I whip out my phone and message Jem. She’s in the States, but I do some quick maths and decide that even though I can never remember whether it’s five hours ahead or five hours behind, as long as it’s five something I’m not waking her in the middle of the night.
Is this lame? I say, attaching a photo of the nativity.
Umm, no?!! she replies instantly. It is in fact the best thing I have ever seen!
I smile down at my phone as she peppers me with stars and Christmas tree emojis. There is nobody in the world with a heart as pure as Jem Young.
Why the self-doubt? she asks. Are you OK, little pigeon?
Oh sorry, I’m totally fine! Just “having a silly moment,” as your mum would say. Maybe time for a sugar fix . . .
It’s always time for a sugar fix. And please do not quote my mother at me at this hour!!
But Mrs. Young has so many excellent one-liners! What about that time she told me I was an abject failure, dragging her daughter to the dogs?
Or the time she told me I was “a disappointment, fundamentally speaking”？
I press my hand to my heart. We joke about these moments now, but I know how badly they wounded Jem. Even if these days she has fundamentally speaking literally tattooed on her arse.
You have never disappointed me, not even when you chose Team Jacob over Team Edward, I type, with a string of hearts.
She writes back, Love you. Rehearsals now—got to go. Missing you so much. x
I tap out a heartfelt Miss you more before sliding my phone back into my pocket. Winter is my Jem time—her being gone has left me feeling a little unsteady. We only do Christmas together every other year—I’m on rotation between Jem and Grigg and Sameera—but even if I’m not actually with her on Christmas Day, we always spend September onwards sending each other fantastically bad new Christmas songs and meeting up for mulled wine after work.
But this year she’s so busy that bothering her with the new festive album from a washed-up noughties band feels kind of stupid. Jem’s always wanted to be a performer—musical theatre is the dream—and this year she finally got a spot in the ensemble of a brand-new American musical. It’s the perfect breakout role for her, after years slogging away in part-time jobs.
It just also means spending six months in Washington, DC, where her parents live. Which couldn’t be less perfect. Jem spent half her childhood living on my street in Surrey, and half in DC—her family moved back and forth twice. When her parents finally settled in the US for good, Jem stayed here. Nice and close to me, nice and far away from them.
Fate, she’d said gloomily to me as we’d drunk cheap wine on my floor and mourned the fact that her dream had come true in her nightmare location. Or Karma. Or something. Basically, the universe has decided I can’t escape my mother.
I grab a bag of candy kittens from the shelf under my computer screen and let the sugar rush hit as I flick through the booking book. My phone buzzes with a notification: it’s from Google, reminding me of a photo from this time last year. I wince. Google is missing some serious subtext: it’s a picture of me with Drew, my old flatmate, who I emphatically do not want to remember, especially at this time of year. I swipe the notification away and ram in a few more candy kittens.
“Lost property time,” says a familiar voice behind me.
I slam the book closed on the desk and steel myself for an interaction with Lucas. As I turn, I see him regarding the booking book with his usual disdain. One of my favourite activities is to make Lucas say “the booking book” as many times as possible during a shift, because he hates my cutesy names for things. The trick is to trap him when a guest is there so he can’t be a dickhead—or at least not out loud.
“Is it?” I say testily.
I glance at the clock mounted behind the desk. It’s another relic from the Bartholomew family. It needs rewinding every morning, and by the end of Poor Mandy’s shift, it’s always running nineteen minutes behind. Checking the time on the lobby clock involves a combination of maths and guesswork: it’s around midday, so the clock is probably already at least five minutes slow, so that means . . .
“It’s twelve on the dot,” Lucas says, already sounding exasperated with me. “I don’t know why you even look at that clock. Don’t you have a watch?”
I do have a watch. It is mint green and fabulously chunky, and I remember to put it on maybe two mornings out of ten. Today was not one of those mornings.
“I don’t need a watch,” I say sweetly. “I have you here to yell the time at me.”