The Mother of All Christmases

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The Mother of All Christmases Page 21

by Milly Johnson


  With all the build-up to the launch of the Winterworld lagoon and then the news about the baby, Jacques hadn’t had much opportunity to catch up with his old friend, properly, over a pie and a pint. He wanted to ask if he’d be set for acting as best man. He felt he’d cheated Davy out of the position when he and Eve got married in secret with only a couple of strangers as witnesses and so he had some making up to do. As did Eve. Denying her Auntie Susan the opportunity to buy a new hat was borderline unforgivable.

  Davy, of course, agreed. He was looking forward to it. In his own words, he hadn’t been in a good place when Jacques and Eve first tied the knot. It had taken Davy a lot longer to adjust to civilian life than it had Jacques; he hadn’t left the army with a physical disability like his friend had done, but he’d had a mental one for a long while.

  ‘I saw you and Cariad getting quite close recently,’ Jacques could not resist saying.

  ‘Don’t be daft, she’s half my age,’ said Davy, lifting the beer to his lips.

  ‘Quite a few of the girls have been swooning over you. Some of them even younger than Cariad,’ replied Jacques.

  Davy gave a lopsided grin. He was a good-looking man now he’d got himself sorted out. He’d looked like a skinny Rasputin when Jacques had caught up with him last year. He’d let himself go, didn’t know how to fit into the world anymore. Now he was groomed and toned and back in the driving seat of his life. ‘Well, you’ve either got it or you haven’t.’

  ‘Seriously, come on. What’s going on between you two?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Davy. ‘I swear to you. She needed a bit of experienced man advice.’

  ‘She’s got her Uncle Effin for that, though,’ said Jacques.

  ‘Effin isn’t experienced, Jacques. He married his first love and has never had any complications, he hasn’t been around the block at all. Plus he’s an uncle, who . . . maybe isn’t the best person to talk to about some things,’ Davy replied, putting his glass down on the table. ‘It’s between Cariad and me, Jacques. I’m not betraying any confidences. I like Cariad and yes, I’d be in there like Flynn if I thought I had a chance, but . . . I think she’s got her eye on a higher prize.’

  ‘Dylan Evans. I see your point. Young, fit, handsome . . .’ Jacques chuckled.

  ‘No, not that wee . . .’ He shook his head, bit off his words. ‘I don’t understand why Effin’s got him on a pedestal. There’s something about him.’

  Davy did have a tendency to take against people for no explicable reason, Jacques remembered then. It had caused a couple of problems, as it would, when you were supposed to work together as a unit. He had always blamed it on his instincts being too strong. Their commanding officer at the time had told him to unwire those instincts and wire them back up properly or he would be out on his arse.

  ‘He’s Effin’s one-time best friend’s son, I do believe,’ said Jacques.

  ‘Another pint?’ said Davy, draining his glass, pushing his chair back and standing.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Jacques. He could take a hint. The subject of ‘the Welsh lot’ as Davy called them collectively, was closed.

  *

  Dessert was a Pavlova. A bought nest but Tommy had whipped up the cream and loaded the fruit in it himself, he explained, as he put a dish down in front of Palma.

  ‘Don’t believe in small portions do you?’ she said, puffing out her cheeks.

  ‘You should have left some room. I didn’t expect you’d stuff the whole of your main course down in one mouthful. You can shift your grub, can’t you? I don’t know where you put it.’

  ‘It would have been rude to leave it,’ Palma picked up her spoon.

  ‘I’ve got cheese and biscuits to come after, so be warned.’

  And he wasn’t lying. He brought a cheese platter to the table after the pudding, complete with sticks of celery and grapes. It was like something out of an expensive restaurant, she thought.

  ‘You’re eating for two, aren’t you?’ Tommy chuckled, seeing her eyes widen in surprise.

  ‘Two humans, not two blue whales.’

  ‘I thought you’d be slapping weight on by now,’ said Tommy. ‘How many months have you got to go?’

  ‘There’s about forty-one weeks from start to finish and I’m fifteen tomorrow.’

  ‘So twenty-six then, six months exactly.’

