We sat in Flowers's Range Rover and waited for the others to arrive.

It was impossible to avoid the swan shit on the stairs and inevitably some of it was trampled on to my floorboards.

I made coffee and gave the usual warning about the glass wall of the lavatory. My warning did not inhibit Michael Flowers, whose urination sounded like the Zambezi in spate.

Nigel and Gary Milksop sat next to each other on the white sofa. The two serious girls sat cross-legged on the floor. Ken Blunt and his wife lolled awkwardly on the futon. I brought the chairs in from the balcony to a chorus of swans hissing. Ferret Face took one chair and Michael Flowers the other. I was quite happy leaning against the kitchen counter. I just wanted the awful night to be over.

Flowers kept us waiting. He assumed the posture of Rodin's The Thinker first, then lifted his head and said, 'Before I address you, can we move closer together and form a circle.'

A lot of awkward furniture shifting took place, and Flowers said, 'I want you to hold hands and close your eyes, and feel the atmosphere in this room.'

I closed my eyes and held Ken Blunt's and Ferret Face s hands and felt embarrassment, suspicion and boredom.

Flowers intoned what he said was a Buddhist mantra, which he urged us to join in with.

At the end Ken Blunt pulled his wife to her feet and said, 'We've got to go home now to let the dog out.'

As I saw them down the stairs, Ken said, 'I'd sooner dance barefoot on drawing pins than stay to hear what he's got to say.

When I went back into the room Flowers was saying, 'I was reading Voltaire at six and Tolstoy at seven.

Gary Milksop lisped, 'Have you ever written a novel, Mr Flowers?'

Flowers said that in the 1960s he had written 'the definitive English novel'. He had asked his dear friend Philip Larkin to read the manuscript. According to Flowers, Larkin had written back to say, 'Hello to All This is the novel of the age. Humbler writers such as myself, Amis et al. should push our pens aside and weep. Mike, my good friend, you are a genius. Every publisher in London will be beating a path to your door.'

Nigel said, 'I know I am just an ignorant gay-boy, but I've never heard of Hello to All This.'

Flowers bit his lower lip and turned his head, as though trying to control strong emotions. 'No,' he said, in what I imagine he thought was a hollow-sounding voice. 'My first wife, Conchita, burned my manuscript.'

Gary Milksop, Ferret Face and the two serious girls gasped in horror.

Nigel said, 'And it was the only copy?'

Flowers nodded. 'It was handwritten in purple ink on fine hand-blocked paper.

Nigel's lip curled. 'And you sent this through the post to Philip Larkin?'

Flowers bridled. 'The postal workers of this country are the finest workers in the land. I trusted them implicitly.'

I said, laying a trap, 'But you still have the Larkin letter?'

'No he answered. 'Conchita destroyed everything that was precious to me.'

One of the serious girls broke her silence and said, 'I did my MA on Philip Larkin -- 'Philip Larkin, Uber-Nerd'

-- I read everything there was to read but I don't remember him mentioning Michael Flowers.'

Flowers smiled and sighed. 'You dear sweet girl, poor old Phil's papers were burned.'

'So I said, 'there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that you were a intimate friend of Philip Larkin? Or that you wrote a masterpiece called Hello to All This?'

I couldn't stand any more and excused myself, saying I needed air. I stood on the balcony for a few minutes until the cold forced me back inside.

When I returned Flowers was saying, 'I did my best to halt the encroaching dictatorship of the motor car. I tried to stop the production of the Ford Cortina. I lay down outside the gates of Dagenham. I had the prescience to see that supplying the proletariat with motor cars would destroy the environment, England and eventually everything we hold dear.'

Nigel said, 'My dad had a Cortina Mark 4. It was duck-egg blue and had leopard-skin seats. Did any of the car workers give up their well-paid jobs because you were sufficiently worried to lie down in the road?'

Flowers said, 'I was deeply disappointed by the workers' response. I'm afraid they lampooned me and several of them took the opportunity to give me what I believe is called now "a good kicking".'

Gary Milksop offered to give Nigel a lift home and ordered Ferret Face to drive the serious girls to the flat they shared.

Flowers stayed talking to me long after the others had gone. He talked mostly about Conchita. He said, 'I went to Mexico after seeing a production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun at Loughborough Town Hall. I was a young man searching for an alternative civilization and I thought I had found it in the remnants of Aztec culture. I met Conchita in the courtyard of the La Croix Hotel.'

'Was she a fellow guest?' I asked.

