‘I’m coming over,’ she says, and hangs up.
The others laugh when I relay the conversation to them.
‘Is she coming over because she’s cross with us or because she doesn’t want to miss out?’ Kirsty asks.
I shrug. I suspect the latter. Though I’m hoping that doesn’t mean that her Christmas with Martin hasn’t gone well. She’s on the doorstep ten minutes later.
‘Martin’s asleep on the sofa, and I’d worked my way through most of a tub of Celebrations. It sounded like there was much more fun to be had over here,’ she says, going through to the front room where Erin and Kirsty are giggling about something to do with shoes that I lost track of a good ten minutes ago. She’s huffy, Julie. Like we’ve deliberately left her out.
‘Olly’s back,’ Julie says, reaching down to stroke him. He growls.
‘No, he’s not back, he’s just visiting, with Kirsty,’ I say. ‘Sit down. Do you want a glass of prosecco?’
‘Prosecco, is it? Are you allowed to mix alcohol with your medication?’
‘It’s Christmas Day,’ I say. ‘And I’ve only had one. These two have had a bit more than that, as you can probably see.’
Kirsty’s grinning, more relaxed and happy than I’ve ever seen her. And the worry that surrounded Erin when she arrived has disappeared, at least temporarily. Now I just need to get Julie to calm down. I go to the kitchen and she follows.
‘Is something wrong?’ I ask.
She sighs, deep and loud. ‘It’s Martin. I wanted today to be really special but it’s like we’ve slipped straight back into our old roles. Which basically means me doing all the cooking and clearing up and him snoring on the sofa. I thought we’d have learned something, from being apart. But instead we’re just pretending he never left me for someone else and going back to our old ways. And I’ve realised, while he’s been gone, that I wasn’t that happy with them.’
I pour her a drink and pass it to her, watching the tiny bubbles make their way to the top of the glass and then burst.
‘You have to tell him,’ I say.
I’m a fine one to talk, all those years I wanted to tell Arthur how I really felt. All those years with the words stuck in my throat. And now, him dead, and me still not being totally honest.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Tell him what you just told me. Tell him the truth.’
She nods, looks glum.
‘You’re not going to do that, are you?’
‘I’m scared to,’ she says. ‘I’m scared he’ll just leave again, if I make it too much like hard work.’
I don’t know what to say to that. We go back through to the front room and I sit in my armchair and Julie squeezes onto the sofa with Kirsty and Erin. I get out the box with her present inside and turn to her.
‘Thank you for this, but I’m not sure what it says.’
Julie takes it from me. Holds out the letters one at a time. ‘M for Mabel, A for Arthur, B for Bill, D for Dot.’
Of course. How could I not see it? I take it back and look at it. ‘Thank you, that’s wonderful.’
She comes behind me and helps me put it on. And then her mobile telephone rings and she looks at the screen and says it’s Patricia.
‘Happy Christmas, Patty. Oh, okay. Yes, of course. The thing is, I’m at Mabel’s. Kirsty’s here too, and Erin. Long story. Do you want to come?’ She looks at me for approval and I nod, though I’m starting to feel a bit exhausted by it. I think back to this morning, when I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage the whole day on my own, and remember to be thankful for all this company. ‘Yes, all right, Patty, we’ll see you in a few minutes.’
We all turn to look at her, waiting for her to fill us in before Patricia arrives.
‘Huge row with her daughter,’ she says, using her hands to demonstrate exactly how big a row she’s talking about. ‘About this Geoff character. Sarah thinks Patty had something to do with them breaking up, or something.’
I think about the text message I sent, think about my mobile telephone, shut away in a drawer. No one would think to look at it, would they? Julie gets up to open the door when Patricia arrives, and Erin and Kirsty both slide to the floor, as if by mutual agreement, so she has somewhere to sit down.
‘We could bring a couple of chairs in from the back room,’ I say, but Erin says she’s fine on the floor, and Kirsty seems happy enough.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘this isn’t the day I expected at all.’
‘Tell us about your happiest Christmas,’ Julie says, her eyes a bit glazed. Has the prosecco softened her up already?
I search back through my memories, through the years Arthur and I spent alone, and the ones we spent with our parents, earlier on. There are some that stand out, like the year it snowed on Christmas Day and Arthur and I walked around the town as the snow fell and all the lights twinkled and we felt like we were in a fairy tale, or the one when he said he’d take care of the dinner and forgot to turn the oven on, so we ended up eating a plate of vegetables and then had turkey sandwiches for days afterwards. But I reach back further, to my adolescence, my childhood.
‘I was eight or nine,’ I say. ‘My dad had just come back from the war. I barely knew him but I could see how happy Mother was to have him back. She’d managed to scrape enough food together for a Christmas dinner, somehow or other, and Bill bought me a copy of Little Women. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. My family, back together. It was like magic.’
I’m back there for a few moments, and when I return to the present, I realise they’re all silent.
‘We don’t know we’re born, do we?’ Julie asks.
I shake my head. It isn’t that. Every generation has their own struggles, their own hardships. We didn’t have much back then, materially speaking, but there was a lot less to worry about, too. The world wasn’t complicated the way it is now. But I don’t have the words for all this, so I don’t say anything.
It’s only about an hour that we’re all there together like that. Soon enough, Martin’s messaging Julie to find out where she’s got to.
‘Probably hungry again,’ she says, rolling her eyes. But she gets herself ready to go all the same.
‘I should face the music, too,’ Kirsty says, getting up from the floor and stretching.
‘And me.’ Patricia hasn’t said much about the argument, but I know she’ll be devastated that something has ruined her Christmas with those girls, and I know I’m at least partially responsible for that. I thought once they were back, everything would work itself out, but perhaps that was na?ve.
It’s just Erin and me left, and we start another game of Scrabble, but neither of our hearts are in it, and before we’ve finished I tell her I need to go to bed.
She packs the game away neatly, asks if I’m sure it’s all right for her to stay.
‘I’d be offended if you didn’t, at this stage,’ I say.
We go upstairs and I get her a towel from the airing cupboard and a new toothbrush from under the sink.
‘I don’t suppose you want one of my nighties, do you?’