by Emlyn Rees
David had let her son, who couldn’t swim, take his lifejacket off.
He’d only turned his back on Paul for a moment.
For that moment, the only moment that mattered.
He’d been helping Simon untangle the landing net, but when he’d turned around, Paul had gone.
They hadn’t heard him fall in. Neither Simon nor David had heard even a splash. David had dived in straight away, groping through the water to find Paul, but the current had been too strong.
The rest: the coroner, the police, the hospital, the mortuary, all passed in a blur. The aeroplane home. Even the funeral.
And then everything slowed down. Slower than before. Each day became interminably long, black and heavy with truth. Her baby was gone. Paul was gone. Her baby boy was dead.
‘Hey there.’
Stephanie was jogged out of her thoughts by Isabelle, who was hovering in the dining room doorway, nursing a mug of hot chocolate. She was wearing matching cream silk pyjamas and an open silk robe. Her hair was brushed back and she didn’t have any make-up on, but she still looked perfect. Stephanie quickly turned away, so that Isabelle wouldn’t see her tears.
‘They’re going to be so excited,’ Isabelle said.
‘Who?’
‘Nat and Simon of course, and I hope Taylor and Elliot are too. Especially El. I’ve got him a very special surprise this year.’
Stephanie didn’t say anything. She simply didn’t have the energy to buy into Isabelle’s excitement or enthusiasm.
‘Stephanie? You know, I’m glad I’ve got you on your own . . .’
Stephanie knew what was coming, but she couldn’t stomach any sympathy. Not from Isabelle. Not from anyone.
‘Well. That’s me done. I’m off to bed,’ she said, cutting her off.
‘I really want to talk to you about –’ Isabelle said, but Stephanie was already dashing past.
‘I’ll be more useful in the morning. Honestly, Isabelle. It’s very late. Night night,’ she said, and ran up the stairs.
DAY 2
Christmas Day
Chapter 13
‘This place is a dump,’ Roddy said.
Roddy, Michael and his mum were in the public bar of the Windcheater. It was ten in the morning, but it felt like night. The snow was piled up so thick against the window that only the palest of light showed through, as if someone was holding up a candle behind cloth. Michael was sweating. The radiators were blasting out heat, but still he shivered, thinking about the tin mine, wondering if Taylor would still want to go there, and hoping that she would not.
‘Useless thing,’ Roddy said, slapping the side of the wall-mounted TV, which was hissing like a cat, picking up nothing but static.
It was Christmas Day, but it was like any other day. As with every morning after the night before, the bar felt as if it had had the life sucked out of it. There were patches of spilt red wine on the carpet. It looked like a murder scene through which a bloodied body had been dragged. The jukebox was silent. The fruit machine lights were off. It was hard to believe that only a few hours ago, the room had been full of drunk people, merrily singing carols and old Christmas pop standards.
The pub would be open again in a couple of hours, just to catch anyone who felt like briefly ducking out of their family commitments for a swift pint. It was important to squeeze as much business out of the place as possible, Roddy reckoned, while they still could.
Time was, when Michael’s dad had still been here, that Michael wouldn’t have set foot in the bar on Christmas Day. His dad had always been a sucker for Christmas and all its festive tat. He’d been a drunk, and sentimental with it.
Michael smiled now, as he remembered how it had been. They’d always left clearing up the pub till Boxing Day. They’d stayed in bed late instead, and had then opened their presents and gone out to play. Michael’s dad had taught him how to fly a kite one Christmas and had snagged it in a tree. Another year, he’d fallen flat on his arse and twisted his ankle whilst trying to show Michael how to jump a pavement kerb on his first skateboard. Michael would help his dad and mum cook a lunch visible from space in the afternoon, then they’d curl up on the sofa in front of the fire and watch repeats of the shows Michael’s dad had loved when he’d been a kid himself: The Two Ronnies and Monty Python. Or they’d settle down in front of a movie, one of the classics, like The Bridge on the River Kwai, or Gone with the Wind.
