by Fiona Harper
He was a tall man in his fifties, with thick brown hair and a wide bright smile. For some reason she could imagine him as a dashing airline pilot when he was younger, even though Juliet had told her he’d run a sewage company. He had the right charm and swagger to be flying jets, and the air of quiet superiority that went with it.
Gemma gave him a hug as he stepped inside, even though she still wasn’t sure when, or if, she’d met him before. He wasn’t really her uncle, but the widower of her father’s sister. However, when his hand slid down her back just a little too far and crested the curve of her buttock, she had a sudden flash of memory.
Oh, he was that Uncle Tony. She smiled thinly at him and untangled herself from his grasp. Now she understood why the rest of the family steered clear. She had no idea why Juliet had taken pity on him.
His girlfriend was a strange creature. She was a thin woman with a beakish nose and dyed black hair that was far too severe for both her colouring and her age. From the neck up, she looked like an unhappy vicar’s wife—pinched, sombre and slightly disapproving—but from the neck down she dressed like a hooker. The leopard-print dress she wore was unforgiving in its tightness, and the skirt so short, Gemma was sure she was going to have to keep telling the boys off for whispering ‘I see London...’ to each other and giggling.
‘Lovely to meet you, Wanda,’ she said. She didn’t hug. For some reason she didn’t think Wanda was much of a hugger. Wanda just nodded and followed Tony inside. Gemma took their coats and herded them into the living room, where the kids had been tasked with entertaining them.
She checked the clock. Juliet had planned to serve lunch at one thirty, so there was just over an hour to go. The chickens were cooking nicely now—thanks to Juliet’s massive Aga—and the potatoes were about to go in.
She stood up and sighed. She’d worked like a dog for the last twenty-four hours, but she’d finally got there. It wouldn’t be the fanciest Christmas dinner she’d ever had, but it wouldn’t be the worst either. She hoped Juliet would be proud of her. She was feeling proud of herself.
She called Polly and told her she was in charge of crisps and nuts, a task which her niece immediately rose to, and after setting her off with bowls full of tortilla chips and pretzels, Gemma told her to keep them topped up and to ask Tony and Wanda what they’d both like to drink.
Polly hadn’t yet returned when the doorbell rang again. Gemma frowned. Who on earth was that? It was a bit early for Will to be bringing Mrs Waterman, and he was always so punctual. She walked to the front door, wiping her hands on a tea towel and frowning.
She opened the door to find three people standing on the doorstep. Mrs Waterman and two young women she didn’t recognise. Will was standing behind them.
‘Merry Christmas!’ Doris Waterman said loudly and beamed at her. ‘This is Birgit, she’s from Germany, and this is Trine, from Denmark.’
Gemma’s mouth dropped open. ‘But I thought I explained! We had a bit of a disaster, and there’s no way I can manage Christmas dinner for so many people.’
‘You did explain,’ Doris said, still smiling. ‘You said you couldn’t manage; you didn’t say anything about us managing together.’
It was then Gemma noticed all three of them were carrying covered dishes and Tupperware containers. She swept past Gemma and headed to the kitchen, Birgit and Trine in her wake. Will stepped inside behind them. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘She swore me to secrecy.’
Gemma blinked, then closed the door and ran after them. By the time she reached the kitchen the three women were unloading multiple dishes onto the kitchen table.
‘But why...? How...?’ Gemma stuttered.
Doris just handed her a platter full of sausage rolls and a tub of brandy butter. ‘Your sister has done plenty for us, hasn’t she, girls?’ She looked over her shoulder at Trine and Birgit and they both nodded emphatically.
‘She talked to us when we didn’t know anyone and were feeling homesick,’ Trine said.
‘And she asked us over for tea and sometimes Sunday lunch,’ Birgit added.
‘That girl deserved a holiday, and the least we could do is take care of her family for her while she is away,’ Doris added, and handed her a bag of vegetables. ‘I have a gentleman friend who likes to garden,’ she explained.
Besides that, Doris had brought a honey-glazed ham, and a proper home-made Christmas pudding, which smelled five times better than Gemma’s sorry-looking shop-bought one. Birgit had brought stollen and Trine contributed braised red cabbage and a rich-looking rice pudding with warm cherry sauce. Traditional Danish fare, she promised.
Even Uncle Tony came up trumps, disappearing off to his car and returning with six bottles of champagne. They cracked a couple open and poured everyone a glass—except the children, who had sparkling apple juice—and then they toasted and wished each other a Merry Christmas.
Gemma looked around the room, and all the happy smiling faces, some of which belonged to people she didn’t even know. It had been a mad week, and since Christmas dinner wasn’t yet on the table, she was sure more madness was to come, but she had to admit that this moment was far better than spending Christmas on her own, no matter how hot and sunny the location.
She’d missed this, a sense of family, of connection, and the sad thing was she’d been so busy running away from that same family that she hadn’t even realised it.
As she sipped champagne, she caught Will’s eye. She’d thought of him as Juliet’s stand-in while she was away, there to check up on her, judge her, and he’d been a first-hand observer to most of her cock-ups and disasters over the last week, but here he was raising his glass to her. She felt another flush, deep down inside, one that had nothing to do with warm and fuzzy Christmas feelings. It wasn’t good news.
