I answered Daisy's question by shaking my head. She said, 'Tell her quickly and get it over with. She doesn't want a long engagement.'

I said, 'I've told her that we are not engaged.'

Daisy said, 'So you're free, are you?'

I said, 'I've just remembered who you remind me of. It's a thin Nigella Lawson.'

She said, 'I remodelled myself on Nigella last year. Had the boobs done, the hair dyed, the lips plumped up. But I'm no domestic goddess. I loathe domesticity.'

She reached out and removed my glasses. I felt as though I were standing naked in front of her.

She said, 'I like the way your hair curls on the back of your neck.'

I said, 'I meant to go to the barber's.'

She said, 'No, don't cut it.' She stroked the back of my neck and said, 'I know you are honouring a dead dog tomorrow or something, but do come for Boxing Day lunch. I need an ally.'

'The Holly and the Ivy' came to an end and we moved to opposite ends of the fireplace.

When I put my glasses back on, the world seemed to be suffused with colour.

Wednesday December 25th Christmas Day Woke with the usual adult disappointment that there was not a sack of toys at the end of my bed. The sky was grey and it was drizzling. Why can't the weather give us a break for once and snow on Christmas Day?

As I drove to Wisteria Walk, I passed a few kids trying out their new Christmas presents. A man in pyjamas and a dressing gown was supporting a kid on a bike along the pavement. A little girl in a nurse's outfit was pushing a doll's pram behind them. They didn't seem to mind the rain.

The atmosphere in my parents' living room was more Pinter than Dickens. There was a Christmas tree in the corner of the room but it was a scraggy affair and looked as though it was apologizing for its almost bare branches. My mother had done her best with three sets of Christmas lights, baubles and tinsel. I was pleased to see that the 'bell'

I had made out of an eggbox and a pipe cleaner when I was seven had been hung in a prominent position at the front of the tree. I sensed that my mother was depressed.

She said, 'My heart's broken, Adrian. I was so looking forward to Rosie coming home for Christmas.'

I asked where Rosie was. Then I remembered she wasn't coming.

'In Hull!' she shouted indignantly. 'Nobody spends Christmas in Hull!'

My father said, adding to the misery, 'It's William I miss. Remember him last Christmas, Pauline. He loved that drum kit we bought him: My mother said, 'Please, George, don't mention that precious little boy's name. I can't bear to be parted from him.'

'And I'll miss having a few drinks with Glenn,' said my father. 'He was somebody to go to the pub with.'

My mother said, 'And it's the anniversary of the new dog's death. Christmas Day will never be the same again. I will never forget the sight of that poor dog choking to death on a turkey bone.'

The presents were still unopened under the tree. I added mine and we sat around talking about past Christmases and toasted absent friends with Safeway's Bucks Fizz.

At 11 o'clock my father put on the Russian hat with the ear flaps that he wears in the winter and said that he had to go out and fetch something. I watched him get into his second-hand camper van and drive off.

I said to my mother, 'I'm surprised you let Dad wear that hat, Mum. He looks so weird in it.'

She said aggressively, 'Mozart, Van Gogh and Einstein were not conventional men.'

I went into the kitchen and stuffed the limbless and wingless turkey. There were still some ice crystals inside the bird, but quite frankly, diary, salmonella poisoning seemed quite a welcome prospect.

At 11.30 my father returned, carrying a large cardboard box on which he had stuck a polyester red-ribboned bow. The three of us stood around the tree. He passed the box over to my mother and said, 'Happy Christmas, Pauline. I hope this makes up for what Adrian did last year.

The box was obviously heavy and my mother quickly put it down on the coffee table. She opened the cardboard lid and a strange-looking puppy peered out. It was the most peculiar dog I have ever seen. It looked like Rod Hull's Emu with a Kevin Keegan perm. It started slobbering all over my mother's face in a disgustingly unhygienic manner.

My mother and father bent over the new puppy as though they were worshipping the Messiah. I hardly got a look-in for the rest of the day. I was merely the galley slave who had killed their last dog.

My Christmas presents were the usual tat. The worst was from my father: a golf set that consisted of three golf balls, a tiny golf ball 'towel', a pewter tankard inscribed 'The 19th hole' and a pair of dimple-palmed golfing gloves.

My father said, 'I know you hate golf, but I didn't know what else to get you.

My mother let me in on the secret of the 'Mole Christmas gravy'.

'I was hoping to pass the secret recipe on to Rosie, but since she's not here she said bitterly, 'I'll pass it on to you.

She told me the secret in the kitchen with the door closed.

'You boil the turkey giblets in three pints of water with an onion, a carrot and a potato. Then you strain the liquid and some turkey juice from the roasting pan, and dissolve two chicken Oxos in a cup of the hot liquid. Next mix a little Bisto in an eggcup --'Why an eggcup?' I queried.

'Because,' she said scornfully, 'you don't want the gravy too thick, do you? Add the ingredients together, carefully simmering for a time, until voila! You've got the Mole Christmas gravy.

I was incredibly disappointed. I told her that I had expected to hear about a magic ingredient, some rare and exotic spice I'd never known of, something available only at Christmas time, bought after dark from a mysterious foreign woman.