That had all stopped, a year or two before Michael’s dad had gone. Christmas had become about empty wine and whisky bottles and silent meals. It had been about Michael, his mum and his dad staring out through the windows as if they’d had bars.
And now Christmas had gone altogether. All his Dad’s old seasonal favourites – the dancing snowman, the Christmas tree ice lolly moulds, and the hairy fairy for the top of the tree – were tied up in bin bags up in the attic, along with the now moth-eaten clothes he’d never come back to pick up.
Michael had listened to the national news on the radio earlier that morning with his mother as they’d eaten their breakfast. It was official: there was a white Christmas across the UK. The usual warnings had gone out: don’t drive unless you absolutely have to; keep the kids away from canals and frozen ponds; wrap up warm and check on your elderly neighbours if you can.
A ship had gone missing off Newquay. The red and white coast guard helicopter had scoured the shores for wreckage, but nothing had been found. The whole country had practically come to a standstill. Roads were blocked and people had been stranded in their cars on the motorways all night. There’d been no mention of St John’s or Brayner, though. All the news had centred around London and Cardiff and Edinburgh and the dense populations there. It was as if the world had turned its back on Michael and his family. It was as if they’d been forgotten or had ceased to exist.
‘At least this is the last Christmas we’ll be having to do this,’ Roddy said, pushing a grey-haired mop across the red lino floor near the bar, leaving it shining like ice in his wake.
He had a hangover. He sniffed hard and made a show of clearing his throat, in protest at the guff of chemical stench thrown off as he plunged the mop head into the bucket of foaming brown water. He’d been grumbling for what seemed like an age and Michael glowered at him from the corner of the room, where he was wiping down a table with a wet cloth.
Cleaning up the pub wasn’t something Michael relished, but it wasn’t something he hated either. It was just part of the mechanics of the day, like brushing his teeth, and he hated Roddy for making such a big deal of it. Michael had grown up here. This was his home. Roddy hating it the way he did made Michael feel as if Roddy was hating a part of him too.
Fuck him, Michael thought, and fuck his rancid fucking tea shop in rancid fucking Truro. What did Roddy think? That it would be different there? That there’d be no clearing up to be done?
Michael wanted to scream at both Roddy and his mum, to tell them he wasn’t going to go with them, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to hurt his mum – and telling her what he really thought about moving to Truro would hurt her, because Roddy had convinced her that leaving Brayner behind was what she wanted to do. Everything Roddy had told her, she’d passed on to Michael as Gospel truth: that they’d have a better quality of life in Truro, and a bigger home; that Michael would soon make new friends; that they’d all have more money and would be able to go to the Caribbean on holiday next Christmas.
But Michael knew the truth. They weren’t going to Truro for any of these reasons. They were going there because that was what Roddy wanted. He was going to take the cash from the pub and buy what he hadn’t been able to afford in Truro when he lived there on his own.
‘It’s a pigsty in here,’ Roddy said.
Only because you got shitfaced last night and kept it open till gone one, Michael thought.
‘Only because nobody bothered to tidy up last night,’ he said.
‘Nobody like you,’ Roddy said.
‘Because I was in
bed. Because I’m a kid, remember?’
‘Yeah, a kid with an attitude problem.’
Michael opened his mouth to tell him to fuck off. He’d done it once before, when his mother hadn’t been there to hear, and it had led to a god-damned almighty row, which had terminated in Michael screaming at Roddy that he wasn’t his dad, and Roddy shouting back at him that at least he could thank his lucky fucking stars for that.
‘Will you two stop bickering?’ Michael’s mother intervened. She was busy behind the bar, stacking up the glass washing machine, nursing a hangover (the same as Roddy). She was wrapped up in a white towel dressing gown with brown coffee stains patterned across its sleeves. Her face was smudged with last night’s make-up. Michael had fixed her an Alka-Seltzer as soon as she’d got up, but it didn’t seem to have worked.
