by Fiona Harper
Unfortunately, the fight in the back seat erupted again at that moment and a deft kick in the back of her seat from Jake caused her to pitch forward. Her foot slipped off the clutch as she was crossing the roundabout and the car growled then stalled as it straddled the little white hump.
The car to her right slammed on its brakes and the driver leaned on his horn. Juliet’s heart pounded and her arms shook. The man was using his hands in the most creative of ways and she could lip-read enough of his tirade to know he thought she was a middle-class bitch who shouldn’t be allowed to operate a vehicle.
A stalled car in the middle of the junction meant that traffic backed up in all four directions. Horns blared. Drivers swore. All four of Juliet’s children started to scream and shout at each other, letting each other know, without holding back on the toilet-related insults, just whose fault it was.
Juliet found she couldn’t move. She was just frozen, fingers clenched around the steering wheel. She couldn’t even remember which pedal to press or what to do next to get the car started again. But the noise—the engines, the horns, the bickering children—was burrowing into her skull in a way she just couldn’t bear.
‘Will you just shut up!’ she bellowed at the top of her lungs, surprising herself with the volume, hearing the croak as her voice broke when she reached maximum decibels.
Outside the car the commotion continued, but inside everything went still and quiet. Violet, Polly, Josh and Jake stared at their mother open-mouthed.
She could feel the echo of her words pulsing around inside her head and it scared her slightly. She didn’t shout like that. Ever. And she certainly didn’t lose her temper with her children, not to this degree, anyway. Of course, she disciplined—she’d read countless books on how to do it properly—but she never just screamed at the kids. Right from when they were babies she’d always feared the kind of woman who did that was also the kind of woman who dragged toddlers down the street with their arms half out of their sockets or walloped them in the middle of supermarkets.
She’d had a feeling that things were a little off-kilter for weeks now, but she’d just put it down to the idea of Christmas looming ahead of her. As much as she loved the season, it would now be forever associated with the departure of the man she’d planned to spend her life with. If your husband choosing Boxing Day to announce your marriage was over didn’t leave a stain on a celebration, then she didn’t know what did.
Still, Juliet was good with stains, knew all the tricks and tips to get them to vanish. With the right amount of determination, you’d hardly ever know they’d been there once she’d finished with them. This one would be no different. She’d just have to try harder.
She became aware of quiet breathing beside her and in the back of the car. Silence verging on the miraculous. For the first time in years all four kids had shut up at the same time. She needed to reward them for that, didn’t she? Positive reinforcement.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, and if she’d been able to feel anything in the numbness of the after-shock of her outburst, she’d have been pleased at how calm and rational she sounded.
‘Mum...?’ a shaky voice said from beside her. ‘Are you okay?’
Juliet took some air in and held it. There was nothing left now. Not the dizzying frustration, not the clawing sense of racing towards a goal that got ever further away. Not even the fear that Violet would turn out to be exactly like Gemma and push her away for ever. Just nothing. It was wonderful.
‘Yes,’ she said, letting the breath out again. ‘Everything’s fine.’
The ability to not only think but also drive returned, so she started the engine, yanked the car into gear and without making eye contact with any of the drivers giving her withering looks she carried on her journey to the swimming pool.
CHAPTER THREE
THE KIDS WERE STILL a bit subdued over tea that evening, but once they’d all tidied their plates away and headed off in their individual directions the sounds of normality began to creep back into Juliet’s household—the stomp of Violet’s feet on the stairs, an argument breaking out on the landing, the tinny cacophony of a cartoon show somewhere on a television...
‘Your dad’s going to be here at seven thirty,’ Juliet yelled up the stairs. ‘Make sure you have your stuff together by then.’
And, miraculously, they did. By the time Greg rang the doorbell four overnight bags were lined up in the hall and four children were in various stages of getting their winter coats on.
Greg looked tense when she opened the door. ‘Are they ready?’
Juliet nodded. It was odd, her standing here and him standing there. She hadn’t quite got over the shock of it each time he arrived to pick up the kids for his allotted weekend. She still wasn’t really sure what had gone wrong between them. They’d thought themselves the perfect couple, and this their perfect house, and then their four perfect children had come along and they’d been so happy... But now she could see how smug they’d been in the middle of all that perfection, how complacent.
She hadn’t seen it coming. Not in the slightest.
It was as if on her rigidly maintained To Do list she’d forgotten to reserve a tick box for ‘prepare for the disintegrating of your life and a painful divorce’. How stupid of her. She was never normally that disorganised.
‘Can I open the car, Dad?’ Josh said, pushing past Juliet’s legs and reaching for the key in his father’s hand.
‘No, I want to!’ Jake said, trying to nudge his brother out of the way.
Greg handed the key over to Josh. ‘Josh can open the car up now and you can lock it when we get there,’ he told Jake. Both boys ran off in the direction of the drive. At least Violet and Polly stopped to give their mother a kiss on the cheek before they went out the door.
She ran after them, hugged them to her, one under each arm, and gave them a proper kiss. ‘Love you,’ she said, squeezing them, ‘and I’m sorry about earlier on.’
Violet shrugged.
