The Warrs are one of those terrible families where Christmas Day present-opening is banned until the late afternoon, but that year I didn’t mind too much, having other things on my mind. I hadn’t asked for anything in particular, so ended up with a big stack of books, an assortment of bath products I’d probably never use, and a sweatshirt from Mum featuring the phrase ‘Fries before guys’. The family had a good laugh about that one.

After presents, the grandparents all fell asleep in the conservatory, Mum got into an intense chess match against Jonathan while Dad and Rachel prepared the tea. Ellis and I played a bit of Mario Kart before I snuck off to my bedroom to chill out and check my phone.

I opened my Facebook message chat with Pip.

Georgia Warr

merry christmas!! i love you, hope you had a good day yesterday xxxxx

It was still unread. I’d been drunk when I sent it midway through Christmas dinner. Maybe she just hadn’t seen it yet.

I checked her Instagram. Pip’s family celebrated Christmas primarily on Christmas Eve, and she’d been posting a lot of Instagram stories. She’d posted a photo in the early hours of the morning – her family walking along the street on their way back from Midnight Mass.

i fell asleep in church lol

And she’d posted another photo half an hour ago of her in her family kitchen, putting a doughball into her mouth.

leftover buñuelos get the FUCK inside my belly

I thought about responding but couldn’t think of a funny thing to say.

Since she posted that half an hour ago, she had probably seen my message on her phone. She was just ignoring me.

She still hated me, then.

I was tucked up in bed by 10 p.m. Overall, not a bad Christmas Day, despite having lost my best friends and the way my singleness was becoming an ongoing family joke.

One day I would probably have to just tell them.

I don’t like guys. Oh, so you like girls? No, I don’t like girls either. What? That doesn’t make any sense. Yes, it does. It’s a real thing. You just haven’t met the right person yet. It’ll happen with time. No, it won’t. This is who I am. Are you feeling OK? Maybe we should get you an appointment with the GP. It’s called being ‘aromantic asexual’. Well, that sounds fake, doesn’t it? Did you hear about that on the internet?

Ugh. OK. Didn’t really want to venture into that conversation any time soon.

I was heading downstairs to get some water when I heard the raised voices. At first, I thought it might just be Mum and Dad bickering at each other, but then I realised the voices were, in fact, Auntie Sal and Uncle Gavin. Ellis’s parents. I hung back on the stairs, not wanting to interrupt.

‘Look at Jonathan,’ Auntie Sal was saying. ‘He’s got it sussed. Married, his own house, his own business. He’s set for life.’

‘And he’s a decade younger than you!’ Uncle Gavin added.

Oh. Ellis was there too.

I wasn’t super close to Auntie Sal and Uncle Gavin. Same as Ellis, really – they didn’t live close by, so we only saw them a few times a year at family gatherings.

But they always seemed a little more uptight than my parents. A little more traditional.

‘I’m aware,’ said Ellis. Her voice took me by surprise. She sounded so tired.

‘Doesn’t that bother you at all?’ asked Auntie Sal.

‘What is there to bother me?’

‘That Jonathan is growing up, starting a family, making plans while you’re still …’

‘Still what?’ snapped Ellis. ‘What am I doing that’s so bad?’

‘There’s no need to shout,’ said Uncle Gavin.

‘I’m not shouting.’

‘You’re getting older,’ continued Auntie Sal. ‘You’re in your mid-thirties. You’re passing your dating prime. Soon it’s going to get harder and harder for you to have children.’

‘I don’t want to date, and I don’t want children,’ said Ellis.

‘Oh, come on, now. Not this again.’

‘You are our only child,’ said Uncle Gavin. ‘Do you know what that’s like for us? You are the sole carrier of my surname.’

‘It’s not my fault you didn’t have any more children,’ said Ellis.

‘And what, that’s it for us? No more children in the family? We don’t get to be grandparents? That’s the thanks we get for raising you?’

Ellis sighed loudly.

‘We’re not trying to criticise your … life choices,’ said Auntie Sal. ‘We know it’s not about us, but … we just want you to be happy. I know you think you’re happy now, but what about ten years from now? Twenty? Forty? What will your life be like when you’re Gran’s age, without a partner, without children? Who is going to be there to support you? You’ll have no one.’

‘Maybe I would be happy,’ Ellis shot back, ‘if you hadn’t spent my entire life brainwashing me into thinking that finding a husband and having babies is the only way for me to feel my life is worth anything. Maybe then I would be happy.’

Auntie Sal went to interrupt, but Ellis cut her off.

‘It’s not as if I’m actively rejecting people, OK?’ Ellis sounded on the verge of tears now. ‘I don’t like anyone like that. I never do. This is just who I am and one way or another, we’re all going to have to put up with it. I can still do amazing things with my life. I have friends. And I’ll make new friends. I was a successful model. Now I’m an artist and my paintings are selling really well. I’m thinking about going to uni to study art, since I never got to go the first time. I have a really nice house, if you could ever be bothered to visit. If you tried, and I mean really tried, you could actually be proud of all the things I’ve done in my life and all the things I’m going to do.’

There was a long, horrible silence.

‘What would you say,’ said Auntie Sal, speaking slowly as if choosing her words, ‘to thinking about trying therapy again? I’m still not sure we found the right therapist last time. If we kept looking, we could find someone who could really help.’

Silence.

And then Ellis said, ‘I don’t need fixing. You don’t get to do that to me again.’

There was the sound of chairs scraping the floor as someone stood up.

‘Ell, don’t do this,’ said Uncle Gavin. ‘Don’t have a strop like last time.’

‘I am an adult,’ said Ellis. There was a contained fury in her voice that reinforced the statement. ‘And if you’re not going to respect me, then I am not going to be around you.’

I watched, hidden in the darkness at the top of the stairs, as Ellis sat down on the bottom step to put her shoes on. Then she pulled on her coat, calmly opened our front door, and stepped outside.

Before I could think twice, I raced to my room, grabbed my dressing gown and slippers, and ran after her.

I found her sitting in her car, vape pen hanging from her mouth but with seemingly no intention of smoking anything.

I knocked on the window, which made her jump so hard that the vape pen flew out of her mouth.

‘Holy fucking shit,’ she said after turning on the ignition and rolling down the window. ‘You scared the absolute poo out of me.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What are you doing out here?’

‘I …’ Maybe this was a bit awkward. ‘I heard your parents being shitty to you.’

Ellis just looked at me.

‘I thought you could use some company,’ I said. ‘I dunno. I can go back inside, if you want.’

Ellis shook her head. ‘Nah. Get in here.’

I opened the door and hopped inside. She actually had a really nice car. Modern. Way more expensive than my elderly Fiat Punto.

There was a silence as I waited for her to say something. She located her vape pen, slotted it neatly into the compartment in front of the gear lever, and then said, ‘I’m in the mood for a McDonald’s.’

‘On Christmas Day?’

‘Yeah. I just really want a McFlurry right now.’

Thinking about it, I was actually really up for some chips. I guess it was a ‘fries before guys’ day.

I also wanted to talk to Ellis about everything I’d just heard. Especially about ‘not liking anyone’.

‘We could go to McDonald’s,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

So Ellis started the car, and off we went.