One Christmas Star

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘I like clothes,’ Emily stated. ‘But usually not quite this much.’ She sighed. ‘I fell into a bit of a rut after Simon died and trawling the shops and the markets was the only thing that stopped me from going insane… or taking up vaping.’ Another sigh. ‘I needed something to keep me busy, so I shopped. Am still shopping… but not as much. I hate to say it, but the Christmas show is actually helping to distract me. I’m doing more shopping on Amazon for crowns and shepherd’s crooks that can’t be used to decapitate anyone, than I am for Lindy Bop dresses.’

  ‘How did the new song go down today?’ Ray asked. He felt almost as enthusiastic about writing new lyrics to ‘Stop the Cavalry’ as he did about new music of his own.

  Emily grinned wildly. ‘It was brilliant. The kids loved it. Especially the ones who don’t celebrate Christmas in the Church of England sense. I mean it will have to get Mrs Clark’s approval, but she’s currently leaving us to it while the diocese is all glowing over our last performance.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Ray said. Seeing her smile and become animated like this was so much better than the Emily he’d seen distraught in the hallway a week or so ago. And her voice was terrific. He was enjoying bringing out some confidence in her.

  ‘Yes, that is great.’ She took a breath. ‘But what isn’t so great is having to deal with underage drinking and shoplifting.’

  ‘Whoa, one of your children did that?’

  ‘I can’t say anything else. It’s a delicate matter at the moment and investigations are on-going.’

  ‘And you’re worried about dinner with your parents?’ Ray remarked.

  ‘Oh, it’s not dinner,’ Emily said quickly. ‘It’s just drinks. Lots of drinks. And I’ll come up with a super fundraising idea along the lines of this year’s theme – that they will have made up between the lots of drinks – and I’ll escape as quickly as I can and eat chips on the way home.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s at this pretentious wine bar called Clean Martini. The name is meant to be funny. A play on dirty martini.’

  ‘I know it,’ Ray said. ‘I played piano there a few years ago, before the whole TV show thing. I was busking and labouring in the daytime and a couple of nights a week I played cocktail piano there.’

  ‘Wow,’ Emily said. ‘I’ve been going there for a good few years now. Maybe you were playing piano while I was undergoing this yearly ritual.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Ray agreed. Although he would like to think that he would have remembered her…

  ‘You should come with me,’ Emily said suddenly. She shut the wardrobe doors, pushing her weight against them as they refused to correctly meet.

  ‘Really?’ Ray asked. ‘Because you’ve made it sound like the worst night ever.’

  ‘Well… it is… but, you know, if I had someone with me to help field the upper-class BS, it might not be as bad.’

  Ray laughed.

  ‘But it’s Friday night. You probably have all sorts of plans. Sorry! The minute I get another flatmate I become all overbearing.’

  ‘No,’ Ray said. ‘I mean, I don’t have any other plans. I’m in the studio for another session early tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Well, the offer’s there and if you get fed up of my parents there’s always the piano,’ Emily said.

  ‘OK,’ Ray replied.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ray answered. ‘Why not? Wait,’ he said. ‘Hang on.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Have you got anything in that wardrobe I can wear? I’ve heard the fashion stakes are high.’

  ‘So not funny!’ Emily said as he ducked out of the door.

  Forty-Two

  Clean Martini Bar, Soho

  Emily could hear her mother from the entrance of the ultra-modern bar and she wondered why on earth she had decided this would be an event to invite company to. She had never suggested that Jonah came with her. But then her mother didn’t really like Jonah. Alegra didn’t understand him or his love of where he’d come from and grown up. Alegra did love Jonah’s food and culinary talents though, but she thought he had crawled up through the ranks to polish off his working-class tarnish, not to make good but then revel in and still enjoy being exactly the same.

  There was a bright white Christmas tree in the lobby, it’s only decorations black sequinned stars. It was neither festive nor stylish in Emily’s opinion. It looked like something that would only fit at the funeral of a chintz-loving celebrity.

