“You’ll have to go down the flower-girl route then.”
“A frothy party dress, becoming braids, and a woven basket of posies?”
He pretended to appraise me, then nodded. “I reckon you could pull it off.”
Oh God, we were here at the museum. Thank God we were at the museum. At least now we could talk about the exhibits.
The Museum of the Home’s main exhibits—which were all decorated for Christmas at this time of the year—were sitting rooms from across the ages, decked out with original furniture and paintings for their period, with well-researched place settings on the tables and artificial representations of food of the day.
Visitors weren’t allowed in the rooms—you had to stand behind a silken rope and gaze into the interiors, staring back into the past. The first room dated from 1600 and had a table groaning with food, which I knew, since I’d been here several times before, was mainly sweet, sugar having been so expensive at the time that it was an expression of wealth. A sort of sweet-tasting version of keeping up with the Joneses.
As I looked at it now, it was all too easy to imagine images of the mock eggs and bacon made entirely of sugar paste being posted on Instagram, had Instagram existed back then.
As we moved on, Mark had his head in the information leaflet and read aloud about the elaborate cake which formed the centrepiece of the table in the Regency Room.
“Did you know that green food colouring had arsenic in it in those days? Fancy dying because you had a slice of cake.”
I couldn’t think of an answer to that, witty or otherwise. By the time we reached the Victorian Room, my head was throbbing. Why the bloody hell had I come here with him today? Apart from the awkwardness between us, everything about the bloody Victorian Room screamed children—the china doll reclining on the armchair. The building blocks. The wooden Noah’s Ark and the carved animals coming out of it two by two. And the 1950s room was no better, with wrapping paper strewn everywhere, almost as if the family had just stepped out for a moment.
I stood there, looking at it all, my arms wrapped around myself for comfort, trying to cling to my belief that one day soon I would have a family like this one. But all I could think about were the ghosts of Christmases past—Christmases I’d spent with my parents and Christmases I’d spent with Sylvia and Richard, Mark and Rosie. So much lost joy.
Mark still had the information leaflet in his hand, but suddenly I realised he’d stopped reading from it.
“I have two things to tell you,” he said. “A big thing and a small thing.”
I swiped my eyes with my sleeve. “Don’t tell me,” I said harshly. “The toy soldiers on display contain harmful lead? The paper chains are somehow radioactive?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“What, then?”
He looked at me. Took a deep breath.
I began to feel worried. “What is it?”
“It’s Grace and Jaimie.”
I frowned. “Grace and Jaimie?”
He nodded. “Let’s just say they aren’t going to be alone this Christmas. And I’m not talking about Jaimie’s girls being with them.”
I gaped, realising exactly what he meant. “Grace and Jaimie are seeing each other?”
“Seeing quite a lot of each other, I imagine. If Jaimie’s kept up his naturism tendencies.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said, but even as I spoke, I realised I absolutely did. Jaimie and Grace were perfect for each other. Jaimie wouldn’t have to buy Grace dresses and lipsticks to try and improve her; she was always so well turned out. Hell, Olivia and Emily even already liked her, the jammy cow.
Then I remembered Mark telling me last Christmas that Grace was barely at home. That she had often had weekend clients. And my thoughts took a leap further. “D’you think they were seeing each other when you two were still together?”
“Yes, I do. Definitely. But I don’t care. Good luck to them, I say. What about you? Does it bother you?”
Considering I’d lived with Jaimie for almost a year, and that I’d spent most of that time making our relationship my priority, bending over backwards to make his girls like me, the extent to which I didn’t care was shocking.
“Not in the least.”
Mark smiled. “Well, that’s good, then, isn’t it?” he said.
Silently we walked on to the 1990s room, a bright, cheerful interior with coloured plastic chairs arranged around a table adorned with gaudy foil Christmas crackers.
“So,” I said, “what’s the small thing? You said you had two things to tell me. Something big and something small. What’s the small thing?”
Mark shook his head. Something about his expression set my heart racing.
“That was the small thing—Grace and Jaimie getting together.”
“It was?”
“Yes.”
A family joined us at the display, their voices loud and intrusive.
“Look, can we go outside?” asked Mark. “Would you mind?”
Numbly, I shook my head, following him past the remainder of the exhibits and out the exit doors. He led me round a corner, out of the wind, and reached out to turn my collar up, keeping his hands there afterwards.
“The big thing is”—he stopped to sigh and took hold of my coat lapels—“I’ve realised I’m a complete idiot. Well, actually, I realised it last Christmas, only the timing was . . . well, crap, if we’re being honest about it. And then you would barely speak to me, and who could blame you after I’d behaved like a total dick? Certainly not me.”
Oh God. I wasn’t up to hearing this. To raking it all up again. Unfortunately, I wasn’t up to saying something bright and corny like, Never mind. It’s all water under the bridge. It’s all in the past. Let bygones be bygones. I was too busy trying not to cry and not having much luck at it.
And besides, his hands had moved from my coat lapels to my shoulders.
“Christ, when I saw you with that idiot Tom, I was so jealous. And what Smithy said really got to me too. Look, last Christmas, when we kissed, when I kissed you, I realised something. Something I’ve spent the last twelve months coming to terms with.” He sighed. “I don’t need to tell you it’s been a tough year for me, what with splitting with Grace, sorting everything out. Trying to keep my head above water with work. And then there was the whole Mum-getting-together-with-Gary thing. I mean, it’s cool; I really like Gary, and Mum’s right—Dad would have approved, wouldn’t he? He’d be egging her on. And it is great—really great—to see her happy. Only somehow, seeing her happy with Gary meant grieving Dad all over again. So I suppose I’ve been a bit depressed, what with one thing and another.
“Look, the point is, it was all excuses. Because I was just so bloody terrified. I mean, it’s a big thing, isn’t it, when you’ve loved somebody for as long as I’ve loved you? To try and change the terms of that love?”
Tears began to run down my cheeks. It was happening. At long last, it was happening. And I wasn’t quite sure whether I wanted to hold him close or give him a good shaking for making me suffer so much while he worked things out.