The Mother of All Christmases

by Milly Johnson

  ‘I’m really sorry, Effin, but you didn’t ask me to do that.’

  Effin slapped his forehead. ‘Not you as well.’

  ‘We did talk, yes, but you never said anything about the train. If you had, I’d have told Huw straightaway because I was working with him.’

  Effin felt the colour drain from his face as if someone had pulled a plug out from his neck.

  ‘Are . . . are you sure?’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure,’ said Dylan, quietly, as if he didn’t like the idea of contradicting his dad’s friend.

  ‘Are you all right, Effin?’ asked Huw. ‘You’ve gone very pale and—’

  ‘Ffycin ’el, just mend the bloody train,’ Effin yelled at top volume and stomped off quickly before anyone noticed that his lip had started to wobble.

  *

  Joe offered Palma a lift. It was no bother because they had to drive down Dodley High Street to get home. In fact, they could pick her up every day from the same spot and save her getting the bus, he said.

  ‘If it’s no trouble. I can give you some petrol money,’ said Palma.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Annie. ‘We aren’t going to take petrol money from you when we’re more or less passing your house.’

  ‘That’s really nice of you, thank you,’ said Palma.

  ‘Oh, you will be back tomorrow, will you?’ said Iris, pursing her lips.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Palma with a broad smile. This job was perfect for her. At least for now. A boss who was also pregnant and so understanding and she’d save on bus fares, too. More than perfect.

  ‘Then it’s settled,’ said Annie, locking the metal shutter over the entrance.

  ‘If you could drop me at the Co-op that would be great. I’m out of a few things,’ Palma asked, holding Iris’s bag whilst she struggled into the back seat of the car.

  ‘No worries,’ said Annie with a smile of her own. All they needed now were a few more Palmas. She’d picked things up immediately and was quick and neat; she even passed the Iris test. As soon as they’d dropped her off in Dodley, Iris launched into talking about her.

  ‘So, what do you reckon to her?’

  ‘I think she will fit in perfectly,’ said Joe. He gave Annie, in the passenger seat, a wink. ‘What’s your opinion, Iris. Do you give her your thumbs up?’

  ‘I like her. I even got used to her hair by the close of day. She’s got very deft fingers. And she listened to what I said. And she ties a good bow. Yes, she’ll do.’ She did one of her loud sniffs. ‘Well, if she turns up tomorrow that is. I’ll be disappointed if she doesn’t.’

  ‘I have a good feeling this time,’ said Annie.

  ‘I didn’t see a wedding ring,’ said Iris. ‘Mind you, that’s nowt fresh these days. They do it all in reverse order. They get pregnant, then they move in together, then they meet. Wonder what happened to the man who got her that way.’

  ‘What?’ said Joe with faux shock. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t get her whole life story out of her already.’

  ‘There’s tomorrow for that,’ said Iris. And she sniffed again.

  *

  Palma didn’t see Tommy until it was too late to avoid him. They were both in the tinned food aisle heading towards each other with full baskets. She thought he might ignore her but he didn’t and she felt a mix of feelings that she couldn’t quite untangle when he smiled and stopped to talk.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m good thanks, are you?’

  ‘I’m always good. And I’ve just landed a sponsor.’ He grinned.

  ‘That’s brilliant news. I’m so pleased for you.’ And she was. He should be proud of himself for what he’d achieved.

  ‘Carling Motors, have you heard of them?’

  ‘That massive car place on Wakefield Road?’

  ‘There’s an even bigger Carling Motors in Leeds and in Harrogate and another in York. Owner is a proper boxing nut. It means I can give up labouring and concentrate on training full time.’

  ‘You deserve it.’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘What about you. How are you?’

  ‘Busy, I’ve got a job at last, which makes me feel a lot better.’ She was glad to get that in, in case he thought she was a lazy cow, although she didn’t tell him that she’d only had it for a day.

  ‘Oh, great stuff. What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m at The Crackers Yard. They make crackers. The ones you pull, not the ones you stick cheese on.’

  ‘Cheese,’ he said, clicking his fingers. ‘That’s what I’ve forgotten. Thanks for reminding me.’

