This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  ‘Who gave me this?’ asked Annie, holding up a novel called Daisy Jones and the Six.

  ‘We did!’ said Paul, beaming. ‘It’s about a girl who becomes a huge rock star, and her name’s Daisy Jones, and your —’

  She cut him off. ‘Yes, my name’s Annie Jones, I get it. That’s very sweet. Thank you.’ Inside she seethed. Why would she want reminding that her career had gone nowhere? It was clearly so far from Paul’s and Brian’s minds that she might feel any sadness about this, that they thought nothing of giving her a story about someone who, if the back cover blurb was to be believed, ended up with exactly the life Annie had dreamed of. From anyone else such a gift would have seemed malicious, but she knew it was just carelessness.

  None of them except Naomi knew Annie had been to the open mike night. She hadn’t even talked to Jane about it since Christmas and family had taken over entirely for them both. And she couldn’t expect to hear from that Philip man for ages either. If she ever did. He had probably just been being polite when he took her USB.

  She looked around the room. At least the grandchildren were having a good time. Sunny and Felix had both received boogie boards from their parents. Molly was on the sofa with her legs stretched out in front of her, her feet raised on the old leather ottoman and her baby asleep along her thighs. She was gazing at Petula, and hardly seemed aware of anything else going on around her. Brian and Paul were wearing Santa hats and doing the running man to ‘Christmas in Hollis’.

  The piano called to Annie, but it was trapped: Simon was sitting on the stool and had lined all his gifts up along the closed lid: a multi-tool, a mug that said Take a Chance on Tea, a photo of Felix in a picture frame covered liberally in shells and glue, two copies of The Barefoot Investor.

  Annie took a deep breath. They’d all go to the beach soon. The day was cool, but not enough to put off the kids. She could tidy up, and sit down and play. There was a song that had been knocking on her consciousness since the night Petula was born, and she hadn’t had a moment to play with it yet.

  * * *

  Annie had forgotten that the more people involved in any outing, the longer it takes them to leave the house. Instead of the beach-goers picking up towels and walking out the door, there followed a good forty-five minutes of hunting for swimmers, hats, sunscreen, bags, thongs, water bottles, snacks, and some little plastic models of surfers on boards that Santa had kindly brought and which had disappeared into the strata of wrapping paper that blanketed the living room. Once they were almost out the door, Simon decided to lobby for Diana to join them.

  ‘It’s freezing,’ she said. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s barely even cool. How can you say it’s freezing? Berlin is freezing,’ he argued.

  ‘It feels wrong to swim at Christmas. I just don’t want to. Please, Simon. Besides, I need to stay and put the chickens in the oven.’

  ‘We’ll only go for an hour,’ wheedled Simon. ‘Come on, Di. I do all your holiday traditions. This is mine. Please? For Felix?’

  Diana sighed heavily. ‘All right, all right, I’ll go. But someone needs to take the chickens out of the fridge at half past eleven so they can come to room temperature before I cook them. They’re stuffed and ready, but they can’t go into the oven cold.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Molly said.

  ‘Don’t uncover them — you must leave the cling wrap on them. Just take them straight out of the fridge and put them here on the counter, where there’s no direct sun.’

  Molly bristled. ‘I can take a chicken out of a fridge, Diana. I’m not a moron.’

  Diana smiled apologetically. ‘I know you aren’t.’ She looked wistfully at Petula, lying with her face on Molly’s shoulder. ‘I miss that. You should treasure this time, Molly. It all gets harder after this. Now. Where are my sunglasses?’

  * * *

  When they had gone, Molly changed Petula’s nappy, fed her again, and put her back down for another nap. The eat-change-sleep cycle was short and relentless.

  Her mother was in the living room, playing the piano. It was so peaceful with everyone out. It felt like the first time in days she’d been able to let her breath out. All she wanted to do was sleep.

  At eleven thirty she took the two baking trays of chicken out of the fridge and placed them, as instructed, on the counter, exactly where Diana had shown her. She checked the cling wrap was covering the whole birds completely — it wasn’t a hot day but there were still flies around, and eating flyblown chicken was no one’s idea of a good Christmas dinner. That done, she went to the sunroom and lay down on the bed.

