down do we have to go?' Carmen gasps, dragging deeply on a cigarette. 'Six feet,' Eunice says, leaning on her shovel like a professional gravedigger. 'Don't be ridiculous,' Carmen snaps back, 'this isn't a f.u.c.king cemetery, it's Mrs Baxter's vegetable patch. All we're trying to do is get him out of sight.' It would take us years to dig a six-foot hole. As it is we're quite pleased with the shallow pit that we manage.

We go back inside the house to get Mr Baxter. Nothing's changed. Audrey and the baby are both asleep now and Mrs Baxter's sitting on the sofa, the knife on her lap. 'It's nearly tea-time,' she says conversationally when she sees us, 'how time flies.'

Without replying, we set about dragging Mr Baxter out through the French windows. Carmen, who at some point in her life must have witnessed undertakers in action, smiles sympathetically at the newly created widow and says, 'It's time to take Mr Baxter away now, Mrs Baxter.' Eunice and I exchange uneasy glances, worried that Mrs Baxter might spring up from the sofa and suddenly understand what's going on, but all she does is smile and say, 'On you go then.' A real Mrs Eerie-Cheerie.

We drag Mr Baxter's lifeless shape out into the rain and along the garden path. Finally, with a lot of grunting and shoving and swearing, we tip him into his grave.

Eunice shines the torch on him. He looks less dead than he did two hours ago. 'We have to cover his face,' I say hastily as Carmen picks up her spade again. I run back into the house and s.n.a.t.c.h a handful of the festive paper napkins from the kitchen and then run back down the path with them and kneel at the side of the hole and put them on his face. 'Careful,' Carmen says, worried that I'm about to fall on top of Mr Baxter.

Covering him with soil is easy but disposing of the soil displaced by Mr Baxter is a grim job, trundling awkward wheelbarrows of the heavy wet stuff down to the bottom of the garden where we make a pile of it, like a dark sandcastle.

By the time we straggle back inside we look like we've just mined our way down under and back, filthy and soaked to the bone and speechless with shock. We take our shoes off outside the back door and stand under the porch light staring in horror at each other.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Mrs Baxter's making a pot of tea and laying out more Christmas cake and mince pies on plates with festive doilies and the paper napkins which are now doubling as grave-clothes.

Mrs Baxter shoos us into the living-room with the tea-tray, then, putting it down on the coffee table, she beams at us. 'Come on, come on, help yourselves.' My heart sinks. 'And you, Isobel, come on, eat up!' she urges, handing me a paper napkin, the sight of whose red and green makes me blench. The pain in my face where Mr Baxter hit me is growing more acute by the minute.

There's blood everywhere in the living-room, streaked on the walls, on the sofa, and the huge bloodstain that has become a macabre figure in the carpet. 'We'll have to do something about that,' Carmen says to me.

'Dearie me,' Mrs Baxter says, overhearing this conversation, 'we'll need to hire a Bex Bissell for that.' I'm sure the smell of blood salt and rust has seeped into the very air itself. 'Have a piece of shortie,' Mrs Baxter urges, 'I made it myself.'

Audrey stirs, opening her eyes sleepily and spying the baby in her arms smiles her lovely smile. It would take a crowbar to separate them now.

Eunice sighs and leaves the room, coming back with a bucket of hot water and a bottle of Stardrops and mutters, 'Come on,' rather viciously at me but I've reached a stage of weariness that's beyond anything. All my bones are sore and if there wasn't so much blood in the living-room I would curl up on the sofa with Mrs Baxter and fall asleep. 'It's nice to have so many young people in the house,' Mrs Baxter says gaily. 'Daddy will be so pleased when he gets back he's a great one for the young people.'

A statement wrong on so many counts that I forget about the mud and the blood and the horror and sit heavily down on the sofa with my head in my hands.

'Don't be bothering yourself with that just now,' Mrs Baxter says to Eunice, who's on her knees scrubbing the carpet with an expression on her face that defies description. 'How about a game of something?' Mrs Baxter says brightly. 'How about Rhubarb Charades or Hot Potato? Get Home Safe, Mother that's a nice quiet game. Human Croquet, that's a wonderful game of course we need more people for that,' she adds wistfully. (How many people do you need for Human Croquet, for heaven's sake?) I stand up suddenly and run to the kitchen and am sick in the sink. The kitchen door's still wide open, letting the rain in. Our muddy shoes are lined up neatly on the doorstep, like reminders of our lost innocence. I can't go back into that h.e.l.lish living-room. I step over the shoes, into the dark unquiet garden and go home.

