“Keep it till I get back,” she said. “It’ll make Christmas last longer. And look, if things get too unbearable, you can always accept Jaimie’s invitation to spend Christmas with him, can’t you? I’m sorry, Beth; I really am. Please don’t hate me.”
“How could I hate you, you dolt?” I said, giving her a hug.
It was true: I didn’t hate her for putting romance before me. How could I? But I did feel let down. And suddenly I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas Day at all.
5
Years ago, Sylvia would buy everyone a new pair of festive pyjamas to wear on Christmas Eve as we opened our one permitted present before the big day. Rosie and I would be practically incandescent with excitement, hanging up our Christmas stockings on the special hooks above the fireplace, cutting up carrots for Rudolph, and getting Richard to pour a glass of sherry for Father Christmas—even though we’d stopped believing in him ages ago.
The days of new pyjamas were long gone now. This year, I wasn’t expected until Christmas morning.
Richard and Sylvia lived in Middlesex, in London’s commuter belt. It took about forty-five minutes to drive there from Dalston. I arrived at their road at nine thirty on Christmas morning dressed in a sparkly black dress and full, festive makeup, smiling as I drove past the light displays in front of everyone’s houses. The neighbours competed with each other every year, the displays getting fancier and fancier, but somehow Richard and Sylvia’s house always topped the lot. Richard made sure of it.
I parked my car and walked slowly up the garden path, taking it all in. There were lights glowing in the trees and stars twinkling on the front wall, and that was without Santa in his sleigh on the roof and the Christmas trees, snowmen, and elves on the lawn. If that lot didn’t get me into the Christmas spirit, nothing would. Maybe the day wasn’t going to be as awful as I feared it might be.
Richard let me in. He was wearing a Christmas jumper which sported a picture of two penguins kissing, with the words YULE BE MINE across the middle. I guessed Sylvia had made it for him.
“Happy Christmas, love,” he said, giving me a kiss and a hug.
“Happy Christmas, Richard. Amazing lights, as per usual. And I love the jumper.”
Richard looked down at his canoodling penguins. “It’s class, isn’t it?”
“How’s Sylvia about Rosie not being here?”
“Somewhere between sobbing her heart out over her empty Christmas stocking and planning what to wear for the wedding. How about you?”
Sylvia bustled out of the kitchen to greet me before I could answer.
“Hello, dear. Happy Christmas! Don’t you look lovely!” She hugged me close. “Nice to see there’s someone I can rely on, what with Rosie living the high life in Rome and the happy couple still in bed.”
Reliable, predictable. Yes, that was me. God, I had to stop feeling sorry for myself.
“Come into the kitchen. I was just getting the turkey on. You can make yourself a cup of coffee and tell me all you know about Giorgio.”
Despite my knowledge of Giorgio being minimal in the extreme, I was still in the kitchen helping Sylvia when Mark came down in his dressing gown. His hair was attractively tousled. He looked to be what he no doubt was—a man who’d just made love to his wife of two weeks.
Back when I was a teenager, after my feelings had changed and I suddenly saw Mark as the boy of my dreams rather than my friend’s overly bossy older brother, I used to have to prepare myself to see him if I’d been out somewhere and come back to the house. The family still lived in London then—in a town house with the sitting room in the basement. Sometimes I’d have to visit the loo on the ground floor before I went downstairs to greet everyone, just to have time to collect myself.
I could have done with such a space on that Christmas morning, but I didn’t get it. One moment I was peeling parsnips ready for roasting, with carols playing on the radio and Sylvia listing all the facts she could think of about Rome, and the next, Mark was saying, “Happy Christmas, Beth,” and dropping a kiss on my cheek on his way to kiss his mother.
“Happy Christmas, love,” Sylvia said, enveloping him in a big hug. “You two will be getting up soon, won’t you? Or it will put out all my timings.”
“Your timings are quite safe, Mum. Just making Grace a cup of coffee, and then we’ll be down. She doesn’t do anything until she’s had a cup of coffee.”
If Rosie had been there, this would have inspired some banter; I knew it would. But Rosie wasn’t here. There was just me, bent over the parsnips with my bruised heart and pretend smile. I could do this. I could.
“Did you have a good honeymoon? When did you get back? I bet it was cold, wasn’t it?”
I could hear my voice going on and on. When I risked a swift glance up at him, Mark was smiling.
“Yes, thank you. Last night. Yes, I suppose so, but we had our love to keep us warm.”
Ha ha. He probably expected me to give him a sisterly shove or something in response to that, but even if I’d wanted to, he was over on the other side of the kitchen making coffee. So I kept my attention on the parsnips.
“Oh, no need to slice them quite so small, Beth love,” Sylvia said, whisking them away. “We don’t want parsnip chips, do we?”
Now I had nothing to do with my hands and nowhere to hide my face. And to cap it all, Richard came into the room and gave my shoulder an affectionate squeeze.
“Are you okay, Beth?” Mark asked, frowning at me, a cup of coffee in either hand.
“Probably thinking about the time your mum and dad took you to Paris, aren’t you, love?” Richard said. “What with Mark and Grace just back from there.”
I hadn’t been, but now I was.
“I didn’t know they’d taken you to Paris,” said Mark. “You must have been very young.”
“I was seven. Mum wanted to see an art exhibition.”
“You arrived on the fourteenth of July, didn’t you?” Richard said. “Bastille Day.”
I nodded. “Yes. Mum and Dad had no idea about it being any kind of special day. Our hotel was right next to the Eiffel Tower. Quite by accident, we saw all the fireworks being set off to music.”
“Cool.” Mark waited for a moment to see if I was going to say anything else, but I didn’t feel like talking about the magic of those fireworks or the fun of watching it all from my dad’s shoulders. How all these years later it was almost as vivid to me as back then.
Mark put the coffee cups down on the table and drew me in for a hug. “Sounds like a very special memory,” he said.
I nodded quickly, blinking away sudden tears. “Yes.”
He kissed the top of my head and let me go. “I’d better take this coffee upstairs if I want to avoid fireworks here, I suppose. See you all soon.”
After Mark had gone, Sylvia frowned at her husband. “What did you want to bring that up for? Beth’s upset now.”
“I’m not, honestly. I’m fine. Now, what else can I help you with?”
When Mark and Grace finally came down, Sylvia was persuaded out of the kitchen so we could all exchange gifts. I’d bought Sylvia a lovely soft scarf in duck-egg blue, and Richard a new pair of gardening gloves he professed to be delighted with. I normally gave Mark something jokey—the previous year I’d bought him some nylon tattoo “sleeves” which made him look as if he’d spent five weeks at a tattoo parlour when he wore them on his arms. Which he did, all over Christmas.