'No, she was sweeping it he said. 'We exchanged a few words. She complimented me on my Spanish and asked me if I needed a guide to see the Mayan ruins of Palenque.

'We were lovers almost immediately. She took me to meet her family. They were dreadfully poor -- ten of them living next to a rubbish heap in a shack with an earth floor. Her little brothers were running around in white vests and no pants. I gave her father $50 and brought her to England.' He sighed. 'It was like transplanting an exotic hothouse flower into a sodden English field. She was briefly happy when Daisy was born, but before Daisy was three years old she had deserted us and gone back to Mexico.'

'With a pork butcher from Melton Mowbray,' I prompted.

He winced and said, 'Please as if I had pulled the scab off an old wound.

Seconds ticked by and I wondered if it would be rude if I changed into my pyjamas in the bathroom. But he started up again, saying, 'Netta quite literally saved my life at Stonehenge.'

I said, 'Literally? You mean one of the stones was about to fall on you and she --'

He said, 'Perhaps not literally, but she turned my life round, took charge of me and loved me, until very recently.' He paused, and then said, 'I'm finished with women. I'm going to channel my energies into something far more important--the future of this great country.'

When he finally left, I threw myself down on the futon, too exhausted to undress. I composed a letter in my head.

Dear Martin Amis I have a request. Could you please take a quick look through the whole of your dead father's correspondence, diaries, journals and other written material to see if you can find any reference, however slight, to Philip Larkin's friendship with a Michael Flowers of Beeby on the Wold. In particular a letter from Larkin mentioning a manuscript called Hello to All This. I know that your father and Philip Larkin were the best of friends.

Tuesday December 24th Christmas Eve My father rang me first thing this morning. This is such an unusual occurrence that my immediate thought on hearing his voice was that my mother was either severely incapacitated or dead.

He said, 'You've broken your mother's heart. Why didn't you invite us to your engagement party last night?

Are you ashamed of us? I know we smoke and drink a bit and your mother can be opinionated, but --I interrupted him by saying, 'Dad, it wasn't an engagement party.'

I then heard my father saying, 'Pauline, he says it wasn't an engagement party.'

I heard my mother's muffled voice from across the room saying something angry and tearful.

My father translated, 'Your mother says that everybody in the Imperial Dragon sang congratulations to you last night, according to our milkman: I said to him, 'Tell Mum that the milkman should check his facts before passing on gossip.'

My father took the phone away from his lips and relayed this message to my mother. She shouted something incomprehensible, though I managed to make out the words 'liar' and 'engaged'.

My father started to repeat my mother's response, but I broke in and said, 'Can I hear it from the horse's mouth please?'

My father said, 'The horse is lying on the settee, crying her bloody eyes out.'

I told my father that I didn't know how I had got engaged, it had all been a horrible mistake, and I didn't love Marigold or even like her much. I said that I would ring him and my mother later that night.

When I got to work the shop was already full of customers looking for last-minute presents. Mr Carlton-Hayes was struggling to serve a queue of people.

At ii this morning Netta Flowers rang to say that Marigold was safely home from the hospital. She said, 'She's anxious to see you, Adrian. Would you like to join us for Christmas tea tomorrow?'

I said, 'I'm sorry, Mrs Flowers, but my family are holding a memorial service for a very beloved pet dog at teatime tomorrow.'

Netta said, 'Marigold's spirits are very low. I have given her an Indian head massage and strewn her room with lavender, but nothing seems to calm her.'

I'm sorry to relate this, diary, but I mouthed silent obscenities into the phone while writing 'To Mum from Adrian' on a gift tag.

Netta then said, 'Even Daisy can't lift Marigold's spirits.'

I said, 'Daisy's there?'

Netta said, 'Yes, all my girls are home for Christmas this year.'

I said that I would come over to Beeby and bring Marigold's Christmas present.

Netta said, 'We're all very fond of you, Adrian and put the phone down.

At about 4.30 my father rang again to say that my engagement had appeared in the Leicester Mercury on the family announcements page and that people had been ringing Wisteria Walk non-stop to ask about Marigold. He said, 'Your mother has took it hard, Adrian. She's gone to bed with a double dose of Prozac. She's not stuffed the turkey, nor nothing.'

I ran to the corner and bought the Leicester Mercury. The notice was in a box. It stood out prominently on the page. It said: Michael and Netta Flowers are delighted to announce the engagement of their precious daughter Marigold to Adrian Mole.