  She’d given him his get-out word. As she thought, he started to wind up the conversation. ‘Well, you take care of yourself, Palma.’

  ‘You too,’ she said.

  He smiled again and she thought he was about to say something else, but he didn’t. He walked off towards the cheese counter and she walked purposefully in the opposite direction towards the newspapers and magazines. She picked up a Daily Trumpet and put it in her basket as if it had been on her list of must-buys, then she went straight to the nearest till, packed her stuff quickly into her bags, paid and left without a backward glance.

  She was glad to get home in a way that she never had been in Beckett Street. The little house almost felt glad to see her again, a fancy that she put down to pregnancy hormones making her hyper-sensitive.

  ‘Tuna sandwich okay with you, miss?’ Palma asked, placing her hand on her still flat stomach. She made it and sat at the table, spreading the newspaper open to read as she ate. She read every part of a newspaper, even the bits she wasn’t particularly interested in. She always had, it was a thing she did. Same with books, too; she couldn’t abandon one if she’d started it, she had to read it to the end. After the news, the lost and found columns, the ‘would like to meet’, articles for sale and coach trips, then there were the sports pages at the back and her heart kicked because there was a picture of Tommy ‘Dynamite’ Tanner – she tutted at the wrong name – holding up the Lonsdale belt in his right hand. Sponsorship Deal for Tommy was the header and underneath all the details and how proud Mr Carling was of the arrangement. The story continued overleaf so she turned to it and the words melted into an unreadable jumble because all she could focus on was the large colour photo of Tommy in a suit posing for the camera . . . but this time his right hand was around the waist of a curvy, long-haired blonde in a skimpy black shimmery dress, showing off a cleavage that the Incredible Hulk could have drowned in. The caption underneath read: Tommy with girlfriend Katie at the John Wade vs Lemit Kwapisz fight at Ponds Forge last weekend.

  Palma’s skull exploded in prickles. Katie looked beautiful and perfect for the arm of someone who was up and coming in the boxing world. No wonder he couldn’t get away fast enough from her in the supermarket.

  THE TRUMPET TRIUMPHS

  An unfortunate spelling mistake in last week’s Daily Trumpet led to an unexpected success story when the Maltstone Over 60s club advertised their Tea, Cake and Mingle Afternoon in the weekend What’s Happening feature. The article unfortunately appeared as ‘Tea, Cake and Minge Afternoon’. Chairman Marjorie Thorpe-Horbury said, ‘We were going to complain but so many people turned up that it was a ticket sell-out and £1752 was raised for the Sunshine House charity when we were only expecting £200 at most.’

  Chapter 27

  The next morning Annie and Joe sat in the hospital waiting room, him a lot more comfortable than her. Her bladder was about to burst from all the water she’d had to drink and Joe was doing his best to take her mind off the fact that fluid was about to come out of her ears. He pushed the Women by Women magazine into her line of vision. ‘Look at this. Nonalcoholic tiramisu. What a joke.’

  ‘Joe, I’m sorry, I can’t concentrate on puddings. What time is it now?’

  Joe didn’t say that it was three minutes later than the last time she’d asked. And a full half an hour after the scheduled time of their appointment.

  ‘I ha
d a feeling they’d do this to me,’ said Annie. ‘I’m going to wee myself in a minute.’

  Joe persisted with his dessert-disdain. ‘Rum is what you should put in a tiramisu. That’s what Italians do.’

  Annie rocked back and forward. ‘I’ll have to ask how long they’re going to be. If I start weeing I won’t be able to stop.’

  ‘I’ll ask for you,’ said Joe, putting the magazine down. Just as he stood, the door in front of them opened and the sonographer called out Mrs Pandoro’s name.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Annie through clenched teeth. She stood up carefully.

  ‘Sorry about your wait,’ said the sonographer with genuine apology. ‘When someone is late, the system gets totally thrown.’

  Joe knew that if Annie had got hold of the late one, she wouldn’t have been responsible for her actions. She didn’t get annoyed very often but Joe could recognise the signs that she was ready to blow like a geyser. But downwards.

  The sonographer helped Annie up onto the couch. She was wearing a badge with her name on it: Vita Goodchild; a name not easily forgotten.