I have blood on my hands and no matter how much I scrub at my fingernails I can't get rid of it. I lie in the bath until the water turns cold and then wrap myself up in towels and pad damply out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. Then I lie down in my bed and sleep like the dead.

And dream about Mrs Baxter's garden in summer. Dream about scarlet runner-beans on a wigwam of canes, about marrows sheltering under their big leaves and the feathery fronds of carrots. A neat row of drumhead cabbages, like giant peas, and a row of cauliflowers, their big white curd heads bursting through their leaf-cowls. One of the cauliflowers seems different from the others. Slowly, as I watch, it turns into Mr Baxter's head, poking up through the brown soil and speaking angrily, shouting at me, telling me what a wicked person I am. Then Mr Baxter shoulders his way out of the brown soil, climbs over a row of lettuces and starts lumbering along the path. His flesh is putrid and he has the clumsy gait of a zombie. I turn to run but can only move on the spot as if I'm caught in a cartoon. I start screaming but my voice is as silent as if I was in the depths of s.p.a.ce.

I come downstairs in my nightdress and make myself cocoa. Gordon is sitting in Vinny's armchair by the ashes of the fire, cradling the baby. How did the baby get home on its own?

'She's very fretful,' Gordon says, smiling at me. 'How did the baby get here?' I ask Gordon. 'Who knows?' he says, smiling vaguely. In the kitchen Debbie is making an inventory of the Welsh dresser, watching the willow pattern plates like a jailer. The carca.s.s of a half-eaten turkey is on the kitchen table. Christmas dinner. I shake Debbie by the arm. 'What day is it?'

'It's Christmas Day, of course.'

'How long have I been asleep for?'

'What on earth are you talking about?' She moves a sauce-boat a fraction of an inch.

'Have I eaten Christmas dinner, for example?'

'For example?' Debbie frowns. 'Well, you've certainly eaten Christmas dinner. It wasn't much of an example.'

'Wish?' Gordon asks, coming into the kitchen and picking up the arc of wishbone and proffering it to me. I decline.

I have to go round to the Baxters', I have to find out if Mr Baxter's alive like Hilary and Richard (presumably) or whether he's at this moment turning into a vegetable. I run out of the back door and down the drive, the wind whipping through my hair and the rain soaking through my nightdress.

I'm running so fast that I can't stop at the end of the driveway and run straight into the normally deserted road. The oncoming car's on top of me before I even register that the dazzling light is coming from its headlights. Our paths are destined to cross exactly in the middle of the road, the driver must have a good view of my terrified face as I bounce on the bonnet before he swerves violently and goes crashing through the hawthorn hedge on the opposite side of the road and drives his car smack into a gnarled old hawthorn tree.

I have certainly seen his face, seen the horror on the features of Malcolm Lovat as he tries to avoid my unavoidable body.

I've landed half in the hedge and its thorns have torn at my face and hands. I crawl over to the car. The driver's door is hanging open and Malcolm is slumped in the seat. I kneel on the ground next to him and put my hand up to hold his. I know there's no escaping the dreadful words he's going to say to me. I wait patiently, almost peacefully, for them.

He half-opens his eyes. His hair's matted with blood, his face almost unrecognizable. 'Help me,' he whispers, 'help me,' and closes his eyes. I crawl away, back to my hedge, I really can't bear this.

I'm invisible. I'm like some dreadful mythical creature that turns up in other people's lives to wreak havoc and disaster. At the corner of my vision I can see people running from their houses to see what all the commotion is. I catch a glimpse of Mr Baxter, very much alive, running along his drive. I agree with Audrey we know nothing. I watch the police and ambulancemen removing Malcolm from the wreckage of his car, hear one of them say softly, 'Is he gone?' and another one murmur, 'Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

Why must it always end this way? Why must it end with Malcolm Lovat dying? Again? 'That's Malcolm Lovat, old Doc Lovat's son,' someone says. 'That's a dreadful thing,' someone else says, 'a lad like that with such a great future ...'

A policeman suddenly catches sight of me and an ambulanceman rushes over to me with a blanket but I am already gone, washed over by the wave of blackness that takes me down to the bottom of a Polar Ocean where everything is the colour of blue diamonds and only the seals and the mermaids swim.

PRESENT.

MAYBE.

THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD BUT IT IS THIS ONE.

The smell of frying bacon wakes me up. My bedroom's warm. It's never usually warm, except at the height of summer. The room's the same but different. There are pretty flower-sprigged curtains at the window, a carpet on the floor I've never seen before and a pale striped wallpaper on the walls instead of the usual beige relief. What's wrong? Can you step in the same river thrice? The time is seriously out of joint in Arden, I fear.

