The table is laid with the good silver, each fork positioned perfectly, napkins wrangled into delicate swans and lilies. Marla's mother has been orchestrating this since early morning: the caterer's arrival at nine, the florist at ten, the final "walk-through" at two while Marla sits in her room pretending to catch up on holiday reading after church. She's dressed carefully. A navy dress with a neckline that isn't too conservative, and not too showy, understated jewelry, hair arranged perfectly, after forty-five minutes at her bathroom mirror with a curling wand. She looks as if she has stepped out of a magazine.

She can't quite tell if she likes it.

The guests arrive between seven and seven-fifteen. There are always exactly eight: Marla's parents, Aunt Lillian, the Hendersons from two streets over with three children at Eton, the Smiths, and the Ashworths. Brian hasn't been invited this year. Her mother said he was with Giuletta in Rome this Christmas. Marla knows from his Instagram that he is in Bristol. She knows not to bring it up: Marla's role tonight is to be present, intelligent but not showy, warm but not effusive, interesting but not attention-seeking.

She knows this.

"Marla, darling," Mrs. Henderson says, kissing her cheek. "How's St Anne's treating you? Your mother says you're doing brilliantly."

"It's been quite demanding," Marla replies, the correct level of humility in her voice. "But I'm enjoying it."

"Demanding in what way?" Mr. Smith asks.

Marla considers her answer carefully. "Academically, socially. There's a lot of... presence expected."

"That's what the best schools do," Mrs. Ashworth says, as though this is obviously positive. "They prepare you for a life where you're always being watched."

Marla only smiles.

Dinner is announced. Everyone moves to the table with a sort of choreographed ease that Marla finds slightly disconcerting without the set dressing of uniforms and class-times. Marla's mother--Emmeline--sits at one end, her father at the other, creating the illusion of democratic seating. Marla finds herself next to Aunt Lillian. The first course is soup. Everything is soup first, then fish, then meat, then something "light" for dessert. The progression is as certain as liturgy.

Marla can feel her aunt's attention like a weight. She doesn't look at her; she focuses on her soup spoon, on the precise angle she must hold it.

"You look thinner," her aunt continues. "Diminished."

"I'm managing fine," Marla says.

"You always say that."

Across the table, Mr. Smith is telling a story about his son's first term at Oxford. Everyone is laughing at the appropriate moments. Her father is nodding at something Mrs. Henderson said about the housing market. Everything is proceeding exactly as it should. Emmeline catches her eye and holds it for just a moment: be present, be appropriate. Marla nods fractionally. The check is complete.

The fish course arrives, cod, cooked to translucent flaccidity, lay upon a bed of tasteless pea and mint purée. Everyone compliments it anyway.

"Marla, I heard you might be Head Girl next year," the Ashworth daughter (Catherine? Caroline?) says. "That's extraordinary."

"Not yet," Marla replies. "The selection hasn't been finalized."

"But you're expecting to be chosen?"

"I'm hoping to be," Marla says carefully. There's a precision to this language: hope is acceptable, expectation is arrogant.

"Well, I'm sure you will be," Catherine/Caroline says. "You have that look about you."

Marla swallows around a thin fish bone. It cuts her on the way down. "That's very kind of you to say."

After dinner there's coffee in the sitting room. The men cluster near the fireplace discussing golf and cricket. The women distribute themselves across the sofas, Marla's mother fielding questions about her charity work, something to do with children's literacy, which Catherine/Caroline volleys animated questions about with a disinterested investment.

Marla sits on the edge of a sofa, coffee balanced precisely on her knee, and listens.

"You're very quiet tonight," Aunt Lillian observes, joining her on the periphery.

"Just listening," Marla says.

"To what?"

Marla considers this. "Nothing in particular."

"There's something different about you," her aunt says quietly. "Since the last time I saw you. Something's shifted."

"School's demanding," Marla offers.

"It's not that." Her aunt leans closer. "It's like you're listening to something I can't hear. Are you quite alright?"