  She raised her eyebrows, impressed at this speed of calculation. She seemed to remember him not being that bright at school. Mrs Digley, their maths teacher, made them sit in order of academic ability and Tommy was always in the last row. The old cow did wonders for kids’ confidence.

  As if he could see into her head he said, ‘Do you remember that old cow who used to teach us maths? Mrs Digley?’

  ‘Yes I do. Horrible old bat.’

  ‘She sent me a letter to Forestgate. She said that she was most disappointed in me but always knew I’d end up somewhere like that. The phrase that really stung – and I remember it word for word – was “I pride myself on forecasting the fate of those whom I teach and I knew from the off you would never amount to much”.’

  Palma’s hand froze on its way to pick up a stick of celery.

  ‘She didn’t?’

  ‘It was the kick up the backside I needed. Forestgate was okay, bit too okay. It was better than home, but . . . but that letter made me cry. It changed me. I thought, fuck you, Mrs Digley, I’m going to show you what I’m capable of.’

  He was angry and upset at the same time; there was a determined tightness to his jaw and a waver in his voice.

  ‘And you did, Tommy. Look at you.’

  ‘Yeah, between her pushing me down and our Neil pulling me up, I did it, didn’t I? I should thank her really.’

  ‘No you shouldn’t. If you hadn’t been so bloody-minded, she could have had you slitting your wrists saying something like that, the old bitch.’

  ‘Stay with me here tonight. We don’t have to do anything, but just stay.’ He reached for her hand across the table. Palma felt the warmth from it spread through her whole body. She nodded.

  ‘I’ll stay.’

  Chapter 38

  Annie, Eve and Palma arranged to go to ‘Aqua Mama’ the following week. In their maternity swimming costumes it was obvious that Annie and Eve were pregnant but Palma had the tiniest bump and was wearing an ordinary one that she’d bought from the supermarket. Cheryl, from the cleaning company, and Raychel with her wild dark curls were there too. Palma felt like a pretender at the side of all the round stomachs. She was definitely pregnant though; she had felt a very delicate fluttering inside her. Mind you, since she and Tommy had been an item, she’d had quite a few butterflies beating their wings against her stomach walls. She’d stayed at his house three times in the past week and they’d finally made love on the third occasion. He’d been gentle and reverent and loving and she hadn’t wanted to leave his arms in the morning. She was falling for him and it was getting harder to hold a little of herself back in reserve. The part that she’d need to prop her up if it all went wrong.

  The woman who ran the sessions was very jolly hockey-sticks. Her name was Shona and this was her own personal pool, built in the garden of her own personal very large house. She was slim and gorgeous with bright copper hair and the figure of an Olympic swimmer. Surprisingly, she had seven children, she told them, and no tummy tuck needed.

  ‘She must have grown them in a jar,’ said Eve for Palma’s and Annie’s ears only, which set them all off giggling like naughty kids.

  The water in the pool was blissfully warm and the first exercise was a simple bobbing up and down, enjoying their weightlessness in the water. One woman at the front was very large and pregnant. Even her legs looked pregnant. Palma wondered if she would ever get that big. Her body would have to get a move on if she was. She felt slightly cheated that she was sixteen weeks pregnant already and hardly showing.

  ‘Okay, I’m going to put on some music and I’d like you to run on the spot, kicking your legs
behind you like this,’ said Shona, from the poolside.

  ‘Oh, I like this,’ said Annie, getting right into the groove of KC and the Sunshine Band. ‘I wonder if it would feel like this if you were exercising in outer space.’

  ‘How are you getting on with your cracker stuffing, Annie?’ asked Eve.

  ‘Wonderful,’ she replied. ‘We have a full workforce hard at it now, including four pregnant ladies who were crying out for some work to do at home and four of Cheryl’s cleaners who wanted some extra money.’

  Palma had interviewed the women at the factory and the ones who sounded promising were given some crackers to roll. Three of the people who turned up hadn’t been suitable: one couldn’t even grasp the basics and another had been extremely hungover and slapdash. Palma thought she looked vaguely familiar but hadn’t been able to place her and the third silly bint said that she was happy to do everything but touch ribbon because she had an aversion to tying knots. Two men were also working for them: a single dad who was struggling to find work that fitted around his kid and a lonely pensioner who wanted something to do. Astrid was their stand-out favourite – what a fabulous person she was. And so quick and precise, despite the size of her fingers. Annie had her hand-rolling some luxury crackers after only a few days and she’d been helping Palma do the white ones that Jacques had ordered for the renewal of his and Eve’s vows.

