Grateful for the subject change, Anatoly looked up, smiling. "By staying out of the way, mostly, or looking after the children so Svetlana could cook in peace. We would have a big dinner, hand out the presents, seperate the cousins from each other and then finally, after the tears were dried and the scrapes mended, ring in the New Year."

The number of times the Sergievsky family was a happy one could be counted on one's fingers, but the New Year holiday was one of them.