"Yes," Marla says. "I'm fine." She pauses, fidgeting by running a nail around the rim of her saucer, considering her next move. She decides that it is a perfectly reasonable move to make, she is eighteen after all, and her Aunt will likely delight in the conspiratorial delinquency of it all. "Aunt Lillian?" She asks.

"Yes, my dear?"

"Do you have..." she lowers her voice fractionally, tilting her head downwards in such a way to not interrupt her curls, "a cigarette?"

Aunt Lillian’s smile doesn’t change, but her posture does: an infinitesimal straightening, a flicker of amusement behind the eyes. She has always enjoyed being the person Marla comes to when she wants to step half an inch outside the lines. “Of course I do,” she murmurs, as though Marla has asked for a breath mint. “But not here.”

Her hand drifts to her clutch, tapping it once with a manicured finger. Then she rises, smoothing her skirt, and says, loud enough for the room to hear, soft enough to sound incidental: “I’m going to get a bit of air.”

Marla waits three polite seconds before standing. Her mother’s assessing gaze flicks toward her, but Marla offers a serene, dutiful smile. Just stretching my legs. Emmeline nods, satisfied. The hallway is dimmer. Aunt Lillian is already at the back door, holding it open with a conspiratorial elegance. Outside, the garden is washed in moonlight, the hydrangeas pale and ghostly. The air is cool, a relief after the thick warmth of the sitting room. Aunt Lillian produces a slim silver case, flips it open, and offers it to Marla.

“Only take one,” she says lightly. “I've seen enough little girls pretend to be seasoned smokers,” she snaps the case closed. "And had enough little girls throw up on me to know when enough is enough," Aunt Lillian says, exhaling a perfect ribbon of smoke. “You are different.”

Marla looks out over the garden. “In a good way?”

“In an interesting way,” her aunt replies. “I like a girl who knows how to weigh her choices.”

Marla lets the smoke curl from her lips. “I don’t know what I’m choosing.”

“Oh, darling.” Aunt Lillian smiles. “You’re choosing yourself. That’s always the beginning.”

The kitchen has been awake since six.

Julian knows because he has been awake since five-forty, lying very still, listening to his dad move about downstairs, trying not to wake a house that was very much already awake. He mutters a word, directed at the turkey, that would earn Aria a lecture if she ever said it. By ten, every surface is occupied. The turkey rests under foil like a patient. Two pans of rice and peas steam on the back hob, and the macaroni cheese sits on the windowsill to cool, guarded by a tea towel. The windows are fogged to the corners. The whole house smells of thyme, allspice and burnt sugar.

Gran arrives at eleven with Uncle Jack carrying her shopping bags, and a cake tin--Quality Street tin, metal with the logo from the 90s--held in both hands. She peels back the lid slightly, and the scent of rum hits Julian harder than anything as he stands in the doorway. Chairs: seven, plus the folding one from the garage that Dad has wiped down twice. People: Mum, Dad, Aria, himself, Gran, Uncle Jack, Devon, and Mrs Adeyemi from next door. Eight. It's a good number. It's enough to make the room loud.

Mum comes down for dinner.

It is, in this house, an event, and no one treats it like one. Dad simply happens to be at the bottom of the stairs when she starts down, and Uncle Jack happens to be holding a blanket, and Aria happens to have cleared the armchair at the end of the table. Mum descends one step at a time, one hand on the rail, the other on Dad's forearm, wearing her good green jumper and a headscarf Aria tied for her that morning, bright gold, slightly crooked.

"Don't everyone stare," she says. "I'm not the Queen."

"You're better," says Uncle Jack. "The Queen never made me saltfish."

She laughs, and sits, and the room breathes out.

The table has been extended, covered with the red cloth that has a wine stain, hidden under the gravy boat. There are crackers, which Julian's Mum flinches at, then laughs at the cheap joke inside like everything is normal again, placing the too-big paper crown on Dad's head even though she won. Aria is wearing hers already, lopsided over her braids, the pink beads clicking whenever she turns.