  Almost the moment she closed her eyes she heard the tell-tale squeaks from the bassinet. No. Just half an hour: she sent a silent prayer to her child. Just give me half an hour. But the grizzling gained momentum. Molly lay still, pretending she was back in hospital and the cries were coming from someone else’s baby.

  Her door opened and Annie tiptoed in. Molly kept her eyes closed, not wanting to interact. Annie gently picked up Petula and crept back out, closing the door quietly behind her.

  It all gets harder after this. That’s what Diana had said. It was what Molly had feared. This was manageable, with all the help and the immobile baby whom she could protect. But the future was a chasm of darkness, filled with perils she knew about and perils yet to even be invented. Her poor daughter.

  Molly began to weep.

  * * *

  Petula was a baby who liked to be vertical. She reminded Annie of the moo box toy the kids’d had when they were little: a small can that mooed like a cow when it was tilted to its side. Petula too was quiet when she was upright. To that end, Annie propped her up on her shoulder, and danced through the house with her. The screaming eased off to a grizzle.

  She sat back down on the piano stool and with her one free hand, played a few chords. They were deep and resonant, and Petula stopped crying altogether, stunned into silence. Annie continued, puzzling out as best she could the ideas that had been building up. She hummed a melody to the baby, whose soft puffs of breath tickled her cheek.

  This wasn’t something she’d attempted with her babies. She hadn’t thought she could manage it. Maybe she should have, she thought now. Would it have worked? Who could say? What if it had been unnecessary to stop her music? But it was too late for that sort of thinking. All we ever have is the future. With her left hand, she picked up her pencil and awkwardly jotted those words down on her little pad of lyrics.

  * * *

  The beach party arrived back at half past twelve, around forty minutes after Richard V had wandered into the empty kitchen, jumped up onto the counter and chewed through the plastic wrap covering the two trays of chicken. It was an aggressive assault. One chicken had been dragged under the table and comprehensively mauled. The other was just nibbled, but a small crowd of flies crawled on each.

  Diana made the discovery and her fury echoed through the house. ‘Du verdammte Höllenkatze!’ The culprit, who appeared to have no understanding of either right and wrong or German, streaked past her down the hall and out the front door, leaving greasy pawprints in his wake. Everyone followed the trail of destruction to the kitchen.

  ‘That cat!’ Diana said, her teeth clenched violently. ‘He has ruined Christmas dinner. Now we have nothing!’ Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  Simon laughed. ‘Oh my god, that fucking cat. Never mind, Di, it’ll be all right.’

  She spun around, holding a tray of chewed chicken, her eyes wide with rage. ‘It will be all right? You are laughing? That is your answer to this? After everything, Simon? You still do not care. You do not care about anything if I care about it.’

  ‘Calm down, Di,’ he said, as if reading aloud from The Everyman’s Guide to Wrong Moves.

  ‘I won’t calm down! I am only trying to celebrate Christmas, which you place no value on, and now this happens and it is clear to me that you do not even care.’

  ‘The side dishes are fine, we’ll just have those.’

  ‘They a
re side dishes. They go on the side. On the side of what, Simon? On the side of what?’

  Brian and Paul fled the kitchen and joined Molly, Jack and Annie, who all stood frozen in the living room, as if playing a game of musical statues where they could only move when a German woman was hurling obscenities at a cat or her husband.

  They heard someone close the kitchen door, and the argument resumed, muffled now.

  ‘Are the chickens salvageable?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ declared Brian. ‘We need a plan B.’

  ‘Nothing will be open,’ said Jack, ‘it’s Christmas Day.’

  ‘KFC,’ said Paul triumphantly. ‘It’s always open. I’ll bet it’s open today. And it’s got chicken. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much: I’ve just saved Christmas!’

  ‘It’ll have to do,’ said Annie, grudgingly. ‘Diana won’t be happy.’

  ‘I think there’s more than chicken making Diana unhappy,’ said Molly.

