Nico went to his own room, undressed and let his tired body plummet onto his bed, groaning with pleasure at the clean smell of the duvet and its coolness on his skin. Then he made the mistake of glancing at his phone. Red notification dots had attached themselves to app icons like ticks. Three missed calls and eight texts with a couple of WhatsApp messages for good measure. He debated switching the bloody thing off but, with a sigh, checked the texts.
All six were from Loren’s mum, though he felt less alarmed at the number when he saw she sent a message for every sentence. Spoke to Loren. She sounded down.
Are you likely to see her this weekend?
If so, could you ring me after?
Redfern’s out of hospital and needs help but I could dash down tomorrow afternoon if I had to.
We mustn’t let her get in a state again.
How’s Josie?
He sent back: Just home from biz trip to Stockholm but will telephone her tomorrow to see if I can take Josie to visit. Will contact you after. Josie seemed fine when we FaceTimed after school. He added: Is Maria OK?
The missed calls were from Vivvi too so he disregarded them, glad there was no apparent emergency behind the blizzard of notifications.
The WhatsApp messages were from Tilly, his nanny. The first said, Won’t be able to take Josie to school Monday or Wednesday but will be able to pick her up as usual.
The second contained an afterthought: Sorry. He was about to ask why she couldn’t stick to her agreed hours but he lost patience and simply told her what the financial effect would be.
She replied instantly. Thanks a lot. It was no doubt meant to be ironic but though she’d helped with Maria as well as Josie after school for the second week of Maria’s stay, it had been with a put-upon air, even when he’d been working from home and had shared the load. Their once-OK relationship was deteriorating by the day.
Wide awake now, he checked his work emails, glaring at his inbox in frustration because he’d got up to date at Arlanda airport but people worked from home on Fridays and wrote emails last thing about contract changes or tender requests to make it look as if they worked right up to the end of play.
In one email, Anders asked for a meeting early Monday about a concept rebranding and said the client wanted new promo material for all its thirteen leisure centres in four weeks. SLS must grab this opportunity with both hands meaning Nico will have to shoehorn this into his crazy schedule even though he has annual leave booked in the affected period.
He snapped shut his laptop and flopped back onto his pillows.
After an hour of lying sleepless, he got up to get the bloody emails out of the way so he could spend the weekend with Josie. At two a.m. he was about to close down when his eating plan and food diary on his desktop caught his eye. He hadn’t filled it in for over a week. Then he realised he hadn’t eaten since lunch. A gnawing stomach was so familiar he hadn’t noticed it. He should have bought himself a big bar of Marabou chocolate too. His mouth watered. Then he caught himself. No! Binging on sugar was behaviour he’d left behind because it triggered the feeling that he ought to get rid of it again. He had orange and chocolate chip protein bars in his laptop bag and ate one to fill him up and assuage his sweet tooth. In a few hours he’d eat breakfast according to his plan – porridge. Josie liked porridge made the Swedish way with pudding rice, milk and cinnamon. They’d make it together.
Finally, he slept.
He woke to find Josie on the edge of his bed holding the cordless house phone and hissing, ‘Daddy. Dad. DAD! It’s Mummy.’ Her narrow face was creased with worry, hair tousled from sleep.
He surfaced with an effort and took the handset. ‘Thanks.’ He winked at Josie and said, ‘Loren?’ into the phone.
‘Can you take Maria today?’ Loren sounded high and strained.
Nico rubbed an eye. He didn’t recall any agreement about continuing to help with Maria and part of him wanted to ask Loren if she was getting him mixed up with Maria’s actual father. Then a glance at the bedside clock told him it wasn’t even six a.m. and this was odd behaviour. ‘Is there a reason?’ he asked neutrally.
After several seconds she admitted, ‘I’m not feeling good.’
‘Right,’ he replied tentatively. ‘I was going to call you to arrange to bring Josie for a visit so maybe we can discuss it further then.’
Loren’s voice began to shake. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for Josie to come today.’
Chilled, Nico put out a hand to stroke Josie’s hair reassuringly, not sure how much she could hear. He phrased his next question carefully. ‘Do you think it would be a good idea for me to fetch Maria soon?’
‘Yes.’ Loren’s voice broke.
