“Argentina!” Memo smiled, and reached up to pat her hair—grey, because there’s no point pretending I’m anything but ancient, my darling, but neatly styled into a bob that she had cut and blow-dried in the local village salon every week. “Do you remember when we went to Argentina, John?” She prodded Josie’s grandad in the ribs and elicited a grunt, then turned back to Josie, while Josie waited at a traffic light to cross the road. Nearly there now. Her stomach jumped again and she told it, silently, to calm itself down. “It was such fun, we did it on our tour around South America. Did I tell you about that, Josie?”
“You did,” Josie confirmed. Back when Josie had first left school, Memo had relayed every single traveling story she could think of, in order to try to convince Josie to take some time to study abroad, but Josie had never really been the traveling type.
“Wait,” Memo said, frowning. “If Bia’s not there, then who will you be spending Christmas with?”
“I…” Josie made a show of looking away from the phone and around her, as if she was checking for traffic as she crossed the road.
“Are you…You’re not still planning on spending it with Oliver, are you?”
Josie wrinkled her nose. “No. Absolutely not.”
Her grandad muttered something that sounded like “Ought to give him a piece of my mind.”
“But then, oh Josie, please don’t tell me you’ll be spending Christmas alone in that little flat of yours?”
“Memo, I’ve told you so many times, I like spending Christmas alone.” That was only sort of a lie, Josie reasoned, because she’d still rather spend it alone, pretending that it was a normal day, than go back to the village where her parents were killed. “And I like my flat,” she said, a little defensively.
Memo waved a slim hand in the air. “Yes, yes, it’s a lovely flat, but why don’t you come here, my love? Helen’s coming and we’d all love to have you here.”
“I can’t,” Josie said firmly. “And I have a work party on Christmas Eve anyway,” she added, talking over whatever protest Memo was about to mount. “So it just wouldn’t be practical.” She swiped down to check the time on her phone and bit her lip. She’d be early at this rate, and she couldn’t be having that. She slowed her pace considerably, which was probably for the best anyway—the cold air was stinging her cheeks right now, but she was starting to get warm inside her coat from hurrying, and she didn’t want to arrive all hot and flustered.
“So how come Helen is spending Christmas at yours? What happened to spending Christmas with Mike’s family?”
Memo rolled her eyes. “Oh, she broke up with Mike, didn’t she tell you?”
“What? Are you serious?” Mike was her aunt Helen’s third husband, and Josie had really thought it might last this time. She sighed. “So, you were right then. What did you give it, six months?”
“I’m always right about Helen, my love—a mother knows her daughter.” It hung in the space between them for a moment—the fact that Josie’s mother wasn’t here, the fact that Josie’s mother would never get to know her the way her grandmother did. Then Memo smiled and the tinge of sadness between them was gone, taken away in that way that only Memo could do. “Did I tell you I bumped into Pippa Cope the other day? Do you remember her—Beth Cope’s mum? You went to school together.”
“I remember,” Josie said vaguely.
“Well, Pippa told me that Beth is pregnant again! Isn’t that nice?”
“Sure,” Josie agreed, though in reality, being as how she hadn’t spoken to Beth since she was about fifteen, and hadn’t even known that she’d had a child already, the news was somewhat hard to get excited about.
“It’s such a nice place to raise children here, don’t you think?”
Josie huffed out a laugh as the sound of tinny Christmas music wafted over to her above the sound of engines and car horns. It was getting busier now, hordes of people clogging up the street. She stopped, leaned against the railings of the park. No point in trying to keep up FaceTime against this tide. “Yes, I’m sure it is a lovely place to raise children, Memo, but I don’t have any children, so let’s not go there just now, OK?”
“I’m just saying,” Memo said, with a little eyebrow raise to underline the point. “And even if not, you might be a bit happier here around your family, don’t you think?”