Dad says grace. It is not long. It never is. He thanks God for the food, for the hands that made it, for the people at the table and the people who couldn't be. His voice catches on the latter part. Julian pretends not to hear.

"Amen," says the table.

Julian watches his mum's plate. A spoon of rice. A slice of turkey cut small. One roast potato, which she moves from one side to the other. She eats four forkfuls.

"So, Julian," Gran says, passing him the gravy. "How is that school treating you?"

"Good," he says. "Busy."

"Busy," Gran repeats. "And are they feeding you? And are they being decent to you? Those places can be funny with boys like you."

"Mum," Uncle Jack says.

"I'm only asking."

"They're fine," Julian says. "Everyone's been fine."

It is true. Nobody has said a single thing to him.

Devon pipes up across from Julian, fidgeting with his hands and trying to look like he isn't desperate for the presents. "Is it true you're up for Head Boy?"

Julian opens his mouth.

"He'll be Head Boy," his mother says, buttering a roll she is not going to eat, the way you'd say the post won't come, it's Sunday -- a simple, obvious case of cause and effect. The whole table turns towards her, and then towards him, glowing with pride, and Julian feels the word settle onto his shoulders like snow. He is not allowed to say if. Not with her sitting there, scarf slipping, every day of this year held in the way she looks at him: she has been telling the nurses at chemo, and the ladies at her support group, and the postman, and anyone who would listen. It is the one thing she has to hand out that is entirely good.

"We'll see," he says, and smiles.

"Modest," says Mrs Adeyemi approvingly. "That's how you know."

Aria pulls a cracker with him and wins the little plastic fortune-telling fish, which she places on her palm. It curls up. She declares this means she is passionate and fickle, and Mum laughs properly, and Julian holds on to the sound.

Presents are a modest affair, and everyone, bar Devon, agrees that is the best kind. Aria gets the keyboard she has been campaigning for since August. Dad gets slippers, and Mum gets a new dressing gown. Julian gets a jumper from Gran, a book token from Uncle Jack, an Arsenal keyring from Aria, and, from his parents, a thick, navy notebook with nothing written on the front.

"For next year," Mum says. "For all the plans."

The first page is not blank. In her handwriting sits a small phrase, rendered in biro: Julian. Whatever you decide, I will have been proud first. Mum x

He closes it before he can search out the signs of sickness in the handwriting.

"Thanks, Mum."

"You hate it."

"I love it."

"Good," she says.

Later, when the family begins arguing over the washing-up, and Gran is stuck entertaining Devon with his new Hot Wheels set, Julian takes the bin bags out. The back garden is small and dark, and the patio slabs are slick with a snow that never settled. Over the fence, next door's fairy lights blink in a long, tired loop, red and gold and red. His breath hangs in front of him. For the first time all day, it is quiet.

He does not hear the door, only the click of a lighter that doesn't catch, and then Uncle Jack beside him with his coat over his shoulders and an unlit cigarette between two fingers.

"Don't tell your mother," Jack says.

"I won't." Julian almost laughs. They stand side by side looking at the bins. Somewhere behind the rooftops, a car passes, tyres squeaking on the wet road. And under it, so faint he could be imagining it, there is the hum: the same note that lives in the chapel's lights at night, when the prefects have gone and the building lets out its breath, and for a second the cold in the garden is not the cold of December at all.

"Do you hear that?" he asks.

Jack tilts his head politely, though the answer is obvious. "Hear what?"

Julian listens. He hears nothing but a dog three gardens down, and the intro to Last Christmas radiating from next door, and the distant clatter of his sister loading the dishwasher wrong.

"Nothing," he says. "Sorry. Long day."

"It's Christmas. They're all long." Jack claps him once on the shoulder. "Come in before you freeze. Your gran's cutting the cake," he says, before slipping away.

Farah and Ahmed are in her room by ten past five, both small bodies clambered up onto the bed and sat on her legs, poking and prodding her like a corpse.

“She’s awake,” Ahmed whispers.

“Her eyes are closed.”

“That’s what awake people do when they’re pretending.”

“It’s five,” Hannah says into the pillow.