Quickly ending the call, Nico kissed Josie. ‘Mum’s not feeling well so we’re going to have Maria home to play.’ Josie trailing after him, looking as if she wasn’t sure whether to be happy or worried, he woke Emelie to ask her to stay with Josie, dressed and drove to Loren’s.
He found Loren sitting on the step of the street door to her apartment block, crying.
‘Where’s Maria?’ he demanded, heart giving a giant leap that Loren should be out here on her own, hair greasy, tears trickling from her chin.
She wiped her face on her wrist. ‘She’s OK. Watching TV.’
Maria his immediate concern, Nico took the key Loren clutched, slipped past and ran upstairs. In the flat he found Maria sitting on the floor of the lounge, watching Peppa Pig with tear-stained cheeks.
When she saw him she jumped up. ‘Juice, Mydad?’
He swung her into his arms. ‘Coming right up.’ She drank two beakers full while he rocked her absently. She smelled stale and was fully dressed in grubby clothes so had probably slept in them. The thirst she was demonstrating, gulping and gasping as she drank, was that big red flag again, waving in his face, not to be ignored. When she was finally sated he wasted no time but went to her room. The bag he’d returned on Tuesday was on the end of her bed, still packed with most of the clean clothes he’d sent back, so he swung it over his shoulder and located her coat on the hall floor. As he threaded her into it, Maria beamed at him trustingly, making him ashamed of his earlier irritation at Loren’s call. ‘Shall we go see Josie?’ he suggested.
Maria clapped her hands. ‘Yes! Yozee.’
Loren came back into the flat, hovering, eyes red and swollen. The confines of the hall made it obvious that she once again smelled of alcohol. He paused. Here was someone else who needed help but he wasn’t superman and he wasn’t a saint. He could only help her indirectly. ‘I’m going to call your mum, OK?’ he said gently.
She managed a ghostly smile. ‘I’ll be OK. Just can’t manage the parenting stuff right now.’
Not by any stretch of the imagination was Loren ‘OK’. ‘Grab some sleep,’ he suggested. ‘And how about a spare key?’
She found one in a drawer and he left, grappling with Maria, her buggy and her car seat. She barely looked at her mother.
At home, Emelie met him in the hall. ‘Josie’s in the shower,’ she said, ‘Hiya, Maria!’ Then, to Nico, ‘What’s going on?’ Her eyes were soft with pity as she took Maria and helped her out of her coat, saying, ‘I bet you want breakfast, hey?’
‘Yes, beckfast,’ Maria agreed, nodding hard.
‘Thanks.’ Nico whispered the bones of the situation to Emelie, adding, ‘I have to call Vivvi.’
Emelie moved towards the kitchen, Maria trotting beside her. ‘I’ll make breakfast for the girls. And some for you for when you come off the phone,’ she added, without looking at him.
Nico nodded, remembering his empty stomach and wondering if Emelie’s comment meant he was looking too thin again. He retreated to the relative privacy of his bedroom to make the call.
‘Why so early?’ Vivvi demanded, when the phone had rung several times, her voice wavering between irritation and uncertainty.
‘I’ve come from Loren’s.’ Economically, he tried to convey the gravity of the situation w
ithout inducing panic.
Vivvi groaned. ‘Oh, no. She wouldn’t speak on the phone yesterday but she texted to say she was OK.’
‘Well, she’s not,’ Nico said bluntly.
Vivvi drew in an audible breath. ‘I’ll drive straight there. Be in touch with you later.’
Treading slowly downstairs, Nico entered the kitchen. The girls were absorbed with something on Josie’s iPad, used cereal bowls abandoned. Emelie was emptying the dishwasher, her phone jammed between shoulder and ear. ‘I haven’t told Nico yet,’ she was saying, ponytail swinging in time with her rhythmic movement between cupboards and dishwasher. ‘It’s not a good time. We’ve got an extra child again.’ Pause to listen. ‘I know, right?’ Another pause. ‘But it’s not a good time!’ Pause. ‘Yes, you know I want to but I can’t be a cow.’ There was both longing and exasperation in her voice.
Nico, realising he was eavesdropping and suspecting he wasn’t going to like knowing what was going on, said from the doorway. ‘Finished breakfast girls?’
Josie flung herself off her stool and into his arms. ‘Daddy! I’ve downloaded a free balloon game for Maria.’
