The Wake-Up Call(9)

“You’re a very creative young woman,” Mrs. Hedgers says, turning her steady gaze my way.

For someone with such energetic children, Mrs. Hedgers is surprisingly calm. She wears her dark brown hair in a chignon, smooth and neat, and there’s never a speck of mud on the wheels of her chair when she heads out of the door. On her checkin notes, she listed her profession as “life and career-change coach,” which is probably why she seems to be so impressively together. I guess you can’t tell other people how to live their lives if yours is a bit of a state.

“Oh, thank you!”

“Is it hard work, staying switched on all the time?” she asks, tilting her head.

“Sorry?”

Mrs. Hedgers smiles slightly. “Creative people tend to need their downtime.” She looks at the nativity. “You like to add a little sparkle to everyone else’s day, am I right?”

“That’s actually why I love working in hospitality,” I say, twisting my fingers together. Mrs. Hedgers is making me nervous. She has a headteacherly sort of energy, as if at any moment she’ll tell me I’m not allowed to wear clip-in highlights at school. “I’m a total people-person.”

“And how do you switch off?”

“Umm. Hanging out with friends?”

“Hmm,” says Mrs. Hedgers.

“I do yoga, too, sometimes,” I find myself saying. I think I last did yoga in the first lockdown, when everyone got excited about working out in our living rooms, as if the lockdown rules were the reason we weren’t all bounding out into the woods for fifteen-mile runs every morning.

Mrs. Hedgers waits. I can come up with no other downtime activities except “watching television,” which sounds like something Ruby Hedgers would put forward in answer to this question, so I just get gradually pinker and wait in silence.

“Well,” Mrs. Hedgers says, hands on her chair’s wheels again. “Perhaps something to think about. It’s so important for us to nourish ourselves so that we can continue to nourish those around us.”

“Right! Totally. Oh, sorry!” I say, hopping out of her way. “Actually, while I have you, I’ve been meaning to ask—we still need a card for any costs that your insurer won’t be covering for your stay. Would you . . .”

“They’ll cover it all,” Mrs. Hedgers says, and there’s steel in her smile. “Just send the bill their way.”

“Oh, OK,” I say, as she pushes open the door to her suite and manoeuvres herself through.

As the door closes behind her, I stare at it for a while. Nothing about that conversation should have made me feel especially uncomfortable, but I’m all discombobulated. Maybe it’s because she didn’t really like my nativity scene. Is that why? Something has got under my skin, and now I feel as though I’ve made a mistake, but I can’t figure out where.

I whip out my phone and message Jem. She’s in the States, but I do some quick maths and decide that even though I can never remember whether it’s five hours ahead or five hours behind, as long as it’s five something I’m not waking her in the middle of the night.

Is this lame? I say, attaching a photo of the nativity.

Umm, no?!! she replies instantly. It is in fact the best thing I have ever seen!

I smile down at my phone as she peppers me with stars and Christmas tree emojis. There is nobody in the world with a heart as pure as Jem Young.

    Why the self-doubt? she asks. Are you OK, little pigeon?


Oh sorry, I’m totally fine! Just “having a silly moment,” as your mum would say. Maybe time for a sugar fix . . .


It’s always time for a sugar fix. And please do not quote my mother at me at this hour!!


But Mrs. Young has so many excellent one-liners! What about that time she told me I was an abject failure, dragging her daughter to the dogs?


Or the time she told me I was “a disappointment, fundamentally speaking”?



I press my hand to my heart. We joke about these moments now, but I know how badly they wounded Jem. Even if these days she has fundamentally speaking literally tattooed on her arse.

You have never disappointed me, not even when you chose Team Jacob over Team Edward, I type, with a string of hearts.

She writes back, Love you. Rehearsals now—got to go. Missing you so much. x

I tap out a heartfelt Miss you more before sliding my phone back into my pocket. Winter is my Jem time—her being gone has left me feeling a little unsteady. We only do Christmas together every other year—I’m on rotation between Jem and Grigg and Sameera—but even if I’m not actually with her on Christmas Day, we always spend September onwards sending each other fantastically bad new Christmas songs and meeting up for mulled wine after work.

But this year she’s so busy that bothering her with the new festive album from a washed-up noughties band feels kind of stupid. Jem’s always wanted to be a performer—musical theatre is the dream—and this year she finally got a spot in the ensemble of a brand-new American musical. It’s the perfect breakout role for her, after years slogging away in part-time jobs.

It just also means spending six months in Washington, DC, where her parents live. Which couldn’t be less perfect. Jem spent half her childhood living on my street in Surrey, and half in DC—her family moved back and forth twice. When her parents finally settled in the US for good, Jem stayed here. Nice and close to me, nice and far away from them.