My mother said, 'No, all the ingredients can be bought in the Co-op.'

This is another boyhood illusion shattered.

My mother urged me to ring William in Nigeria. I did so reluctantly. He told me that his stepfather, Wole, had bought him a new bike. As he chatted on about his new life, and his half-brothers and sisters, I felt a powerful longing to hold him in my arms, and sniff his skin, and hold his sticky little hands. I wondered if the stepfather had been pushing William and his bike along a dusty pavement in Lagos. Perhaps I shouldn't have given him up so easily.

I told him about the new puppy and he asked me if it had a name yet. I told him that it was a Mole tradition that dogs were not given a name.

He said, 'You won't kill the new dog, will you, Dad?'

I told him quite firmly that I had not killed the last one.

My mother took the phone from me and my father crowded next to her. I left the room and sat on the stairs. It is a horrible thing to see your old parents crying. The hall was full of packing cases and boxes. The bed I had slept in since childhood had been dismantled and was leaning against the wall.

I was reheating the Christmas gravy when Glenn rang me on my mobile to say that he was being posted to Cyprus. I asked him if I would see him before he left and he said no, he was leaving tomorrow morning at dawn. I didn't like the sound of that word 'dawn'. It was suggestive of urgency and danger and I felt my stomach churn with fear for him. I tried to sound normal and asked him if he'd received his Christmas present.

There was a slight hesitation, then he said, 'Yes, Dad, thank you. It was just what I wanted.'

He is such a kind boy. I will forgive him for telling me a lie. The sad truth is, diary, that I forgot to send him a Christmas present. I was planning to blame this unforgivable oversight on Parcel Force.

When I told my parents that Glenn was going overseas, my mother's face drained of colour. She said, 'Not Iraq!' I told her that Glenn was too young at seventeen to be sent to Iraq, but he was old enough to go to Cyprus. However, diary, I don't like to think about the boy being out of the country, not with the world in such turmoil.

At 5 o'clock there was a one-minute silence for the dog that I was accused of murdering at that hour exactly a year ago today.

At the end of the silence I said, yet again, 'I did not give that dog a turkey bone!'

But it was obvious that neither of my parents believed me.

My mother went outside into the garden and put a poinsettia plant on the dog's grave. When she came back in, my father gave her a piece of kitchen towel with which to wipe her eyes.

He put his arm round her and said, 'Do you want me to dig him up when we move, Pauline?'

My mother said, 'No. He was happy in the back garden, pulling the washing off the line.'

They smiled fondly at the memories, though I remember my father going berserk when the dog had pulled his best jeans off the line and dragged them through the mud.

After eating a slice of Yule log and cracking a few of the easier nuts, I went home and left them watching a video of Christmas 2001, which mainly consisted of a William Mole drum solo, but they didn't seem to mind the din.

Thursday December 26th Boxing Day I woke with a sense of excitement, but couldn't remember what I was looking forward to. Then I remembered. I would be seeing Daisy Flowers at Beeby on the Wold.

It annoyed me that Marigold always came out to greet me before I had a chance to park the car. I like a moment on my own to compose my thoughts before I enter another household.

She held a twig of mistletoe above our heads and kissed me on the cheek. She was wearing a full-skirted, sequined dress, more suitable for Come Dancing than Boxing Day lunch.

I managed to sit next to Daisy, who was elegant in black. She asked me how Christmas Day had been. I said it had been hell.

She said, 'It couldn't have been worse than here. Poppy's hair got caught up in the Magimix when Mummy was creaming garlic mash. And Daddy got drunk on his foul mulled wine and started to cry about Mummy and Roger Middleton.'

Netta Flowers handed round home-made crackers. She said, 'I can hardly bear to see them destroyed. It took me weeks of working until the early hours to make them.'

I pulled a cracker with Marigold. The novelty was a plastic ring with a gaudy pseudo-ruby stone. Marigold asked me to put the ring on the third finger of her left hand.

When I did so she shrieked, 'Look, family, look, family, I'm properly engaged.'

How we all laughed.

Netta said, 'I'm sure as soon as the jewellery shops open Adrian will be buying you something rather splendid. Perhaps a large cluster of diamonds would suit you, Mazzie.'

I realized then that Marigold had not informed her family that the engagement was off.

A strange thing happened to me. I disassociated myself from my surroundings. I seemed to hover above the table. Voices sounded as if they were coming from afar.

I can now see, sitting here in the silence of my loft apartment, that I was in a state of acute anxiety this afternoon. If it hadn't been for Daisy holding my hand under the table, I might well have broken down. I am like a man who is trapped in a grain silo -- the harder he digs, trying to get out, the more the grain pours in, trapping him still further.

Friday December 27th My parents moved to the top left-hand corner of a windswept field today. Their address is The Piggeries, The Bottom Field, Lower Lane, Mangold Parva, Leicestershire. Most of their furniture and possessions have been put into storage, though to be quite honest, diary, it would have been kinder to the furniture to have put it out of its misery by setting fire to the lot.