There's no sign, I notice, of the box of soaps, nor of the pink party dress absences only to be welcomed.

By the bed, a pair of fluffy pink mules are waiting for my feet, a lemon nylon neglige hanging on a hook on the door is similarly waiting for my body. Laid across my bed there's a stocking as heavy as if it still contained a leg. There's a gift-tag pinned on it and I reach down and turn the tag over so that I can read it. It says, To Isobel from 'Father Christmas'! What does this mean? Who is 'Father Christmas'?

Guiltily for I may not be the 'Isobel' of the gift-tag I investigate the contents of the stocking. Little gifts suitable for a girl bath cubes and handbag vanity mirrors, hair bands and chocolate drops.

Half-reluctant, half-curious, I get out of bed and slip on the mules and the neglige. There's a large cheval-mirror in the corner, not a heavy one like Mrs Baxter's, but a pretty mock Louis-Quinze thing in gilded whitewood. I tread softly on my new carpet in case I'm treading on my dreams (you never know) and look in the mirror. I'm also the same and yet not the same. Some differences are obvious my hair, for example, is much better tended than usual but there are subtle changes that are more puzzling. Is it just my madness or do I look, well (how can I say it?), happy? What's wrong?

On my dressing-table there's an array of teenage cosmetics pale pink lipsticks and pearly nail varnish. I open the whitewood wardrobe and find it's full of nice clothes shirtwaisters and big dirndl skirts, soft Orlon sweaters in pastel colours, a little jersey suit. This is certainly an infinitely better version of Christmas than the previous three, but I hardly need remind myself that appearances can be deceptive who knows what lurks beneath this pleasant surface? What kind of teenage Faustian pact have I entered into to bring about this change in my fortunes? Have I given up my eternal soul to Mephistopheles for nice clothes and a date every Sat.u.r.day night?

From the wardrobe I choose a green linen sack-dress and a white Courtelle cardigan and exchange the fluffy mules for a pair of black kitten-heeled shoes and parade in front of the mirror, pleased with my transformation into a perfectly normal-looking person.

From the window I can see an outside world covered in a glittering white pantomime-frost. Out in the field beyond the garden the Lady Oak looks like a tree from an Arthur Rackham book, a fine-cut black silhouette against the winter sky. Four Christmases in a row and different weather each time. Pretty wondrous strange, if you ask me.

I go downstairs in this same-but-different house and follow the smell of bacon and coffee to the dining-room.

Charles is sitting at the table, tucking into a plate of bacon, scrambled eggs and fried mushrooms. Somebody says, 'Tea or coffee?' and Charles looks up and, smiling through a mouthful of fried bread, says, 'I think I'll have coffee, please.' Very gently, I push the door open a bit wider. Vinny is laminating toast with b.u.t.ter and marmalade. She looks more or less the same as usual, which is no surprise.

The table is covered in a thick white cloth and the Widow's silver is out, as well as her flower-sprigged china, all reconst.i.tuted from its broken pieces. The Widow's chrome teapot sits as usual in the middle of the table, clean and polished and wearing a newly knitted cosy in brown and yellow. The Widow herself ('Surprise!') is sitting next to Vinny, almost as spruce as her teapot, her grey hair in a tidy bun, her spectacles perched on the edge of her nose. She looks in remarkably good shape for one so old certainly the Widow looks in very good shape for someone who's dead ... this is, as usual, all very confusing. There's to be no more dying then?

A hand reaches over the table and takes a piece of toast. I open the door a fraction more to see who the hand belongs to. Gordon. Not the usual careworn Gordon, but a cheerful Gordon, grown slightly plump around the jowls and the waistline as might befit a prosperous grocer. He turns to Charles and says, 'Sure you don't want any more bacon, old chap?' and Charles mumbles through a mouthful of egg, 'No thanks.'

I could swear that Charles looks taller, but then he is sitting down so I can't really be sure. He certainly looks less spotty, less miserable, less idiotic. There's somebody else at the table, sitting next to Gordon, wreathed in cigarette smoke. Gordon turns to this invisible person and pours them another cup of coffee without asking, or being asked. I can see a hand belonging to this person pale skin and long, thin fingers that end in scarlet nails.

I have to push the door open further to see who this person is too far, for Gordon looks up and says, 'h.e.l.lo, old thing, I thought you were never going to wake up. Come and have some breakfast.'

And the invisible person who is now visible says, Darling, come in and sit down. What do you want for breakfast?