‘He started it,’ Michael said.
Roddy leant down by the fireplace and lit a cigarette off last night’s still-smouldering embers. His eyes were bloodshot and the bags beneath them were the colour of dough.
‘All I’m saying is that the sooner someone buys this place off us, the better.’
‘It’s not even yours to sell,’ Michael said.
Michael’s mother looked up sharply and immediately Michael wished he hadn’t spoken.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Don’t apologise to me,’ she said.
‘I’m going out to fetch some wood,’ Roddy announced.
‘No,’ Michael said. ‘Let me.’
He hurried out, before Roddy could object, angry with himself for having spoken out. It had been pointless, childish. Roddy made his mother happy, he reminded himself, the same as he did at least ten times a day. That was all that should matter. So what if the pub wasn’t Roddy’s to sell? They were selling it, anyway, and nothing Michael could say, he told himself again, would make a blind bit of difference to that.
He shoved through the heavy white fire door, which separated the public bar from the rest of the house. Red carpet replaced the linoleum on the other side and, as the door hissed shut behind him, the smell of this morning’s bacon and eggs, which he’d cooked for himself and his mum, and which she’d turned over with her fork as if they’d been covered in mould, took over from the reek of dead hedonism in the bar next door.
Christmas terminated here too. In front of the punters, Roddy had more seasonal spirits than a herd of reindeer, but only because it loosened up their wallets and made them spend their cash. In the family side of the building, neither Roddy nor Michael’s mum had made much of an effort this year.
Inside the kitchen, the only concession to December the 25th was a tiny Poinsettia in a red plastic tub at the centre of the table and a few cards parading across the top of the microwave. Michael breathed in and sighed, scrunching up his nose. There was a plug-in pine air freshener in the electric socket by the door. The sticker on its front advertised the fresh smell of a forest glade, but Michael thought it smelt more like a toilet.
There was cat food on the white tiled floor, next to the cat bowl, and ginger hairs floated on the surface of the half inch of murky water inside a plastic ice-cream tub. Michael’s mum and Roddy were always too busy keeping the public side of the building looking good for the customers to take much care of in here. Michael gave the place a once-over every evening, while they were working at the bar, but most mornings after, when he came downstairs, it was as if it had never been done. He pictured the Thorne house, the carefully prepared lunch he’d been party to yesterday, the shining cutlery and gleaming glassware, and the clean, sweet smell of the air.
He sat down on the kitchen mat beside the three-bar electric fire and started to pull on his boots.
His mother came in and stood over him, reaching down to ruffle his hair.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘everything’s going to be all right.’
He yanked his laces tight. ‘I know.’
‘It’ll be easier, once we’ve moved . . . I promise.’
Michael made a show of focusing on his laces, tying them in perfect double knots. Every time his mother talked to him about this – about her and him and Roddy, about where their lives were going next – it made him feel like a baby, as if he was about to cry. It made him want to shout at her that it just wasn’t fair.
‘I know you don’t want to leave here,’ she went on, ‘but it’s just something we’ve got to do. It’s not right for us to stay. It’s not fair on Roddy. This place is too full of memories, and none of them are his.’
Michael undid the lace he’d just fastened. He didn’t want to look up, didn’t want her to know that he was upset. How could he ever explain to her that he wanted to stay here for the exact memories that she wanted to leave? Sometimes, walking round here, it was as if his dad had never left, as if he’d just gone over to St John’s on the boat and would be back home soon. Michael still hated his dad for leaving, but he loved him enough to want him back as well.
‘Me and your dad made this place what it is,’ his mother said, ‘but that’s over now. It’s time to move on. You’ll understand when you’re older.’
Michael turned his jeans up above the tops of his boots. He’d rung his father six weeks ago and told him they were moving back to the mainland. He’d asked if he could move in with him and Carol, the young teacher his dad had left his mum for, but his dad had told him they hardly had enough room in their flat as it was, and that money was tight. He’d told Michael he’d be much better off sticking with his mum.