  ‘If you could lift up your T-shirt for me,’ said Vita. Annie did as she was told and shuffled into the position where she felt the least pressure on her bladder. Vita tucked some tissue over the top of her trousers and apologised in advance for the temperature of the gel.

  ‘It can be a bit of a shock against the skin,’ she said with a sympathetic smile.

  ‘We don’t want to know if it’s a boy or a girl,’ said Joe quickly. They’d decided they didn’t want to be told in advance.

  ‘Oh, it’s too soon anyway,’ said Vita. ‘That info would come at your next scan. If everything is well and you don’t need any interim checks, that’ll be around twenty weeks.’

  Annie felt stupidly nervous now and she reached for Joe’s hand. She studied Vita’s face as she moved the transducer through the gel on her stomach and looked at a screen above her head. Annie tried to read her expression to see if everything was all right, but it was as neutral as could be.

  ‘I’m always thorough but even more so with an elderly primigravida, so no need to worry that I’ll miss anything.’

  ‘Elderly?’ asked Joe and let out a laugh that made his lips judder.

  ‘A very unflattering term for first-time mums over thirty-five,’ said Vita. ‘Sorry. Strangely enough, all I’ve had today are over thirty-five-year-old first-time mums. One was a year older than you. Would you like some photos of the baby?’

  ‘Oh, yes please,’ the Pandoros replied in unison.

  After what seemed like an interminable silence, Vita smiled and said, ‘We have two arms and two legs and a heartbeat and everything looks good so far. Would you like to see?’

  Vita twisted the screen around and there – in beautiful black and white – was the unmistakable profile of a baby.

  Joe made a sound halfway between a gasp and a gargle and when he spoke, his words were barely above a whisper.

  ‘My God, look, Annie. Look at our baby. It’s real.’

  Annie understood what he meant. Until this moment she hadn’t quite let herself believe it, but there was the indisputable proof that baby Pandoro was growing. She felt the tickle of a teardrop on her hand and wiped it away. It hadn’t come from her eye but Joe’s. He was laughing and crying at the same time, whilst she was calm and caught up quietly in the marvel of it all.

  ‘And your dates are spot on. A nice Christmas present for you both.’

  ‘The best,’ said Joe. ‘I can’t believe it. Is that the heart?’

  ‘Yes, there it is, beating away.’ Vita handed over three freshly printed photographs. ‘You pay for them at reception and they’ll put them in a card frame for you. You’ll be getting an appointment date for your twenty-week scan in the post. Any questions for me?’

  Annie couldn’t think straight. All she’d wanted to know was that the baby actually existed and was all right. And it did and it was.

  Annie was all smiles when they got back to work and couldn’t wait to show off her photographs to Iris and Palma, then they rang up Gill on FaceTime to show off to her. She was absolutely delighted and a little bit squiffy. They’d just come back from a boat trip with Mr and Mrs Penn and Teller and they’d been washing a swordfish lunch down with gin and tonics. It sounded wonderful but Joe and Annie didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment than in their cracker factory holding the photographs of their baby. The next generation of Pandoros, which they’d thought they would never see.

  Palma put the kettle on whilst they were conversing on FaceTime. It was only her second day at work but already she felt at home – the work equivalent of the little house on Rainbow Lane. Plus keeping busy helped drive that picture of Tommy and his blonde arm-decoration from her mind. He looked good in a suit. She’d have been proud to be on his arm too, and maybe she would have been had she not been up the duff with a stranger’s kid. Why had she even trusted Clint in the first place? She knew he’d arranged the deal primarily for the money but she hadn’t even questioned his ‘pitch’ to her, that the Stephensons were a couple with everything except the baby they so badly wanted. Once again she heard Christian’s words echo loudly in her skull: Desperate people do desperate things. It was her only excuse.

  That morning Palma had been working on a special luxury order for Rolls Royce where the crackers had to be hand rolled around a piece of pipe rather than the cheaper ones that were pre-cut and assembled in seconds. It was best done standing up at a table and Iris’s back was playing up so she showed Palma how to do them. Iris had been impressed at how easily she’d mastered the technique and she was speedy too. Annie and Joe inspected Palma’s production before they were packed into boxes.

