“I guess I will.”
“I think it’s a wonderful thing you’re doing.”
“Do you? Not crazy?”
“Not at all. I think it will be hard, yes, but really worthwhile. I’ll give you all the support I possibly can.”
“You always have.”
“Oh, darling, how could I not? We always loved you, Richard and me. And Tilda . . . She meant well, bless her, but well, let’s just say she was sometimes out of her depth.”
“Was I that bad?”
“Of course not. You were grieving, that’s all. You just needed a haven. It’ll be the same for any child you adopt. That’s what they’ll need too.”
“That’s what you still are to me, you know, a haven. Richard was too.”
“Yes, I know he was. Bless him. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since he went, I really can’t.”
I thought about the cruise Sylvia was going on over the holiday period. “Where will the ship be on the actual anniversary?”
Sylvia dug her garden fork hard into the soil so it stood up by itself, and then she reached for her secateurs to start cutting the ivy back. “We’ll be in Bridgetown, Barbados. It’s a day’s stopover. I shall do a bit of shopping—you know how bored Richard always got when I dragged him round any shops—and then I’m going to go on a trip to Harrison’s Cave. Richard would have liked that, wouldn’t he? It’s got lots of stalagmites and stalactites.”
I smiled. “I can hear him talking about it,” I said, “explaining which is which. The ’mites go up, and the ’tites come down.”
Sylvia laughed. “Yes, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Anyway, yes, so I’m going to do that—something for me, and something for him, just as we would have done if he were still here.”
“And what about Christmas Day?”
Sylvia pulled hard at the ivy, and a long strand came away from the wall. “We’re at sea on Christmas Day. No doubt there’ll be heaps of things organised. But to be honest, I’ll probably just lie low in my cabin all day. Send out for room service.” She reached out to squeeze my arm. “But I shall be quite all right. Don’t you worry about me. What about you? Are you still on sick-animal duty over Christmas?”
“Yes, if there are any sick animals to look after.”
Sylvia shoved the ivy strand into the garden waste bin, pressing the leaves down to make room for more. “Next year we’ll have a Christmas to remember. Richard would want us to do that. But I like to think he’d understand us not feeling up to it this year.”
She straightened to look at me, her hands rubbing the small of her back. “Did Jaimie understand what Richard was to you, darling?”
My eyes instantly filled. “No,” I said. “Not at all.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “That must have been very lonely for you. Richard was your dad. Your second dad.”
“He was,” I said. “He really was.” The tears slid down my face.
“Come here.” Sylvia reached for me, and as we held each other to have a good old cry, the robin popped onto the fence to watch us.
18
On Monday, Rosie and I met each other as planned at the foot of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. Starting our Christmas light spotting beneath the tree had become one of our traditions—the tree was always so impressive, and this year’s was no exception. The people of Oslo donated it every year to thank the UK for helping them during the Second World War, and the tree was at least twenty metres tall and decorated in the Norwegian style with vertical strings of lights. Towering between the Trafalgar Square fountains, floodlit in violet, the tree was a symbol of hope, which, after the twelve months Rosie and I had had, was something we both definitely needed.
After we’d admired the tree for a while, we went to a nearby café for a cup of coffee before setting off for Regent Street. Rosie was wearing an incredibly cute leopard-print bobble hat and matching scarf. I doubted whether I looked quite so cute myself. My own hat and scarf were bright red, and as my nose felt pinched by the cold, I suspected it was the same colour. But I didn’t care. This was Rosie—the girl who’d held my hair back from my face as I vomited from food poisoning one ill-fated Spanish holiday. The girl who’d seen me red eyed with stinking colds and with a spot-covered face during our teenage years. We knew each other, warts and all, Rosie and me.
“I saw your mum last weekend. We did some gardening together.”
Rosie stirred sugar into her coffee. “She wasn’t too busy ironing her bikinis, then?”
“I’m not sure whether she’s packing a bikini.”
“You can’t go on a Caribbean holiday without a bikini.”
“I wanted to give her a really nice sun hat for her Christmas present, but there weren’t any in the shops, with it being Christmas.”
“She can buy one out there. It’ll give her something to do.”
Something about Rosie’s tone caused me to frown. “Do you mind about her going? You sound as if you do.”
She shrugged, frowning herself. “Dad would have hated a cruise. All those smug people crammed in together and overindulging. Like a floating housing estate.”
I spooned some of the chocolate-sprinkled froth from the top of my cappuccino into my mouth. “Your mum will love chatting to people, though, won’t she? She’s so sociable. And think of all the sights she’ll get to see.”
Rosie wasn’t convinced. “Sunburnt beer bellies? Women parading their breast implants?”
“I’m sure it won’t be like that.”
She sighed. “Oh, don’t listen to me. I’m just worried about her, that’s all. I think she’ll get out there and be lonely as hell.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re wrong. Or, if you’re not, let’s hope the tropical seas and the dolphin sightings help a little.”
“I’m going to miss her.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. I could certainly empathise with that. “I know.”
“You too. I can’t believe you’ve managed to get out of Christmas with Mark and Grace.”
“I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”
“D’you reckon? You do know her parents will be there? And her sister and her husband. And their baby.”
The way she said the word baby with such horror made her sound like a heartless monster. “Not exactly a baby now,” I soothed. “She’s one.”
“Well, she won’t be able to talk to me about the latest fashions or laugh at Christmas cracker jokes, will she?”
“Will Grace even have Christmas crackers?” I wondered out loud.
Rosie’s eyebrows shot up cynically. “If she does, they’ll probably be the super-posh sort, I suppose. You know, the sort containing a fully functioning corkscrew or a spanner set instead of a fortune-telling fish.”
I smiled at that, remembering an occasion a few years back when we’d all tried out the red cellophane fortune-telling fish Rosie had got in her Christmas cracker. One by one, we laid it on our palms, as directed by the instructions, and one by one, we laughed as the fish curled right up to indicate we were “passionate.” But then when Mark had passed it to his dad for his turn, it had fallen into Richard’s full wineglass.