‘Thanks for helping Roddy,’ Michael’s mother said.
I’m not, Michael thought. I just want to get away from him.
He looked up guiltily and watched a smile light up her face. The smile broadened.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Just you. Getting older.’ She briefly cupped his chin in her hand. ‘I should have got you an electric razor for Christmas, eh?’
He stood, embarrassed, and felt himself blush. Nothing made him feel less of a man than her commenting on his appearance like that.
‘I’m making Roddy a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Do you want one?’
‘No, I’ll be fine.’
She picked up a bag of sprouts off the vegetable rack and laid it on the kitchen table.
‘After you’ve done the wood,’ she said, ‘can you sort out that chicken for me? A big one, mind. So there’s enough for tomorrow as well.’
‘Sure.’ Michael pulled on his coat.
He stepped outside and shut the door behind him. The kitchen overlooked a long rectangular yard, which sloped upwards away from the back of the pub, bordered by a high red brick wall. At the end of the yard, the wood shed and chicken hut stood side by side. His dad had built the chicken shed. Michael reckoned his mum only kept it there at all, because she knew that it would upset him if she had it ripped down. She found plucking the birds for the table a bore and used frozen chicken portions with pre-packed gravy sachets for the customers. The only reason she was cooking a fresh chicken at all today was because they’d run out of frozen last night.
It was normally grotty out here, the brickwork damp and mossy, with chicken shit spattered like punctuation marks across the cracked concrete, but now everything was pristine, as if the whole world had received a fresh coat of white paint. The snow lay inches deep and uniform on the ground, patterned by the tiny footprints of birds.
Pulling his woollen balaclava from his pocket and tugging it down on his head, rolled up like a hat, Michael took the shovel from beside the back door and set about clearing a path round the side of the pub and then up to the top of the yard.
He stood there, catching his breath, and stared out across the village. Snow lay in waves across the roofs of the nearby cottages. Looking back, he could see it slumped in drifts against the back of the pub and the yard walls. A collar of slate showed on the roof at the base of the chimney, where the heat from the fire had melted the snow overnight. Ice teeth grinned down from the gutter.
From inside the chicken shed
behind him came the inquisitive clucking of hens. He’d feed them and get them fresh water, but first he’d fetch the wood. He wheeled the barrow out from inside the wood shed and stacked it high, then began pushing it down towards the house.
A movement snared his attention and he froze. His mother and Roddy were standing there, framed by the kitchen window from their waists up, like they’d been caught in a photo. As Michael watched them kiss, he felt ashamed: for being angry with them, for hating them for wanting to build a new life for themselves.
They weren’t the problem, he suddenly understood. It was him. He was the one who no longer fitted in.
He looked away, again remembering what he’d seen at the Thorne house the day before. Again he saw Elliot turning away from Isabelle, and again he saw Isabelle’s features crumple as she started to cry and buried her face in her dressing gown.
A diamond of ice glinted on Michael’s knuckle, like a ring. He looked up at the sky and hoped that Taylor hadn’t forgotten about coming to see him later on. It was funny how much he missed her, when it was hardly twelve hours since he’d seen her last. He thought of himself in Truro, with his mother and Roddy in their new home. He was going to miss Taylor Thorne so much more then.
He kept warm by working, taking three wheelbarrow loads of logs round to the front of the pub and emptying them outside the front door. He then took them inside and stacked them neatly either side of the fire. Then he trundled the wheelbarrow back round to the shed.
That’s when he noticed the chicken. Its gnarled feet were sticking out from the ventilation gap beneath the hut. It was stone dead, and Michael picked it up as its frozen feathers snapped off in his hands like twigs.
‘Happy Christmas.’
Michael started and turned round to see Taylor. She was grinning at him, her eyes as bright and twinkling as the snow. He felt his stomach twist and realised again how much he wanted her, but then she noticed the dead bird.