Polly gave her an unblinking stare. ‘You know, as shock tactics go, it was really rather good.’
Juliet couldn’t help but smile. She ran after the boys and kissed them as she helped strap them into their booster seats in the back of Greg’s car.
When the doors were closed, the kids effectively sound-proofed from their conversation, Greg looked at her across the top of the car.
‘You look tired, Juliet,’ he said as he knocked on the window and signalled for Josh to return his keys. ‘Maybe you should try to chill out a little instead of doing the whole Christmas rigmarole this year?’
The smile immediately dropped from Juliet’s face. Oh, he sounded so polite and reasonable. So polite and reasonable she wanted to knock his block off. He still thought he had a say about how she behaved, or could comment on how she looked? Seriously? He’d given up that right when he’d moved out and moved on.
And there was nothing wrong with wanting to make Christmas a happy time, when nothing went wrong and everything was perfect. Greg’s surprise exit had put a blight on the festivities two years ago and last Christmas had been their first one living apart, the poor kids ferried from pillar to post and feeling very unsettled, so Juliet was determined this year should be extra special, especially as their father was being totally selfish about the whole thing.
‘Goodbye, Greg,’ she said through teeth so tightly clenched her jaw was starting to hurt, and then she bent and smiled brightly and waved to their children in the car. They didn’t need to know their mother and father were arguing again.
She kept it up as he shook his head and climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled away, but the effort of keeping that smile in place as they pulled out of the drive started to make her head pound. Once the Mercedes had rounded the hedge and joined the traffic on the road outside, she let it all out in a most colourful and un
ladylike word, the sort of thing she’d trained herself out of saying when the kids had been small, and then she hugged her arms around her to stave off the cold and marched back into her empty house in her slippers.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so galling if Greg hadn’t found it so easy to move on. They’d split, he’d grieved and now he had a new girlfriend. Easy as that. Sometimes Juliet wished she could find someone else, just so she could show him she wasn’t lagging behind, that he had no reason to pity her.
As she stalked into the kitchen and reached inside the fridge for a bottle of Pinot Grigio, she spotted her phone lying innocent and silent on the kitchen counter and her thoughts turned from one self-absorbed family member to another.
She kept eyeing her mobile while she emptied a generous amount of wine into a wine glass and took a large slug. And then she flexed her texting fingers.
* * *
WHEN GEMMA EVENTUALLY FELL into bed she didn’t even bother to put her pyjamas on. She just stripped down to her T-shirt and crawled under the covers. She picked her phone up off the bedside table and squinted at it. Two twenty-five. She had to be up in—what? —three hours? It was positively inhuman.
She flumped back heavily onto the soft down pillows and stared at the ceiling as tiredness rolled over her, but instead of sinking beneath those glorious waves, she was tossed and turned on them, feeling the pull of gravity on her eyelids but not quite able to surrender to unconsciousness.
Grunting, she reached for her phone and swiped the screen to wake it up. As usual, this was the only time she’d had all day to check her messages. The little badge on the app told her there were five waiting. It wouldn’t take a genius to guess who at least one of them was from. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she stared at the screen, promising a reprieve, but then, rather annoyingly, they refocused themselves again.
It had been the day from hell. Toby Thornton had had one of his legendary meltdowns and Gemma hadn’t even had the time to eat, let alone sit down in the last twenty-four hours. It was her job to sort things out again, to charm their star into setting foot on set again, and it was taking every last ounce of her resources to make that happen. Millions of dollars were at stake. She didn’t have time to indulge Juliet’s petty moans about the right kind of ivy or whether they should have a red or gold theme for the Christmas table settings.
She couldn’t deal with her sister now. She needed a bit of down time first, so she decided to check Facebook instead.
Cute cats who couldn’t spell... Sick-making chain-posts about how wonderful women friends were... Her cousin Shelley’s dog dressed in a party hat... Yada, yada, yada.
But then Gemma stopped scrolling and blinked. Holding her breath, she went back up and had a proper look at the photo in her timeline.
It was Michael. Damn, he looked good. Even though it had been seven months since they’d split, she still felt a little jolt go through her.
He’d look even better if he wasn’t wrapped around some trollop with glossy brown hair and a wide smile. Well, not wrapped around wrapped around. He was hugging her from the back, his arms draped over her shoulders like he was a preppy cardigan. Their cheeks were pressed together and they were laughing at the camera.
Cow.
Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she tapped his profile picture to visit his timeline. Big mistake. If she’d thought she’d felt terrible when she’d climbed into bed, she felt even worse now his status had smugly morphed from ‘in a relationship with Allie Cameron’ to ‘engaged to Allie Cameron’.
She felt sick. Her thumb was shaky on the home button as she hid the picture and closed the app without looking at it again. Suddenly she wasn’t sleepy in the least. Michael had been different from all the others. Perfect, she’d thought. He was supposed to have been the one that lasted.
Ugh. Well, she might as well get all the crap over with at once...
Without waiting to talk herself out of it, she checked her messages. As predicted, there was one from Juliet.