  Chapter 26

  The Christmas table was beautiful. By four o’clock, there was red cabbage cooked in butter with onions and apples and simmering resentment, bread dumplings and warm potato salad, and a silver platter was ready to be piled high with an assortment of regular and hot and spicy fried chicken, currently staying warm in its striped red and white boxes in a low oven. Several bottles of wine had been decanted into Granny and Pa’s Waterford crystal.

  It was still overcast outside, so Annie located a box of creamy tapered candles for the old silver candlesticks, and once she had lit them the room twinkled. It wasn’t cool enough for a fire, but other than that, she thought, the day was giving a passable impression of a Northern Hemisphere Christmas. She hoped it would mollify Diana, who was upstairs in her room with the door closed.

  The doorbell rang and Sunny and Felix raced to open it. Annie heard Naomi follow them and greet the guests. It sounded like Heather had joined her former husband and son. Brave, thought Annie.

  ‘Come through, come through,’ said Naomi, leading them into the living room, where Brian, Jack, Simon and Molly were sitting. Patrick held his father protectively by the elbow. Ray was unsteady on his feet, and very thin. His suit hung off him like a shroud. Heather wore a voluminous red dress with a handkerchief hem, a huge amount of red lipstick and a large fake rose pinned in her hair. Annie didn’t remember her dressing so flamboyantly. She looked like an aging Kate Bush groupie. Which she probably was, Annie realised.

  Naomi made the introductions. ‘I can’t remember who’s met who, so I’ll go round. Ray, Patrick, Heather: this is my brother, Simon, my sister, Molly, and her husband, Jack, and their daughter, Petula — Patrick, you’ll remember Petula.’

  Patrick gave an awkward nod to Molly and she smiled back uncomfortably. Although Jack had delivered a slab of beer and a case of red wine to Patrick’s verandah by way of thanking him for delivering the baby, Molly hadn’t seen him since she was wheeled out of the house that night, the baby in her arms.

  Jack waved from his seat, and Simon stood to shake hands.

  Naomi continued as her father came in, carrying a tray of Champagne glasses. ‘This is my father, Paul, and this is his partner, Brian. And my mum, Annie.’

  Annie dragged her eyes away from Heather’s get-up and shook Patrick’s hand. As she did, she looked into his eyes and tried to say hello, but only a dry cough came out. A roaring filled her ears. This man was her father.

  Her heart pounded and she tried to take a deep breath. He was not her father. Of course he wasn’t her father. Her father was ash now. He was in powdered form in an urn on the mantelpiece in the dining room, overlooking the festive table.

  Her eyes flicked to Paul. He had seen it too, she could tell. His mouth hung open like a cartoon character’s. The Champagne glasses rattled on the tray he held. Annie let go of Patrick’s hand and reached out to steady the tray. Once she had broken eye contact with Patrick her voice returned, overbright. ‘Lovely to meet you. Whoops, Paul, hang onto those! I’ll get the Champagne. Is Champagne good for everyone? Molly, do you want a tiny one, or something soft? Heather, Champagne?’

  ‘Champagne’d be gorgeous, darling.’ Heather had settled herself into an armchair, while Molly slid over on the sofa to create a space for Ray.

  Annie went back to the kitchen. She opened the fridge and stared blankly in.

  Behind her, Paul whispered, ‘Holy shit. Who was that? Why does he . . . ?’

  Annie didn’t want to say it, but not saying it wouldn’t make any difference. There was only one way a forty-ish-year-old version of her father could be standing in the living room with Ray and Heather. The knowledge her father had another child flash-flooded her brain and body, washing away everything she thought she knew. Suddenly she felt very tired. She rubbed her face with both hands, digging her knuckles into her closed eyes. The younger man’s face remained.

  ‘Why does he look exactly like . . . ?’ Paul didn’t finish this question either.

  Annie turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised. ‘Why do you think?’

  Paul stared at her. ‘No. Your dad? And Heather? No. Did you know?’

  Annie searched her memory for something she’d missed, all those years back, when Heather was her friend.