Emelie swung round, blushing to the roots of her hair. ‘Um,’ she said into the phone, drawing out the syllable significantly, ‘I’ll call you back.’
Nico took the seat in front of a bowl of granola he assumed was for him and poured milk over it, listening to Josie chatter as if words had a shelf life if not delivered at top speed. Maria got the odd word in when Josie had to take a breath.
Emelie finished emptying the dishwasher in silence and then hovered. Nico felt better when he’d eaten and equal to hearing whatever she had to tell him. ‘Josie, can you take Maria up and start running her a bath? I’ll be a couple of minutes.’ He waited till he could hear them clumping up the stairs, Josie making a lot of noise and Maria giggling.
‘Something to tell me?’ He smiled at Emelie. He loved his young cousin and hated to see her looking cornered and uncomfortable.
Emelie’s fair skin went scarlet. ‘Bruno wants me to move in with him,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve explained how things are here and that you rely on me and you’ve been great and everything …’
Heart sinking, Nico managed not to lose his smile. ‘But you want to live with him?’ How would the Josie rota survive without Emelie?
Emelie shuffled. ‘Well … yeah.’
He fought to stay relaxed, noting the sparkle in Emelie’s eyes despite her discomfiture. She was just twenty and her Italian boyfriend had asked her to share his life. If she wanted it, she should be free to grab it. ‘What do your parents say?’
She shrugged. ‘They’re worried about me leaving you in the lurch. And,’ she added honestly, ‘they think Bruno and me are very young to settle down. I told them moving in doesn’t have to mean settling down. We’re students,’ she added, as if that explained everything … which it probably did.
Crossing the kitchen, he gave her a hug. ‘If you want to move in with Bruno then do it. I’m not your responsibility, sweetie.’
She looked torn. ‘I could still help with some babysitting.’ There was a slight emphasis on ‘some’.
‘That would be great,’ he answered reassuringly. Then while she got jubilantly back on the phone to Bruno he went upstairs on leaden feet to check the bath water, though he reminded himself he could probably still ask Emelie if she could take Josie to school on Monday while he had his meeting with Anders. Damn Tilly for bailing on him. Though what would happen if he still had Maria by Monday morning …
Nico put his Dad face on as Maria slithered into the bath to play with the lid of the shampoo bottle, trying to avoid Josie’s attempt to wash her hair. Between them they spilled at least half the shampoo, the sweet-shop smell of vanilla filling the room. Exchanging chitchat with them both, Nico hid the sinking dismay with which Emelie’s news had filled him, answering cheerfully when, from downstairs, she shouted, ‘Going out! See you!’ before the front door slammed.
When he got the girls downstairs again he opened the post, including a letter from the chair of governors of Barrack Road Primary School acknowledging his concerns but backing up everything Mrs Watts had already said.
It was lunchtime before he remembered his eating plan and heated soup for all three of them. Maria liked squares of buttered bread sunk amongst the vegetables. She fished them out with a spoon and a finger, saying, ‘Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm,’ and conveyed each messily to her mouth. Josie, like Nico, just dunked the bread before spooning up the remaining soup.
The three of them sat around the breakfast bar, Josie providing a stream of questions. ‘When can we have our Christmas lights up? And you know Mum’s ill again, how long will Maria be staying?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Nico was aware he wasn’t providing the positivity Josie searched for. She was too sensitive and intelligent to be fobbed off, but he added, ‘What would you like to do after lunch?’
‘Make charm bracelets,’ Josie said promptly. She’d received a set as a birthday present. Unfortunately, but foreseeably, Maria loved the charms and the beads and tried to snatch them out of their compartments until Josie snapped at her. Maria began to cry.
‘She’s only acting her age,’ Nico said gently, swinging Maria off her stool.
Josie acted her age, too, glaring red-faced at the glittering mess of charms. ‘She doesn’t have to be so stupid.’
That was when Nico’s boss Anders chose to ring. When Nico saw his name on the screen of his mobile phone he switched it to silent and ignored it. But before he could get the girls into their coats to forget their spat with a walk on the common, Anders rang the home phone and Josie answered it.
‘Yes, he’s here,’ she said. ‘Dad, it’s for you.’