Gemma! Will you PLEASE reply to my texts! I know you don’t realise it, but you’re being very selfish. I need to talk to you. SOON. Call me! J x
She stared at her phone, unable to produce a noise from her open mouth. Who did Juliet think she was? Honestly! It wasn’t as if she was just lounging around doing nothing all day. There was a reason she hadn’t had time to text back. It was called having a job, having a life. Just because Juliet didn’t have one and decided to cram her days full with fussy little craft activities and gourmet cooking, it didn’t mean she could pass judgement on anyone who didn’t want to do the same.
But that was typical Juliet. If you weren’t doing things her way, you were doing them wrong. And it had always been like that, no matter how hard Gemma had tried.
No wonder the people she worked with felt more like family than her own sister did. Not the actors, of course. They were a law unto themselves. But the rest of the crew. For a few months at a time they’d live together, eat together, share everything. It felt more like home than sitting on Juliet’s pristine sofa trying not to drop biscuit crumbs. At least film people knew how to work as a team, and they needed and respected her contribution.
She lay still and stared at the ceiling. Why? Why was she putting herself through this? And the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if spending Christmas with her sister was a good idea after all. Goodwill to all mankind? Hah! The way she was feeling right now, Juliet might end Christmas night in a body bag.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS SO QUIET in the house that Juliet was tempted to slump into an armchair with a bottle of wine and not get up again. The only thing that stopped her was a good, hard look at the kitchen clock. It was only ten past three on Saturday afternoon. She’d resisted the urge to do that kind of thing after Greg had left and she certainly wasn’t going to do it now. Besides, she had too much to do. The clotted cream fudge the kids were giving out as teacher presents this year wouldn’t make itself.
She was just measuring out the golden syrup when she became aware of a dull electronic hum in a nearby garden. She listened to its comforting droning while she boiled the mixture, then whisked it until it began to crystallise, but as she poured it into the pan to cool she frowned.
The mower had started off as a muffled hum, but now it sounded as if it was much closer, almost as if it was right outside her kitchen window. She walked over to the other side of the room, wiping her hands on her apron, to look out over her back garden.
The next second she was running outside, wooden spoon still in her hand.
‘Will! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted.
Her next-door neighbour just looked up then kept walking the mower along her lawn. ‘I think I’m cutting your grass,’ he said, totally deadpan.
Juliet’s mouth opened and closed. She put her hands on her hips and frowned. Eventually she said, ‘I was going to get around to that myself, you know.’
‘Do you want me to stop?’ he yelled over the noise of the engine.
She frowned even harder. She knew he would if she asked him to, but the thought of having to add one more job to her schedule made her shoulders sag. He was almost two-thirds of the way through now, anyway. It would be silly to ask him to stop, but it didn’t sit comfortably with her to let him do it for nothing, so she went back inside and returned a few minutes later with two brightly patterned bone-china mugs of tea and held one aloft. He nodded but didn’t come and collect it until he’d dealt with the extra tough grass round the bottom of her lone apple tree.
She sipped her tea and watched him over the rim of her mug as he switched the mower off and jogged lightly up her long, thin garden to join her. She blushed as he approached.
She’d always considered him a nice-looking man. He was tall and sporty looking, with chestnut-brown hair and eyes that sh
e thought of as warm, even though she couldn’t remember the precise colour. He was younger than her by a couple of years, but she never got the feeling he was taking pity on the middle-aged woman next door. Besides, she didn’t look too bad for a woman who’d just hit forty. She took good care of herself, dressed nicely.
‘Thanks,’ Will said as he took the mug from her and gave her one of his rare but rather captivating smiles.
They both stood and looked at Juliet’s freshly mown garden. ‘Actually, it’s me that needs to thank you. I’ve been meaning to do that for weeks.’
He shrugged. ‘I was doing my garden anyway...’
‘I know. I could hear you while I was in the kitchen making fudge for the kids’ teacher presents. It just took me a while to work out the rumble of the mower had moved closer and was in my garden instead of yours.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘Fudge? That sounds very labour-intensive.’
She sighed and shook her head. ‘I’ve always done something home-made. It started off when Violet was little and Greg was just starting the business. It was the cheap option back then, and somehow it’s just become a tradition.’
His eyelids lowered a little, as if he was studying her. Juliet resisted the urge to fidget. It was always so difficult to tell what Will was thinking.
‘Traditions like that aren’t carved in stone, you know. You can change them any time you want. Wouldn’t it be quicker to just run down to the supermarket and pick up a bottle?’
‘I suppose so...but the teachers get so much wine and chocolate this time of year, I just wanted to give them something special.’ Her expression softened and her lips curved. ‘And I don’t want to be accused of contributing to the alcoholism of primary school teachers...’
‘But contributing to their obesity is okay?’
‘Shut up,’ she said, and laughed softly.
He turned to study the garden as he drank his tea. She’d thought, when they first met, that maybe there was a little flicker of something between them. She’d quickly eradicated it, of course, since she’d still been married to Greg and Will had been tied up with a serious girlfriend. And then after Greg had left she just hadn’t been in any shape to think about men at all—unless abject hatred was involved. She looked across at him, frowning as he stared at a patch of clumpy grass near the greenhouse, and wondered if she was going to have to tell him not to get the strimmer out, but then he turned to her and spoke first.