  ‘Twenty-week scan tomorrow,’ said Annie, with an excited little hop.

  ‘And now we are going to do some resistance work on our arms,’ said Shona, demonstrating on dry land.

  ‘I’m next Tuesday,’ said Eve.

  ‘I’m next month,’ huffed Palma. ‘I’ll be glad when I start slapping some timber on. I want to wear big frocks like you two fatties.’

  ‘Oy,’ said Eve and Annie together.

  ‘You’ll be swelling soon enough,’ said Cheryl at her side. ‘Enjoy it whilst you can. My back is breaking from all this weight already. How the hell I’m going to last until November, I have no idea. You see that big woman at the front? She’s not even eight months pregnant yet.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Eve.

  ‘Thank the lord we aren’t elephants,’ Raychel butted in. ‘Twenty-two months, they’re up the spout.’

  ‘Think of twenty-two months’ worth of free dental care though,’ replied Cheryl, surprisingly puffed from what sounded such an easy exercise. ‘I could have a full set of veneers done.’

  ‘And stop,’ said Shona from the front. ‘It might not be so tiring for you if you did the exercising without gossiping, ladies.’

  The naughty five firmly closed their mouths as Shona distributed some foam noodles and proceeded to show them some stretching exercises designed to tone up their ‘down belows’.

  *

  Effin helped Cariad move into her new home in Little Kipping. ‘The Old Vicarage’ had been thoughtfully converted into four flats and Cariad’s was at the back with a small private garden. Her uncle, always swift to dismiss shoddy workmanship, was very impressed with the standard although he was much happier when he spotted one of the kitchen cupboards was out of alignment with the next. His lads wouldn’t have got away with that and his status as king of the refurbs was no longer threatened.

  After all the boxes had been carried in, Cariad took the kettle out of one, filled it up and plugged it in so they could have a cup of tea together.

  ‘You could have stayed at the cottage with me, you know,’ Effin said. ‘Saved yourself a few bob.’

  ‘I know,’ said Cariad. ‘I didn’t want to trouble you.’ Which was partly true. More than not troubling him, she didn’t want to be responsible for murdering him either. He might have thought he knew what was best for her, but he didn’t always. Take Dylan Evans for instance.

  ‘So, have you seen anything of Dylan then?’ asked Effin, trying to sound casual.

  ‘Nope,’ replied Cariad flatly. ‘Please, Uncle Effin, I don’t want to talk about him.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ said Effin. ‘But—’

  ‘But what I might want to talk about is your memory,’ she said, not giving him an inch. ‘I’ve been hearing all about you misplacing stuff and forgetting things.’

  Effin pulled himself up to his full height of five foot four. ‘What . . . who the bloody hell has been saying stuff about me? Bastards.’ He was incensed and when he was incensed his skin changed colour like a chameleon who had been shifted from a white blanket to a bright red one at speed.

  ‘People told me because they thought you might listen if I said something to you,’ said Cariad.

  ‘Who told you? Was it the Poles or the bloody Welsh boys. Pricks, the lot of them.’

  Effin started to pace up and down.

  Cariad tried to shake the picture of Dylan tapping his temple out of her head, telling her that her Uncle Effin was losing it. After he’d told her that on their night out, she’d done some private investigating to see if he was telling the truth and she hadn’t liked what she’d found out.

  ‘I heard about the letter falling off the Santapark sign from someone who cares about you a great deal,’ said Cariad, gently.

  ‘Dylan?’

  ‘No,’ screeched Cariad, ‘not bloody Dylan. Why do all roads lead me to Dylan Evans with you? People are worried about you, Uncle Effin. I think you should tell Auntie Angharad. Go have a holiday and take some time off.’