“It’s Christmas,” Ahmed says, before settling back onto his knees, pressing directly into Hannah's stomach. She tries not to wince as she turns her face away and sighs loudly into the duvet. At school she wakes to a bell and lies there in the dark until she feels like a person again. Here, two elbows land in her ribs and she is simply a sister. She can't quite decide which she prefers

By half past six the living room is a sea of wrapping paper, which her father chases behind uselessly with a bin-bag, because he cannot stand a mess, even on Christmas. Ahmed drives his new remote-controlled car straight into the tree, showering the carpet in small barbs of green plastic. Farah unwraps her 48 pack of new felt tips and announces that her notebook with a lock is not to be read by anyone but 'exspechally Ahmed', and Hannah sits there last, holding her small flat box, wrapped in fancy ribbon, waiting for the noise to die down before she opens it.

Eventually, she does. Inside is a thin silver chain with a plain cross, worn smooth at the edges. “It was my mother’s,” her mum says, already rising to cross the room. “She wore it all the way from Lahore. I had it cleaned.” She fastens the clasp, hands resting on her shoulders a moment longer than required. “Now you carry something of us.”

“I always carry you,” Hannah says, as a joke.

Her mother does not laugh. “Good. Keep doing that.”

The Christmas service at the centre is long, loud and joyful. The kids do the nativity, and Ahmed sings a five second solo about the sheep and the shepherds, off key and out of tune with a tea-towel on his head. Farah stumbles over her lines, and Hannah mouths them back to her from the audience, some kiddy babble about stars and His light. Her mother sings every verse with her eyes closed and one hand raised, as if she must be heard in Heaven, and Hannah finds herself joining in, easy as anything. Here is not St Anne's. No one is judging her tone, or accent, or waiting ti see if she forgets the words. Here, it is easy. The congregation welcomes her.

Then Pastor Daniel asks for a moment of silence.

She bows her head. The hall settles into the sound of a hundred people not speaking: a cough, a creaking chair, a baby fussing. Ten dozen heads all bowed in silence, all thinking of the same thing and different people: of Jesus ans his love, of their own children, and siblings, and sisters and brothers in a thousand different countries. Hannah's thoughts went straight to the prefect girl, and her voice, the way she sings in Mass and answers questions so eloquently you'd think she'd been the one asking, her tone so polished and perfect. And under it, there is a hum.

Her eyes open.

It is the chapel at dusk, the note in the walls of St Anne’s. It is here, in a hall that smells of coffee and tinsel, beneath a cardboard crib and glitteron the projector. She looks at the keyboard, switched off beneath its cloth. At the amplifier, its lead coiled on top, unplugged. At the strip lights, the ticking radiator.

Nothing explains it.

Pastor Daniel says “Amen,” the noise rushes back, and the hum is gone. Hannah’s hand has closed around the cross at her throat.

Lunch is crowded and happy and relentlessly full: aunties with dishes of their own, a cousin from Leicester with a baby, biryani beside roast chicken beside a trifle soaked in cardamom syrup. Hannah sits between her mother and Liza Auntie and eats everything put in front of her.

“And the school?” Liza Auntie asks. “And the girls?”

“They’re fine.”

“Fine,” Liza Auntie repeats, in the tone of a woman who has raised children. “You hear this, Aisha?”

“I hear it,” says her mother, and finds Hannah’s knee under the table with a single firm pat.

Her father stands to toast her. “Our scholar.” The table echoes it.

That night, with the guests gone and Farah and Ahmed carried to bed, Hannah kneels beside her own. The house is full of quiet sound, and for once, the night does not unsettle her: the boiler filling, her mother on the phone to Lahore, Urdu rising and falling through the wall.

Please help Mum not worry so much.

Please help me do well in exams.

Please keep Farah and Ahmed safe.

She stops. There is a fourth thing. She said it last time, and stopped, startled, and has carried it all week like a stone in her shoe. She does not say it. Instead she stays on her knees in the dark, eyes open, and does what Pastor Daniel asked. She stays quiet.