We battled against a north-east wind to erect the tent. It was dark long before the last peg had been battered into the muddy ground. We sat in the back of the camper van with the new puppy while my mother made tea on the tiny Calor gas stove. The wind screeched and moaned around the vehicle and rocked us as though we were in a cabin cruiser on the high seas.

I didn't like to leave them there and almost asked them to come home with me and stay until at least one of the pigsties had been converted. But then I thought about my father's noisy toilet habits and kept my mouth shut.

As I trekked across the field towards my car, parked in the dark lane, I was overcome with sadness because at least they had each other and I had no one to share my troubles with.

Saturday December 28th Our sale started today. Mr Carlton-Hayes told me that he'd had a serious talk with Leslie over Christmas and that he intends to implement all my suggested changes.

I am to be given the title Manager and am in sole charge of ordering new books, meeting reps, organizing a readers' club, buying a coffee machine and crockery, setting up a computer and going online. These changes are to be phased in gradually, as we do not want to alienate our regular customers, who are always going on about the necessity of having an independent bookseller on the High Street.

Mr Canton-Hayes's duties are onsite domestic valuations, banking, wages, repairs and rebinding. At busy periods we will both work on the till. We are going to open our lavatory to the public and reorganize the shelves so that we can fit in more furniture.

Mr Carlton-Hayes did not mention raising my salary, but I expect this was a simple oversight.

An elderly woman wearing a rabbit's paw brooch came in and complained that I had sold her Trainspotting by Irving Welsh as a Christmas present for her 76-year-old railway enthusiast husband.

She said, 'It's nothing but filth and Scottish words. My husband had to double his blood pressure tablets after reading it.'

I swapped it for Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.

Sunday December 29th Brain-box Henderson phoned me this morning, interrupting the omnibus edition of The Archers. He had heard that I was associated with the Leicester Madrigal Society and wondered if he could join. I gave him Michael Flowers's phone number.

I asked him if he had managed to sort out the Fossington-Gore/George Foreman grill farrago. He said that he had managed to swap the grill for an electric juicer. He wanted to talk about the situation in Iraq. He is another Doubting Thomas regarding the Weapons of Mass Destruction. I cut him off by saying that my coffee was boiling over on the stove, and anyway the swans were making such a racket outside I could hardly hear what he was saying.

An hour later Marigold rang to say that Brain-box Henderson is auditioning tomorrow night. She asked me what I was wearing to the fancy dress party on New Year's Eve.

I said, 'I will probably go as the French writer Flaubert.'

She said, 'Shall I go as Coco?'

Then Gielgud honked so loudly that the rest of her words were lost. It would make a change to see Marigold dressed elegantly for a change.

Monday December 30th I got up in darkness this morning. My car was covered in a thick layer of frost. I had to scrape my windscreen clean with my Visa card, before driving to the Piggeries to check that my parents had survived the night. I drove by Wisteria Walk and said goodbye to the empty house. There had been some happy times there -- not many, but certainly some.

There was a evil wind blowing when I got to the Piggeries. Half of the tent had blown down and was flapping in the wind. I opened the door of the camper van quietly. My parents were lying separately on two shelves, one above the other. The ugly puppy woke and started yapping. My father stirred and muttered, 'Let it out for a pee, Adrian.'

I opened the door and the puppy ran across the field towards the lane. I had no choice but to follow it. There is hardly ever any traffic, but it would be just my luck for the stupid dog to be run over by the only vehicle to use the lane that day.

I caught up with it in the boundary ditch. The water came up to its neck. I dragged it out by its collar and carried it back to the camper van, where it was soon swaddled in the best towel and given hot milk to drink. I, on the other hand, was offered no refreshment and was told to look in the tent for another towel.

My God, it is a desolate place. As I was setting off to the car, my father said, 'There's no high ground between here and the Urals, Adrian. This wind is coming straight from Russia.'

I turned back to wave and saw my mother, who was dressed in a donkey jacket, dungarees and wellington boots, applying scarlet lipstick. What a waste. The only person she'll see all day is my father.

Tuesday December 31st New Year's Eve I asked Mr Carlton-Hayes if I bore a resemblance to Gustave Flaubert. He screwed his eyes up and said, 'If you were stockier, had longer hair and a large moustache, perhaps there would be a fleeting likeness.'

Encouraged by this, I went to Party! Party! -- the fancy dress hire shop -- in my lunch break. I took a copy of Madame Bovary with me and showed Flaubert's portrait to a gormless assistant and said, 'I want to look like this.'

He went into the back of the shop. I was surrounded by last-minute customers jostling for a view of themselves in the full-length mirrors. There was an Elvis, a clergyman, a Nell Gwyn -- complete with plastic oranges -- and a tube of Colgate toothpaste with her husband, a toothbrush.

The gormless boy came back with a black wig, a curly black moustache, a floppy cravat and a velvet smoking jacket. When I finally got to the mirror I was quite pleased with what I saw.

I was the first guest to arrive at the party.

Pandora opened the door to me wearing her usual belly dancer's fancy dress costume. She said, 'You're early. We're not quite ready yet.'

I said, 'The invitation says "8 till late" and it is exactly 8 o'clock.'