  ‘Palma, dear Palma, don’t ever leave us,’ said Annie. She couldn’t believe how perfectly the crackers were constructed and how each hand-tied bow was exactly as it should be. ‘I’m not sure even I could do as good a job in so short a time.’

  ‘I got into the swing of them,’ said Palma. She’d always given her best to whatever she was doing. Except for your life, said a nasty little voice inside her. You’re cocking that up left, right and centre, aren’t you?

  ‘She even makes a nice coffee,’ said Iris, slurping from behind them. ‘Bit light on the biscuits though.’ She winked at Palma who smiled and said, ‘I’ll take that on board for next time.’

  ‘I’m craving something sweet; Jaffa Cakes, do we have any in the cupboard?’ asked Annie.

  ‘We did have . . .’ said Iris with eyes full of guilt.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ said Joe, throwing up his hands. ‘Tip number one, Palma, never leave the Jaffa Cakes in a cupboard when Iris is around.’

  Annie laughed. She didn’t care that her cupboard was empty of Jaffa Cakes because her soul was full of joy. Joy she didn’t think for a minute would ever be hers. There was nothing that could be sweeter than that.

  *

  Palma was craving oranges ever since Annie had mentioned the Jaffa Cakes and asked Joe to drop her off at the mini supermarket at the other end of the High Street from the Co-op after work. It didn’t have half the range of stuff and was expensive, but she didn’t want to chance bumping into Tommy. Then again she did. Moth to the flame situation because it would hurt her to be near him, especially if he felt obliged to talk to her; if that happened she’d cut away as soon as was polite.

  She’d see Joe and Annie tomorrow because they’d asked her if she would consider working a Saturday. They’d treat her to fish and chips for lunch, they said. She liked the Pandoros and thought the job suited her very well. Who would have known she’d have a flair for rolling crackers? She’d even volunteered to write some new jokes for them as the ones they were using were so crap they didn’t even have a groan factor.

  Minnie’s Mart only had three aisles. She found some fresh clementines in the first and was heading down the second where the biscuits were when who should she see coming towards her but Tommy. She froze. Shit.
You couldn’t make this up. Her legs felt shaky and her jaw tightened with tension. She imagined how she’d look through his eyes: drab and flawed when compared to the dazzling Katie he had now in his life. She really wished he hadn’t spotted her: she would have dumped her basket and walked out rather than have to pretend she was fine with being in a friend-zone, because she wasn’t.

  His twinkly eyes and customary grin had drifted into her mind more times than she would have liked. But that was an avenue which had closed and so the sooner she got her head around it, the better. It couldn’t have lasted anyway. Not when he can pull Katie-type girls, said a voice inside her head that was attempting to comfort but evidently wasn’t very good at it. She would rather not have met him at all than endure his forced politeness, his sympathy, his pity.

  ‘You following me?’ he asked, that smile making her legs feel incapable of holding her up.

  ‘I . . . no . . .’ she stammered. ‘The Co-op didn’t have any oranges.’ The ridiculous lie was the first thing that came to her mouth. He must have known it wasn’t true.

  ‘I think we both must have magnetic bits inside us, Palma.’

  She wanted to be first to break contact this time. To show him that she wasn’t stalking him, because that would be beyond sad.

  ‘Yeah, possibly . . .’ a small burst of amused laughter. ‘Anyway, hope you have a lovely weekend.’

  ‘And you, Pa . . .’ But she was walking away already, and silently cursed herself for getting the timing so wrong. Now she just looked rude. She tried to compensate for that and called over her shoulder, ‘See you, Tommy,’ and she thought that she saw him wave from the corner of her eye.

  She paid for the clementines and stuffed them into the carrier bag that she’d pulled out of her handbag. She always had one with her. She knew her desire to be organised and prepared came from the years when she lived in chaos with a mother who had no order or boundaries. Neither did the men that Emma brought home. Her mother had laughed it off when one of them lost his bearings and ended up in Palma’s bedroom. She’d never quite rid herself of the memory of his hands pawing her young body and it was then she discovered – by accident – that a well-placed knee made the best escape route. Since that night, Palma never went anywhere without something she could use as a weapon, if it was called for.