I am a radiant being, I rise up and float for happiness, float round the dining-table, past my brother who has grown almost handsome now, past Vinny and the Widow, rest as lightly as a b.u.t.terfly on the carpet and kiss Eliza on the cheek. Merry Christmas, darling. On her finger, a ring sparkles, emeralds and diamonds catching lights off the fire in the hearth. This is neither past nor future this, surely, must be my parallel life, the one where everything goes right. The one where real, right justice prevails (the one with no pain). The one that should only exist in fiction.

And so the day goes on, every moment another gift unwrapped. 'What are you so cheerful about?' Vinny says and I laugh and plant a kiss on her withered-apple cheek and exclaim, 'Oh, Vinny I love you!' and catch Charles' comic face, cross-eyed with horror.

The Christmas dinner is everything you would expect from such a day, the goose as fat and succulent as a goose raised by a genuine goosegirl, the roasted potatoes as crisp as crackling on the outside, as soft as clouds on the inside. 'This is nice apple sauce,' Gordon says and the Widow replies, 'From our own apples.'

Gordon brings in the pudding, flaming like a dragon, and the Widow picks up a silver sauce-boat and says, 'Now who's for rum and b.u.t.ter sauce?'

When we're as stuffed as Christmas geese ourselves we play a quiet hand of rummy in the living-room, to the accompaniment of Christmas carols on a record the Widow brings out. Once we've begun to digest our dinner we play a noisy game of Racing Demon and then a hilarious game of Charades at which Eliza proves particularly talented. Someone should go and fetch Mrs Baxter, this is just the kind of Christmas she would love.

It's dark outside, but inside everything glows with its own inner light the Widow's poinsettias, the polished mahogany of the table, the tinsel and Christmas cards, the holly with its red berries, the sprig of mistletoe hanging from the Widow's chandelier, beneath which Gordon is even at this moment kissing Eliza so fiercely that the Widow can't resist a little tutting.

Then it's time for more food, here is the Widow already with a big wooden tray piled high with mince pies and Christmas cake, turkey sandwiches and sticks of celery in the engraved celery gla.s.s. We eat sitting round the fire, then Gordon says, 'Let's have a sing-song, eh, Vin?' and we sing l.u.s.tily, 'Early One Morning', 'Polly-Wolly-Doodle' and 'What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?' to which (miraculously) I find I know all the words.

Then Gordon is prompted to sing 'Sweet La.s.s of Richmond Hill' which he does beautifully and follows it up with 'Scarlet Ribbons' which brings tears to Eliza's eyes. We finish up with 'One Fish Ball' and 'Some Folks Do' and even Vinny is inclined to cheer the merry, merry heart that laughs by night and day. This is pure wish fulfilment. We are an ideal family. We are a happy family. I am living the perfect plot, but what will the ending be like?

Is this real? Or am I imagining it? And what is the difference? If I imagine a Christmas table groaning under fatted goose and flaming pudding, why isn't it as real as one that really happened? How is an imagined Christmas different from a remembered one?

We've just embarked on another round of mince pies and pot of tea when a car horn hoots outside. Eliza pulls the curtain at the window aside and says (to me), It's for you, darling, it's your boyfriend.

My boyfriend what a wonderful phrase. But who will my boyfriend be? 'Here's Malcolm,' Gordon says, striding towards him and shaking his hand as Vinny lets him in. 'Happy Christmas, Malcolm!'

'Happy Christmas, sir,' Malcolm Lovat says and goes around the room exchanging the season's greetings with everyone. He blushes when Eliza murmurs, Happy Christmas, darling, and kisses him full on the lips but Gordon laughs and says, 'You'll have to excuse my wife, Malcolm, she actually invented flirting, you know. We're trying to persuade her to take out the patent and make us lots of money!'

Oh, that's not fair, darling, Eliza says, we were standing under the mistletoe that's allowed.

How long can this last? What if it could go on for ever?

We're going to visit Malcolm's parents apparently.

'Your mother too?' I ask cautiously, trying not to let the knowledge of the past cloud this wonderful present.

'Of course,' he grins, 'she's one of my parents, after all.'

'And she's quite well?'

'Perfectly.'

Perhaps n.o.body in the world is dead or dying? Perhaps everybody is alive and well and happy, I muse, as I follow Malcolm out into the hallway. Perhaps there is no sickness or famine or war. A chorus of Goodbyes! echoes behind us and I pause abruptly on the front doorstep of course! This is heaven. I have died and gone to heaven. I had died in the car crash so has Malcolm and we're in heaven where our families have been waiting for us but then they'd all be dead too. Has everyone died? Everyone in the whole world? Perhaps this is the Day of Judgment and the unnamed dead, those who the flood did and the fire shall are risen up and reformed from the dust that they have been.

Isobel?'