The hum comes back.

The house is too warm, and it smells of everything at once. Charlie lies on top of the duvet in their childhood bedroom, still dressed from the night before, listening to the kitchen through the floor, the clatter of the big roasting tin sparking behind their eyes like a fire-cracker. Their dad sings along to the radio in the wrong key, as he has every Christmas morning for as long as Charlie has been alive. It should be a comfort. They try to let it be one.

The room is exactly as they left it in September. The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling have mostly lost their glow. The Frankenstein essay, marked and returned with a B-minus and where is YOUR argument? in red, is folded in the front pocket of their bag. Beneath the bed, a shoebox of old birthday cards. Everything is smaller than it was, as if the room has been quietly shrinking while they were away.

Their phone buzzes.

Alice: merry xmas u absolute disaster

Alice: my nan has given me a fish-shaped soap

Charlie: lucky

Charlie: i got a thermos

Alice: sexy

Alice: u ok?

Charlie: yeah. just tired. family stuff

Alice: ok. text me if not x

They put the phone face down on their chest.

"Charlie!" Their mum, up the stairs. "Come and help me with the sprouts!"

The kitchen is a heat wall. Charlie's mum stands at the counter in her Christmas apron plastered in cheap reindeer and snowflakes, a glass of fizz already sweating beside the chopping board.

"You've got your dad's jumper on," she says.

"It was on the radiator."

"It suits you. It's a bit big, though, isn't it?"

"It's meant to be big."

"Of course," she says, and turns back to the sprouts.

That's the thing about home. Nobody says anything. It's all small glances and careful sentences, and Charlie hates it. They peel the outer leaves off sprout after sprout and pretend not to notice that their mum has been hovering at their elbow for ten minutes, pretending to look for the colander.

By one o'clock there are eight at the table: Mum, Dad, Gran, Uncle Rob and his new girlfriend Priya, their cousin Tamsin, and her daughter, Ellie, and Charlie. Charlie takes the seat nearest the door. Plates start to travel hand to hand around the table, heavy, steaming, and Charlie's stomach clenches and hollows at the same time, like two people pulling on a cracker. It's just food, they tell themself. It's only Christmas dinner. They have told themself this in various forms since the beginning of December, standing in the lift at school, in the dining hall queue, in the dark of their dorm. It has never once helped.

"Go on, love," Gran says. "Get stuck in."

Charlie picks up their fork.

They eat a piece of turkey. They eat a potato, slowly. They eat three sprouts and then talk to Priya about her job at the hospital for such a sustained and enthusiastic length of time that they're almost proud of themself. Every so often they catch their mum's eyes on their plate and then away again, and the tiny pause in her chewing when she thinks they aren't looking.

Under the table, Charlie digs a thumbnail into the pad of their finger.

"Not hungry, darling?" Mum asks.

"Just pacing myself."

"Quite right," says Uncle Rob, who hasn't noticed anything, bless him. "It's a marathon, not a sprint."

The table laughs. Charlie laughs too, half a beat late, and for just a moment the rope goes slack and they're a person at a table, a person among people. They eat two more forkfuls without counting. Then they notice that they haven't counted, and the clench comes straight back. They put the fork down.

Pudding is lit with a flourish. Dad does the brandy and the lights go off, and for a moment the whole room is only blue flame and faces.

"Make a wish," Gran says, as if it's a birthday.

Charlie doesn't know what to wish. They stare into the little blue fire and don't wish anything at all.

"You've gone pale," their mum says quietly, leaning across. "Do you want some air?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't have to be."

"I'll just get some water," they say, and stand.

The downstairs loo is small and cold, and smells of lavender and bleach from Mum's obsessive cleaning 'for the guests'. Charlie runs the tap and holds their wrists under it, watching their own face in the mirror. The collarbones showing at the neck of their dad's jumper. It is not enough.

When they come back to the dining room, the table is half-cleared. Someone has saved them a bowl of pudding with a modest spoonful of custard, and their mum is pretending to be very interested in the dishwasher.