He shrugged. “I hadn’t thought. Just in the dining room, I suppose.” He studied my face. “You don’t object to me buying her a drum kit, do you?”
I could have said the prospect felt like sheer torture, but what I actually said was, “Well, it’s just that it’s noisy enough here sometimes as it is.”
Jaimie turned his back on me to gather together the wrapping paper and Sellotape, then pulled another toy from the bag of toys waiting to be wrapped. “They’re just children, Beth. Children make noise. It’s quiet enough when they aren’t here, isn’t it? Too quiet.”
They were his girls. This was his house. His business. I’d never disputed that, because I knew how much it hurt him when he didn’t see his girls for days on end. But now, at a time when I just felt like curling up somewhere to lick my wounds, didn’t I deserve a bit of consideration?
“I think I’ll go to bed,” I said.
“Okay. I shouldn’t be too much longer here.”
I was like a ghost all through Christmas Day—there and not there, going through the motions. I didn’t know where Mark was spending Christmas, whether he and Grace had gone to Enfield to be with Sylvia and Rosie, but I felt so guilty about not being there myself. But then, if I’d decided to spend Christmas with them, I’d probably have felt guilty about not being with Jaimie.
The truth was, I didn’t want to celebrate Christmas. Why would I? Richard had been a part of my Christmases for more than twenty-five years. And now he was gone. No house lit up with extravagant, over-the-top lights. No proudly worn but ridiculous Christmas jumper. No Richard to say, “So were you good this year? Good enough for Santa to come calling?” Or to hold his stomach as if he were Santa and say, “Ho, ho, ho!”
It was almost an out-of-body experience, opening my presents early on Christmas morning. Like I was looking down on the room as Olivia, incandescent with excitement, tore the wrapping paper off her drum kit. At myself playing the part of Beth opening her gifts—another dress and some lingerie from Jaimie—Thank you, how lovely. Watching Jaimie and the girls open theirs—I didn’t think you’d read that book yet, Emily? I just saw the colour and thought of you, Jaimie.
And then, after the wrapping paper was cleared away, I helped Jaimie cook Christmas dinner to the accompaniment of Olivia’s drumming. Gamely pulled Christmas crackers. I felt like an outsider, like an interloper. But it wasn’t only my grief that made me feel that way. I’d probably have felt a bit like that anyway, even if Richard hadn’t died.
At some point during the afternoon, I remembered what Mark had told me about Jaimie’s desperation following his split from Harriet and imagined him lying distraught on the dining room floor, the way Grace had found him. Six months before the two of us had met at Mark’s wedding, that was all. Was I some sort of rebound romance for Jaimie? Had he been drawn to me because he didn’t want to be alone? The tight black dress, the lingerie, and the makeup—all of Jaimie’s Christmas gifts seemed to say that he wanted me to be someone else. The woman he’d thought I was at the wedding, maybe, when I’d gone over the top with my appearance to help myself get through the day. If I was right, then Jaimie must have been disappointed in me every day when I put on my trusty old walking boots and cagoule to go to work. But what woman would put on full makeup to walk dogs in all weathers? Grace, probably. Not that Grace would ever work as a dog walker.
I had tried so hard to be a part of this family. To be an accepted and valued part of Olivia’s and Emily’s lives. I’d dreamed up ideas for activities, told them stories, talked about the animals they liked. I’d learnt to make birthday cakes. Done my best to construct last-minute fancy dress costumes. Bought them sunflower seeds to plant in the garden. But the truth was, if I walked out the door today and never came back, neither of them would probably miss me very much. Not even Olivia. Their adoration of Harriet had always been a solid steel barrier to our closeness.
Pretending to be okay when I wasn’t probably would have given me a headache anyway, but with Olivia’s drumming, my head felt as if I’d come out the loser in a boxing ring by teatime. So I took myself off to bed early. And when I woke up the next morning, I knew I wasn’t capable of a repeat performance.
“Jaimie,” I said before Olivia could come into our bedroom or go downstairs to pick up her drumsticks again, “I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to go and see Sylvia and Rosie.”
Jaimie frowned at me in the half light. “Are you sure they’ll want you there? I don’t imagine they’re doing anything very Christmassy.”
“I don’t want to do anything Christmassy.”
He sighed. “I know. But what I mean is, don’t you think they’ll want to be left alone with their grief rather than have to think about a guest?”
Would they? I entertained the idea for maybe ten seconds, everything in me reeling at what it implied. Jaimie thought Sylvia and Rosie wouldn’t feel they could grieve if I was there. But that was precisely why I needed to be with them. So I wouldn’t have to pretend to be okay. Wouldn’t have to fix a smile on my face. I wanted—and needed—to be with my fellow sufferers. People who understood what I was going through because they were going through it themselves.
“I think they’ll be fine with it.”
“Well, you know best,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested that was very far from being the case.
I didn’t ring ahead to say I was coming. I just turned up on the doorstep. Sylvia’s face was grey with fatigue when she opened the door, but her eyes lit up as soon as she saw me. And it wasn’t just the illuminated reindeers Richard must have set up in the front garden in the week before he died.
“Beth, love,” she said. “Oh, how lovely to see you. But you’re meant to be spending Christmas with Jaimie and his girls. You didn’t need to come.”
I took her into my arms for a deep hug, inhaling the commingled smell of mince pie, coal fire, and the coconut bath oil I’d given her for Christmas. “Yes,” I said, my voice wobbling a bit, “I did. I really did.”
“Well,” she said, sniffing, “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you. Come on, come in. Rosie? Beth’s here. She’s come home to be with us. Isn’t that wonderful?”
You see, that was what Jaimie didn’t seem to understand. Rosie, Sylvia, and Mark were my family. Or as close to a family as I was ever going to get. Much closer than the borrowed family I’d been trying to fit into with him for the past eight months, anyway.
Jaimie and I definitely needed to talk. And soon. But not now, not when I was so sad and vulnerable and still had Richard’s funeral to face.
“Hello, you,” said Rosie, taking me into her arms for a hug. She was dressed in a pair of red brushed-cotton Christmas pyjamas, and I had never been so glad to see anyone in my life.
“Mum and I just broke open a box of chocolates. Come and gorge yourself.”
“And a bottle of sherry,” added Sylvia.
“Fabulous.”
A fire was blazing in the hearth—somebody had done a good job, considering Richard had always been chief fire maker in the household. The three of us settled down in front of it, and Sylvia charged our glasses.