  There must have been something. Her father must have looked at Heather, and Annie must have seen it. He had to have looked at her in a way your father doesn’t normally look at the neighbour’s wife. Perhaps he did, and stupid adolescent Annie was too naive, too caught up with her own burgeoning romance with Paul, too busy trying to disguise her innocence in her songwriting, to recognise it. Or maybe it didn’t start until after Annie had left for London. What had it been between them? A full-blown, years-long affair? One fuck round the back of the garage?

  Was there any way she might have been mistaken? No. The cleft in Patrick’s chin. The angle of his cheekbones. It was all her father. His eyes. God, even his hand when she’d shaken it. She wished with every part of her for a twinge of doubt, but there was none.

  It made sense now: Heather leaving, taking the baby, never to be seen again. Ray and her father’s feud. Although that part didn’t make complete sense. Her father was awful to Ray for forty years. Why? Did he want Heather to have left Ray for him? She did leave Ray; she went away. Was Robert angry about that?

  Annie realised she had been staring at a jar of mayonnaise for several minutes. ‘No.’ She finally answered Paul’s question. ‘I didn’t know. I guess Dad wasn’t exactly who we thought he was. You hear about these things, don’t you? I didn’t think it would ever be us. I didn’t think we were that interesting.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Paul picked up a tea towel and reached for the spatula.

  ‘You didn’t know. It was probably after we left.’

  ‘I know, but could it have started before we went? Did we not see something?’

  ‘That’s what I’m wondering. I can’t think of anything. I don’t remember her ever even being around Dad, really. She and Ray didn’t socialise much with my parents. She hung out with me, and that was sort of it. Mum tried to be her friend first, but Heather was so much closer to my age. Dad was usually at work.’

  ‘Do you think he knows?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The guy. The son. What’s his name?’

  ‘Patrick,’ Annie said, and thought back to her mother’s last years. ‘My mum used to talk about him sometimes, when she was forgetting things, near the end. She said odd things. She thought Patrick and Heather were dead. She was convinced Ray had killed them, because they disappeared and were never heard from again. Well, not by Mum. I suppose this is good news then, that they’re not buried under Ray’s back patio.’

  ‘There’s a bright side,’ said Paul. ‘No one’s going to make a chart-topping podcast about them and drive down the value of your house. Do you think Patrick knows he’s your dad’s child?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Maybe. Could be why he’s back. Maybe he wants his inheritance.’ She was joking, but it occ
urred to her that, in fact, that might well be why he was back.

  ‘Would he be entitled to anything?’

  Annie was suddenly irritated. ‘I don’t know, Paul. I’m not a lawyer. How would I know that?’ There it was again: Paul expecting her to know things for him. Or to find out things if she didn’t know. It had a name now, this constant effort expected of women to keep everything running, to keep all the plates spinning: the mental load. Jane had sent her a cartoon about it. It had shocked her to hear it named. Then she’d been angry that it had taken so long for it to be identified. Of course it had taken that long, though — the people who would benefit from it being identified were all too busy letting the hems down on school uniforms and finding library books and organising the car service and filling up party bags with plastic whistles.

  Paul’s eyes widened. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean anything. You just know lots of things. I thought you might know that.’

  ‘I do know lots of things. Lots of very useless things I wish I didn’t know. I know your shirt size and your shoe size, even though I’m not your mother and never have been. I haven’t even been your wife for nearly two decades. I know bloody Brian’s shoe size. I know all our kids’ birth weights. I know our grandchildren’s birth weights. I know my parents’ medications, still, and their dosages, even though they are dead.’ She clenched her fists. ‘I tried to convince my father to give this house straight to our kids for lots of reasons, but one was so that I would not have to think about it any more. I don’t want to think about which bits are falling off and need sticking back on. I don’t want to have to remember to shut fifty-six windows when it rains, and keep track of which ones need towels stuffed around the edges because they leak. I want to empty out some of the damn clutter in my head. I was hoping to make some space for other things. What I really do not need is this sort of complication in my life.’ She gestured angrily towards the living room.

  Paul sat down at the table and looked at his hands. ‘No, I get that. I’ll do some research. Or should we talk to him, Patrick, to see what he knows? He may not know about your dad. There might not be a problem.’