  He should go take some time off before he kills someone, were Thomas the Tank’s exact words.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ said Effin, now leaving red and acquiring a bruised-purple tone to his face. ‘And don’t you dare tell your Auntie Angharad,’ he snapped. He had never used that tone with her before, which spoke volumes.

  ‘People are worried about you, they care. And despite the fact that you call them all a bunch of useless wankers—’

  ‘Cariad! Your language,’ gasped Effin.

  ‘Oh, Uncle Effin, I’m not a child anymore. And I’m bilingual, in case you’ve forgotten. When you are standing there shouting “Ffycin hel. Ffycin cocs y cwm. Chi ’di darllen y planie ben i waered! S’ech chi ddim yn cachu heb cyfarwyddiade!” the Polish lads might not understand you, but I know you’re shouting, “Fucking hell. Fucking valley cocks. You’ve read the plans upside down! You wouldn’t shit without instructions”, BECAUSE I’M WELSH MYSELF IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED.’

  Effin fell silent. An occurrence that happened only in the most extreme of circumstances.

  ‘And every one . . . well, nearly every one of those fucking valley cocks knows that in that great big beating heart of yours, you love them, and they love you. And they care about you. And they want you to go and see a doctor.’

  Cariad’s words hung in the air long after she had finished saying them, like the tail of a bell peal. She stood in the thick hush, hating that she might have hurt him but also cognisant of the fact that it needed a mallet to knock the words into his head and she was probably the only one who could wield it at the moment.

  Eventually he spoke. ‘Right then. So . . .’ he coughed, sniffed, swallowed, ‘. . . now you’re all moved in, I’ll be off. I’ll see you at work. I won’t stay for a cuppa.’

  ‘Oh, Uncle Effin . . .’

  ‘You ring me if you need anything, Cariad love.’

  He turned from her and walked briskly to the door. Not even her mallet was big enough, it seemed.

  Chapter 39

  Annie lay on the couch and let the sonographer move the transducer around her stomach. It wasn’t Vita this time, but someone older, less smiley, with deep marionette lines from mouth to chin, revealing that the natural set of her expression wasn’t a very happy one. ‘Lesley’ wasn’t as talkative either and Annie felt duty-bound to stay silent whilst she did what she had to.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ said Joe, feeling that the silence needed popping with a verbal pin.

  ‘I’m looking now, Mr Pandoro,’ said Lesley.

  ‘You’re very quiet.’

  ‘Joe.’
Annie grimaced at him.

  ‘I’m quiet when I’m concentrating,’ said Lesley. ‘It’s important I check everything and we can chat when I have finished.’

  Joe pulled a ‘Well, that’s me told’ face at his wife and Lesley carried on.

  ‘I’m presuming you’d like some photos,’ said Lesley eventually.

  ‘Please,’ said Joe and Annie together. Then Lesley twisted the screen around and they saw a very different baby to the one they’d seen before. There was so much more detail: a clear spine, little fingers, perfectly formed feet.

  ‘There’s a lot to check on the anomaly scan, you see,’ said Lesley. ‘I couldn’t see what I needed to see at first but then he twizzled for me. I call them all “he” by the way. Saves all that he and she nonsense. Do you want to know the sex of your baby?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie, a split second before Joe.

  ‘I didn’t want to know either,’ said Lesley and she smiled. Her face changed totally, softened, when she did so. ‘I’ve got five, including a set of twins, all girls. Every pregnancy different. “You’re having a boy this time,” my mother said because my second pregnancy was so different to my first. I didn’t. She had me lying on the floor dangling a needle over my stomach telling me the third was absolutely a boy and it wasn’t. So don’t you listen to all those old wives’ tales.’

  ‘Oh my, I can’t believe how big he’s grown. Or she, of course,’ said Annie, taking the photos that Lesley handed over. Joe didn’t say anything, but stared at the image on the screen, a look of wonderment on his face.

  ‘Halfway now,’ said Lesley, wiping the gel from Annie’s stomach with a single accomplished sweep. ‘Now the fun really begins.’

  ‘What did she mean by “now the fun really begins”?’ asked Joe as they made their way out of the hospital.

  ‘I expect it’s because we’re on a countdown,’ said Annie. ‘I have to say, this past twenty weeks has flown by.’

 

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