  ‘Emily,’ Ray said. He put his mouth to her ear. ‘I’m not sure, but I think there’s a reporter across the street so maybe we could head inside?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, let’s go in.’ Emily said, stepping forward quickly.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘I’d love a tonic water. The clementine flavour one if they have it.’

  ‘Emily! Emily, darling! Mummy’s here!’

  Emily closed her eyes as her mother’s voice grew even louder. She turned, looking through the supposedly arty terracotta roof tiles, made into circles and stacked into a square of space like a room divider. Alegra was finding the gaps, waving through one, then the other, laughing hysterically.

  ‘Ray, listen, perhaps this was a mistake.’ Emily turned to him.

  ‘A mistake?’ he queried.

  Emily nodded. ‘My mother’s already deep into the wine. Nothing good can come from this. You should escape now. Get chips without me and head back to the flat. Or somewhere else. Anywhere else.’

  Ray smiled at her. ‘And miss all the fun?’

  She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Fun. Hmm.’

  ‘Hey,’ Ray said. ‘From what I know about people and alcohol, and I have deep personal experience…’ He took a breath. ‘The ones drinking are never the ones in control of the situation.’ He nudged her elbow with his. ‘This could be a great opportunity to voice your ideas about their charity work and receive little resistance.’

  He did have a point. A very good point. Her mother was far easier to manipulate – no, not manipulate, that was too harsh a word – easier to guide down a certain path, once she’d had a shed load of wine.

  ‘I’ll get us some drinks,’ Ray said, moving up to the bar.

  ‘Emily! Mummy and Daddy are over here!’ Alegra called again.

  ‘Thanks, Ray,’ Emily said, turning and facing the inevitable.

  Smiling desperately, she headed into the main body of the room, all aglow with those large lightbulbs on ropes and all manner of ode to steampunk. There were pistons and what looked like bicycle chains on the mock stone walls – all covered in tinsel and a dusting of fake snow. And there were her parents, seated at a chunky wooden, meant-to-look-straight-out-of-an-eighteenth-century-workshed table with the usual four others. Bill and Ben – no, seriously – Damien and Dana. The tabletop was already covered with wine bottles and pint glasses. What time had they all finished work?

  ‘Hello,’ Emily greeted them.

  ‘Here she is!’ her dad, William said, already ruby-faced, his thinning hair revealed under the light of one of the giant bulbs. ‘Do we have enough seats?’ He raised a hand in the air and began clicking his fingers seeking assistance. ‘Another chair! Over here!’

  Emily swallowed. No please. No thank you. Just a demand. She strode to an empty table and picked up a chair, carrying it over herself.

  Alegra gasped. ‘What are you doing, Emily? Put that down!’

  ‘I’m getting a seat,’ she answered, dropping the rustic mismatched chair down next to her mother.

  ‘You don’t carry seats like that! People here get paid to do that for you!’ Alegra looked to her colleagues. ‘I’m so, so sorry about my daughter, Dana, she works at a primary school.’

  The words ‘primary school’ had been half-whispered like a) Dana had never met Emily before and b) this news was as secret as a minority country’s nuclear program. Nothing changed.

  Emily turned away again.

  ‘Emily!’ Alegra hissed. ‘What are you doing now?’
r />   ‘I’m getting another chair,’ she answered. ‘I’ve brought someone with me.’

  Alegra stood then, looking around the room. ‘What do you mean you’ve brought someone?’ She tittered. ‘One of your little teacher friends?’

  ‘No,’ Emily said, putting the other chair next to hers.

  ‘Not… a man?’ Alegra laughed again, smiling at Dana. Then she stopped smiling and looked put out. ‘Please say it isn’t Jonah.’

  ‘It’s not Jonah,’ Emily answered. ‘Jonah probably wouldn’t come even if I paid him.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he would then,’ Alegra replied.

  ‘Can we make a start?’ William called down the table. ‘Bill and Ben can’t stay all night. They’ve been invited to the opening of a new all-flavours gin and cheese bar.’

  ‘Not jealous at all. Are we, William?’ Alegra said.

  ‘Not at all,’ William answered, slurping from a large glass of red wine. ‘All I can say is, your ideas for the community day… feta brie good.’

