A December to Remember (33)
“Of course,” she replied with her usual abruptness. “I’ll need to use you as an example of what not to become.”
Star felt the gibe like a gut punch and her breath caught.
“I’m kidding! Don’t give me those Bambi eyes. You’re family, of course I’ll want my children to know you. Even if I don’t always like you very much, I do still—well, obviously—of course I love you, stupid girl.”
Star was so relieved she burst into tears.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “You know, Simone, you really need to work on your interpersonal skills,” she chided. “You’re the only person I know who can make ‘I love you’ sound like ‘fuck you.’?”
Star wiped her eyes and heaved herself up out of the chair. “For the record,” she said, sniffing, “I love you too.” She wandered unsteadily to the sideboard and disappeared down behind it, then reappeared holding aloft an unopened bottle of honey-infused Scotch whisky like it was the Olympic torch. “I found this earlier.” She grinned lopsidedly and waggled her eyebrows. “I don’t think Dad would mind.”
Her sisters clapped and whooped in response.
14
The shock of her alarm going off at seven thirty had caused Simone to reach over the side of the bed and throw up into a floral chamber pot, which she vaguely recalled bringing home from the shop last night . . . or rather, this morning. Why had she thought drinking whisky after all that wine was a good idea? What day is it? she wondered, trying to count back to when she’d arrived. This place is like the Bermuda Triangle. She retched again. Time has no meaning. She breathed slowly in through her nose and out through her mouth. Wednesday, she concluded. The act of thinking had exhausted her.
She rolled back onto the bed and covered her face with her arm. It felt as though an invisible entity was using a tin opener to prize open her skull. She was dehydrated. She imagined herself like one of those sea sponges stranded on the beach when the tide’s gone out, brittle and parched as the sun beats down on it. The duvet was stifling her, so she kicked it off and then regretted the movement as waves of sickness rolled over her. Evette always made her drink a pint of water before bed after a night out. But Evette wasn’t here.
The thought of her wife stirred a hazy memory to the surface, and she pulled her phone out from beneath the pillow, where she had stuffed it after turning off the alarm. A notification citing seven missed calls in the early hours and a message from Evette flashed across the top of the screen and Simone grimaced.
Sorry I missed your calls at half one and two o’clock this morning. I was, as most normal people would be, asleep. Your two fifteen call, however, did wake me.
“Oh, bollocks,” she sighed. Evette was a wonderful woman but a horror if she didn’t get enough sleep.
I called you several times, worried that something had happened to you, and when you didn’t answer, I called Maggie. She didn’t answer either. Eventually I tried Star, who did pick up, and she told me you were drunk. So, thanks for that. I hope you drank some water before you passed out. I’ve got clients booked in all day, so I’ll call you later. x
The single kiss at the end of the message did not go unnoticed. Cheers for that, Star, you snitch! she thought, but what else could Star have said, really?
Tentatively she lifted her head off the pillow; the room was shuddering but not wholly spinning. That was something at least. A cotton tote containing thirty-two tiny wooden houses on the dressing table reminded her that she had a meeting at the solicitors’ this morning. Vanessa had booked them in for what she called an “informal catch-up,” by which Simone hoped she meant “free of charge.”
The first muted rays of morning eked in through the gap in the curtains and she steeled herself to get up. Today would require coffee and carbs—fried where possible. She was glad of the claw-foot bath in the ensuite; a good long soak was the first order of the day.
* * *
“WEEE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS, WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS, WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! AWAY IN A MANGER, NO CRIB FOR A BED, THE LITTLE LORD JESUS LAY DOWN HIS SWEET HEAD!”
“Jesus, Mother Mary, and Joseph. Verity, light of my life. I will give you five pounds if you’ll just stop singing.” Maggie’s breakfast of black coffee and paracetamol was threatening to return. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had a headache this ferocious. She laid her forehead on the cool wooden table and prayed that the room would stop spinning.
“But, Mama, I have to practice for the school play. I’m part of the fruit chorus.”
“Can you practice in your head? Please? Just for this morning?”
“No, Mama, Miss Baker says we have to project our voices. Like this: LITTLE DONKEY. LITTLE DONKEY!”
Maggie felt, rather than saw, Joe come into the kitchen; he went back to his room at the pub every night and arrived back at her place early each morning. She was always keenly aware of his proximity to her; even now as she felt barely human, her body was alive to his presence.
“How you doing, sunshine?” He ruffled her hair on his way to the coffee machine. She remained face-planted to the table. “Good morning, Verity. Lovely singing. Excellent projection.”