‘We need a meeting first thing Monday, Nico,’ boomed Anders in his half-jovial, half-bossy manner when Nico had smothered a sigh and taken the handset.
‘Yes, I replied to your email. It’s on my calendar.’ For now, Nico ignored the looming childcare issues.
Then Josie tried to help Maria into her coat and Maria protested, ‘Mydad do it!’ at a volume that made Nico realise he’d developed a headache.
‘A new world war is breaking out,’ he said lightly, over Maria’s howls. ‘I’d better go.’
A pause before Anders said, ‘Sure.’ He didn’t sound any more understanding than he ever did as he ended the call but Nico didn’t care. It was Saturday.
‘Hey, hey, who’s crying?’ he exclaimed, wrapping Maria up in her coat and tickling her. ‘The coat monster doesn’t like crying!’
Maria began to laugh instead and as Josie was pouting Nico chased her around with Maria still parcelled in his arms groaning, ‘The coat monster, the coat monster!’ until Josie burst into giggles too.
As they were bundling the buggy into the boot of the car, Vivvi called. Nico answered, opening the car door for the girls to get in.
Vivvi muttered tearfully, ‘Just quickly while Loren’s in the bathroom. She’s a bloody mess. I’m taking her home with me again. Red’s not feeling so good so I’ve got to scoot. I don’t know which way to turn but I’ll call you later.’
He was left saying, ‘Right, hope Red’s OK,’ to a dead phone.
They drove to the common beneath a sky of marching clouds. Exercise was his go-to so he kept Maria in her buggy for the first mile by shouting, ‘Let’s go-go-go!’ and running up and down over frosty ruts and potholes to make her chortle with glee. Then they reached the climbing things and Maria yelled to get out to clamber on wooden animals and follow Josie up a cargo net. As nobody was around, Nico did twenty chin-ups on a horizontal bar, Josie counting aloud for him and Maria shouting, ‘Hooray!’
Then they tramped on, Josie chattering about ice forming at the edges of puddles, Maria drowsing in the buggy. Part of Nico’s mind was still occupied with what would happen on Monday. He tried to think positively. Maybe Vivvi and Loren could cope. If Maria went to join Loren at Vivvi and Red’s, Loren would feel supported b
y other adults; Vivvi would only have to supervise.
He returned home to roast chicken breasts and root vegetables for dinner, his head clearer.
The girls watched TV, squashed together on the sofa as if it was National Cuddle Day. Nico could supervise them from the kitchen so he made time to call his mum Carina for the first time in weeks.
‘Hej, Mamma, det är jag,’ he said. Hi Mum, it’s me. ‘Any snow in Älgäng?’
‘A flurry or two. Nothing that stayed,’ she answered. ‘How’s life in England? Are you still coming for Lucia?’
One-handed, he got a bowl of frozen peas ready to put in the microwave. It was the only green vegetable Josie would eat without fuss, though she would happily have eaten iceberg lettuce with every meal, dipping it in gravy as readily as in mayonnaise. ‘Can’t wait to be home.’ They were used to him flitting in and out of Sweden without seeing his family. Stockholm was a four-hour drive from Älgäng.
They talked about work and then Carina said, with an edge to her voice, ‘I saw Emelie’s mother Ida in Nässjö, in Kvantum.’
Shit, thought Nico. Ida was married to his uncle on his father’s side, and they ended up in the same supermarket in Nässjö at the same time, even though one lived in Älgäng and the other in Eksjö. ‘Oh?’ he said. He propped his backside on a stool, suddenly fatigued. ‘I suppose she told you I’m giving a hand with Maria?’ He hadn’t bothered his parents with this news.
‘My son certainly hadn’t told me! I rang your father but he knew no more than I did.’
Nico’s brows shot up. Carina must have really wanted to know about the situation to seek information from the man she’d divorced twenty-two years ago.
‘She’s two and being neglected,’ he pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t have left her there either.’
Carina went quiet for several moments before, ‘But, Nico, can you afford to be so magnanimous? You’re already … busy.’
For ‘busy’ read ‘overwhelmed’, he thought as he answered calmly, ‘So far, so good.’
Christmas Wishes: From the Sunday Times bestselling and award-winning author of romance fiction comes a feel-good cosy Christmas read Page 12