  Emily held her breath. As much as she loved cheese it was so corny. It was the corniest. And her parents and their colleagues all fell about laughing. Honestly, if the judges could see them all now, none of them would ever be allowed in a court room again.

  ‘Evening, everyone.’

  Emily looked up to see Ray at her side, a bottle of beer in one hand, her tonic water in the other. He passed her the glass.

  ‘Good God!’ Alegra exclaimed. ‘It’s that man from the front page of the Daily Mail!’

  ‘No idea,’ William replied.

  ‘Yes!’ Bill shouted, standing up and pointing a finger. ‘I recognise him. He’s a singer. You’re a singer, aren’t you?’

  Emily sighed and looked to Ray. ‘I’m so sorry about them. They aren’t usually drunk when I get here. That bit ordinarily only happens later on in the evening when they suddenly all realise they’ve actually got to do some charity work.’

  ‘Are you talking to him, Emily?’ Alegra asked. ‘Why are you talking to him?’

  ‘Mum, Dad, Bill, Ben, Damien and Dana, this is Ray. He’s my… friend… and he’s going to help with tonight’s brainstorming.’

  ‘Hey,’ Ray greeted, raising his beer bottle.

  Emily looked to her mother and watched her literally turn a Brussel sprout shade of green.

  Forty-Three

  ‘I blame myself,’ Alegra said, sucking on a cigarette outside the bar. ‘I should have insisted on booking you in to see my counsellor. This is what I was afraid of when you turned up at the chambers the other day… in that same army coat.’

  Emily shook her head and fastened another button on her jacket. ‘Mother, what are we doing out here? It’s freezing and everyone is waiting for us to get on with this evening of brainstorming.’

  ‘This isn’t like you,’ Alegra continued, as if Emily hadn’t even spoken. ‘It’s not like you at all.’

  ‘What isn’t like me?’ Emily asked.

  ‘This outlandish behaviour. This coming here, with a man… like that.’

  ‘A man like what?’ Emily said. She knew all too well her mother’s prejudices but smoking, wanting to discuss it out on the street underneath a pulsating effigy of Santa Claus, was out-there even for Alegra.

  ‘I wouldn’t even represent that man,’ Alegra said, blowing smoke out into the cold air.

  ‘You didn’t even know his name, Mother,’ Emily reminded her. ‘You don’t know anything about him!’

  ‘Piers Morgan called him a wife-beater,’ Alegra stated. ‘That is him, isn’t it? The singer everyone has been talking about but not for his singing.’

  ‘Mother, Piers Morgan once said “flaws should not be celebrated” and had just about everybody up in arms about it.’

  ‘Well,’ Alegra stated coolly. ‘He was right about that. Who doesn’t want to iron out their creases or straighten their curls? And he’s right about this too!’

  ‘You don’t know Ray, at all.’

  ‘And do you?’ Alegra yelled. ‘Because I don’t remember you telling me anything about a new lodger the last time we spoke.’ Alegra gasped then, both hands going to her face. ‘Has he got some sort of hold over you? Is that why you’ve brought him here tonight? Because you need Mummy and Daddy to help you… escape.’ She looked over her shoulder as if the entire Secret Service were queuing up behind them to make notes.

  Emily shook her head. ‘Do you remember the last time we spoke?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Emily. Of course, I remember. You turned up outside chambers in this shabby outdoorsy disaster.’ She poked her cigarette towards Emily’s coat as if she wanted to tarnish the outfit.

  ‘And the time before that?’

  ‘I telephoned you. About tonight. You insisted on having some futile discussion about pencils.’

  ‘And the time before that?’

  Emily folded her arms across her chest now and waited. This should be interesting. She knew the last time she had spoken to her mother before the invite to Clean Martini but she could almost guarantee her mother wouldn’t.

  Alegra flapped her fag-holding hand as if dismissing the subject completely. ‘This is ridiculous. We are out here so I can inhale as much nicotine as I need to get over the shock of you turning up with a near-felon. A reality TV show contestant.’ She shuddered. ‘You do know what’s next for him, don’t you? It would be Big Brother if that hadn’t ended, so it’s either Love Island or… Dancing on Ice.’

