Christmas present.

This year my mum and sister came over to mine for Christmas dinner. My sister has a son and he usually goes and stays with his dad; my sister is divorced. This year he wanted to stay in Scotland but he also wanted to see his dad, so my sister's ex husband also came. My mother is also divorced, in fact she's been divorced twice now, so far.

The thing is, when I was young she had an affair with this guy. He was married, with kids, and he was a friend of my best friend's mother, my best friend's mother was also my mothers best friend. Anyway, she had an affair with him on and off for a few years until I was about 8 and she left my dad and went to London with this guy. It was all pre-planned. She took me and my sister to my best friend's house for a visit and we all stayed over for a few days. This was not unusual as they lived a good few miles out of town on a farm and we did this quite a lot. It was during the summer holidays, she left my sister and I with my best friend's family. She came into the room late on the second night where I was not yet asleep and said goodbye and left me some money to buy a Birthday present with. I remember crying for a long time after that, until I fell asleep. I did it very quietly so I didn't disturb my friend, who was in the bottom bunk. But many years later he admitted that he'd heard me, anyway.

I think the plan was that she would come back and take us to stay in London. We went to stay with my grandmother, my dad worked shifts so we couldn't stay at home. I was there for a while because I went to school from there for a number of weeks after the summer holiday's ended. She came back. We went to stay back at home. Life got back to normal but I never really trusted her again. I think she continued to see him for a while after that but then he went to work abroad when I was about 12 and I remember her getting drunk and depressed one time.

She left my dad when I was about 16 or 17 for a different man. Lived with him for years before getting married about 7 years ago. She'd been with him longer than she had been with my dad but they divorced at the beginning of this year.

This September my mum was working in the country, looking after someone for a number of weeks to give the woman's daughter some respite. One day she was out food shopping and decided to go to a different supermarket than the one she'd been instructed to go to (the woman was boycotting Tesco for some reason) and reaching for a tin of tomatoes and there was the guy also looking for tomatoes. He lives nearby and had gone out for petrol, but decided he didn't want to go to his usual place so had gone to Tesco, someone earlier that day had told him it was cheaper than his usual place, but on reaching Tesco had turned the wrong way and ended up in the car park. So he'd ended up just going in for some tomatoes. Serendipity.

My mum's been seeing him ever since almost every week. They both came over when I was half moved back into the house, post renovation. But he was also there on Christmas day. I remember, all those years ago, with my best friend and his two brothers, trashing the guy's caravan, which he kept near my best friend's farm. We broke in and wrecked it. We took his clothes out of the cupboards and I pissed all over them. But I couldn't feel angry at him now. For taking my mother away all those years ago. I quite like him. He's more of a gentleman than my dad and more intelligent than my stepdad and kinder than both of them. I think when she left that night she said I'd understand one day, when I was older. I never understood until only a few weeks ago when she told me he's the only man she's ever loved, he's the only man who's treated her with respect. I can understand that.

We had a really great day. The food was fantastic. I gave really thoughtful presents and I didn't really get anything special, but it didn't bother me like it usually does. I don't know why.