Five Gold Rings

Not every Christmas story ends with snow and a kiss. Some end with the council banning inflatables.

In a Britain where the algorithm has made Christmas compulsory on the third Tuesday of every month, Marcus and Derek plan a rebellion from the basement of a Tesco. On Christmas Eve in Manchester, an emergency locksmith hears confessions from a wife who locked herself out on purpose. A new-build cul-de-sac goes to war over fairy lights. A widow in lockdown answers the door to find her much younger lover's partner on the step. A woman picks up a hitchhiker at Gordano services and asks him to be her fiancé for the weekend. In Hove, a couple inherits three French hens that turn out to be Swiss.

And on a quiet street in the Midlands, Emily lays the table for a family that isn't coming.

Funny, bleak, tender and occasionally very rude, these fifteen stories are about the people hiding from Christmas as much as the people hosting it: the widowed, the sober, the skint, the ones who said they'd come and didn't. Two of them revisit characters from Mo Fanning's novels. One is narrated by a puppy.

For readers of David Nicholls, Nina Stibbe and anyone who has ever hidden in the kitchen at a family party.