  ‘You don’t remember, do you?’ Emily said.

  ‘Emily, for God’s sake. I’m not the one embarrassing the family here.’

  ‘Embarrassing the family!’ Emily exclaimed, lungs bursting. ‘Did you say “embarrassing the family”?’

  ‘I invite you here every year because you excel at all this do-gooding. I have no idea where you get those qualities from. I can only assume that the teaching degree had something to do with it, but then again, there was that half-drowned butterfly you insisted on saving in Morocco… or was that in Algiers… and of course there was Jonah.’

  Emily shook her head, her blood boiling. ‘You don’t remember the last time you spoke to me because every conversation with me is inconsequential in your life.’

  ‘Dancing on Ice, Emily. Did you hear me? Dancing on Ice!’

  ‘Everything is about you! It’s always about you! You only phone me when you need something and that’s never very often because you rarely need anything when you own two houses, two lavish cars you don’t even use and more stocks and shares than… than Dancing on Ice has sequins.’

  ‘Emily, you’re getting hysterical,’ Alegra stated. ‘Calm yourself down.’

  ‘No!’ Emily said, with even more force and volume. ‘I won’t calm down. I don’t want to be here, but I’m here because you’re my parents and because, if I didn’t come every year, I probably wouldn’t see you at all.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ There was less exasperation in her mother’s tone now and she dropped the cigarette to the floor and crushed it out with the sole of her designer heel.

  ‘It is true.’ Emily drew in a breath, the hurt squeezing her chest. ‘I’ve stopped inviting you to things, events I care about, like the summer fête at Stretton Park and Jonah’s birthday party on the roof terrace where we had a Wimbledon theme and I covered the deck in Astroturf, and the Christmas when Simon cooked goose instead of turkey and it was really really horrible but we didn’t care because we ate six Yorkshire puddings each and a whole packet of pigs in blankets.’

  ‘Emily…’

  ‘The last time you spoke to me, was when I told you Simon had died.’ She swallowed, the memories clogging up her windpipe as she attempted to get her point across. ‘And do you remember what you said? Because I do.’

  Alegra shook her head.

  ‘You said you were sorry,’ Emily said. ‘And then you asked when the funeral would be as you had a very packed schedule coming up. And then you said was it likely to be a wearing black affair or a new-fangled weari
ng bright colours to signify joy event, because if it was the latter then you should really have your indigo-coloured dress dry-cleaned.’

  Emily really wanted to cry again, some of the same tumult she’d given into in the hallway of her home when Ray had held her close and hugged her emotion away – but she was not going to break down in front of Alegra. Weakness was, after all, the eighth deadly sin…

  She watched her mother’s mouth open, then close again. Alegra looked uncomfortable and that wasn’t an expression she usually showed. Ever.

  ‘Mum,’ Emily began, softer now. ‘I may be a grown woman doing a job you haven’t ever supported or approved of, but I’m still your daughter and now and then, it might be nice if you valued me. For me. Not just for what I can bring to a fundraising planning meeting to impress your friends when it suits you.’

  ‘You’re making me sound colder than Rosemary West.’

  ‘I’m here to see you and Dad, to catch up,’ Emily carried on. ‘As much as I’m here to help you with your project. And Ray is my guest. You need to respect him too.’

  ‘Emily, darling, I just worry that you don’t know anything about him. People in the public eye are a very different breed. They…’

  ‘I know all I need to know,’ Emily interrupted. ‘And what I know hasn’t come from the pages of a newspaper or… Twitter.’ It had come from the delicate handling of a hedgehog, mending shelves and a heating system, holding her close while she cried, warming her hands in his… ‘You need to trust my instincts.’

  ‘I’ve had too much to drink,’ Alegra admitted with a hiccup.

  ‘You always have too much to drink on this night,’ Emily replied.

  Alegra sighed. ‘Because I’m no good at it! I’m used to creating defence for the accused, not making happy places for the impoverished.’

  Emily couldn’t help but smile at her mother’s expression when she’d said the word ‘impoverished’. It was like the word had turned into an incurable disease that was going to infect her.