We wish them peace and spiritual fulfilment for the future.

Wedding arrangements to be announced at a later date.

The Leicester Mercury has a circulation of 93,156, with an estimated readership of 239,000. My blood ran cold.

I realized on the way back to the bookshop that most of the shops along the High Street were closed. I had intended to run out at lunchtime and do some Christmas shopping and now it was too late. I had a few moments of madness. One was when I ran into Habitat and asked if they sold sledgehammers. Another was barging into HMV and begging to be shown the Johnny Cash section.

Some of our customers were equally panic-stricken. By 5.30 we were the only shop open on the High Street.

A crowd of drunken builders who had been drinking all afternoon when they were meant to be shopping for their wives and girlfriends stormed in and asked for help with choosing suitable books.

Between us, Mr Carlton-Hayes and I off-loaded our entire stock of cookery books, including a signed Delia Smith and a Rick Stein complete with his dog Chalky's pawprint.

One of the builders, a plasterer, bought a book on falconry for himself and said he would be back after Christmas to look for similar titles. Before he left the shop, he noticed the plaster around the fireplace 'looked dodgy' and offered to stop by some time in the new year and give us a quote.

I locked the door and turned the closed sign to face the street. A frantic dark-haired woman ran up to the door and shouted through the glass, 'Do you sell replacement bulbs for fairy lights?'

I shook my head and mouthed, 'Sorry.' My heart went out to the poor woman.

Before I left, I selected a few books for my own family, Pandora and Nigel.

When I showed Mr Carlton-Hayes the announcement in the Leicester Mercury he said, 'I never believe anything I read in the papers, my dear.'

I have just rung Wisteria Walk and asked if I was still welcome tomorrow. My father answered. He lowered his voice and said, 'Things are bad here, son. Rosie's phoned to say she's not coming for Christmas. Your mother's upstairs crying and playing Leonard Cohen at volume ten.'

I could hear Leonard Cohen in the background, croaking out a song about sex and death.

My father said, 'I'd love to see you tomorrow, son. I need somebody to help me through the day.'

As I drove to Beeby on the Wold, I caught occasional glimpses of families preparing for Christmas Day. I thought about William in Nigeria and Glenn in his barracks in Aldershot, and hoped that they had checked their emails, where I had posted electronic Christmas greetings. In my heart I knew that they would have preferred a proper card.

Marigold was in her Cinderella coach bed. It is a tragedy of her life, and mine, that she is one of the ugly sisters. She gave me my Christmas present and insisted that I open it in front of her. It was the loft doll's house. She had made many additions since the last time I saw it. It had a swan on the balcony and there were two children. The boy looked like me and the girl looked like Marigold. The detail was amazing. She had made a minuscule Dualit toaster and a cafetiere.

She said, 'Do you like it?'

I said, 'I don't know what to say.

She said, 'I've worked day and night on it. I've hardly slept. That's probably what made me ill.'

I said, 'You must rest now. Stay in bed over Christmas and I'll see you in the new year.

Marigold said, 'But we've hardly seen each other since we got engaged.'

I held her hand and said, 'We're not really engaged, are we, Marigold?'

She said, 'No, not without a ring.'

I gave Marigold her present and asked her not to open it until the morning. I did not want to see her disappointment -- it was a rare unsigned copy of Offally Good!, my cookery book, published as a tie-in to the TV series.

Marigold held her hand out and pulled me down towards her. I caught my shin on the side of the coach bed, the loft doll's house was knocked over and Marigold, our two children and I were knocked on to the floor.

Before I left Marigold's bedroom I said very clearly, 'So you agree, we're not engaged?'

She nodded and sank back into her pillows.

Daisy was downstairs in the drawing room, shivering next to a miserable log fire.

I said, 'Did you know that there is not a single healthy fire in the whole of Dostoevsky's oeuvre?'

She said, 'I've never read Dostoevsky, and with good luck and a fair wind I shall never have to.'

I felt strangely liberated and asked her to name her favourite books. She said, 'I spend every waking moment living at firsthand. I'm the narrator and star of my own life. I'm hungry for everything. I don't want to live vicariously through books. I want to touch, taste and smell life.'

She took a glass from the mantelpiece and drank. I realized that she was very drunk. She wobbled a bit on her high heels.

She said, 'I knew Marigold would get you. She always got her own way when she was a kid. You don't love her, do you?'

What sounded like a small choir was singing 'The Holly and the Ivy' in the next room.