She swallowed her mouthful of champagne. ‘Okay,’ she said, briskly. ‘Time to get back to the kitchen.’ And she disappeared back there, taking her glass with her.
If she cooked Juliet’s Christmas lunch in Juliet’s kitchen, laying it all out on Juliet’s best dishes, she might be able to lose herself in the busyness and forget about the way Juliet’s man was starting to make her feel.
* * *
MARCO FOUND JULIET ON the beach, staring out to sea. She turned as she heard him coming up behind her and smiled at him.
He smiled back. ‘Buon Natale.’
‘Merry Christmas,’ she said softly, and because he was standing there, looking very kissable, she kissed him.
He slid his hands down her sides and around her back, pulling her to him. ‘It is a very good Christmas now...’ he whispered, then he kissed her again before taking her hand and leading her up the wooden steps to his villa. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but when I saw you walking on the beach, I ordered some breakfast.’
She smiled and shook her head.
And as they sat and ate from a platter of fresh fruit, dolloped with creamy yogurt and finished off with crumbly melt-in-the-mouth croissants that were as buttery and light as any she’d ever had in a Paris cafe, they talked a little, but mostly they ate in companionable silence. When Juliet looked up after finishing her pastry, she found Marco looking at her.
‘What?’ she said, brushing non-existent croissant crumbs from her lips.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing... Just that you seem different today.’
‘I feel different today,’ she said, frowning slightly. ‘Like this is the real me. Not the person I was trying to be, but the one that was here all along.’
His brow crumpled slightly. ‘I’m not sure I understand...’
She shrugged. ‘Neither do I.’ She laughed, and she kept laughing, because it felt good, because she wanted to.
Marco just shook his head and smiled. ‘As I have said before, you are an intriguing woman.’
She poured herself some more guava juice. ‘I think
that’s what we call “eccentric” where I come from.’ But she could live with eccentric. It was one step closer to ‘free-spirited and impulsive’ than ‘neurotic and controlling’, so she was making progress.
‘What do you want to do today?’ he asked her.
She looked at him and smiled, very tempted to just say you, but she discovered she wasn’t quite that brave yet. Besides, did she really need to rush?
She turned to look at the bright blue sky beyond the edge of Marco’s terrace. ‘I want to get on a boat and just sail,’ she told him. ‘I want to eat fish caught fresh from the ocean and I don’t want to see anything resembling a turkey or a roast potato or a stuffing ball.’
Marco, as always, was ready to go with the adventure of the moment. He pushed back from the table and stood up. ‘Then let’s go.’
And that’s what they spent the day doing. Pelican’s Reach had boats for hire and Marco’s lakeside upbringing meant he knew how to skipper anything with a sail on it. They snorkelled and swam in little coves and bays along the way then dropped anchor off a deserted beach and used the inflatable dinghy to reach the shore. Christmas lunch was eaten under a palm tree: salads and bread they’d picked up from the hotel before they’d left, fresh fish that they roasted themselves on a fire that Marco built.
While they’d been feasting, an old man had appeared, almost out of nowhere, selling every kind of tropical fruit imaginable. He’d reminded Juliet of a Caribbean Father Christmas, with his white beard and his jolly smile, but instead of a red suit he wore shorts and a vest and instead of a snowy sleigh he had a boat painted in yellow and red and green. He sold them a coconut and hacked the top off with a machete, and Juliet and Marco drank the water and scooped out the still soft flesh with a spoon. In comparison, the coconuts in the supermarkets back home seemed dry and wizened. But when she’d looked up to wave goodbye, the man and his boat had gone.
They spent the hottest part of the afternoon in the shaded area at the back of the boat, sipping wine that had been kept cool by tying a rope around the neck of the bottle and slinging it overboard. But as the stillness of the lazy afternoon crept into Juliet’s bones, she couldn’t stop her thoughts turning towards home, to what her children were doing now and whether they had enjoyed their Christmas Day.
Marco, who was stretched out on the opposite bench, only half awake, propped himself up and looked at her. ‘You have that faraway look again. What are you sad about?’
Sometimes he seemed younger than his years, but sometimes he was scarily perceptive. ‘I feel a little bit guilty for sitting here doing nothing, while everyone back home is working hard to make Christmas Day special, like I’ve run away and left them all to it.’
He frowned and smiled at the same time. ‘Is Christmas usually hard work for you?’
She nodded. ‘My ex-husband used to say I always made such a fuss about it, and I suppose I do, but it’s only because I want it to be perfect for...’ She shook her head.
Marco sat up, looking intrigued. ‘For...?’
She looked at the canopy above their heads. She’d been going to say ‘for my children’. But she couldn’t tell Marco that. She was supposed to be Gemma, wasn’t she? No ties. No roots. Certainly no children.
‘Myself,’ she finally mumbled. ‘I always make it so difficult for myself. I stress about all these stupid tiny details, and now I’m here I’m starting to wonder if it’s really all so important.’
Really, was there anything in her poinsettia notebook that was truly essential to a happy Christmas, rather than just loving her kids and spending quality time with them? To her shame, she didn’t even think that featured on her colour-coded tick list.
Marco sat up and leaned forward, looking at her intently. ‘Why does Christmas have to be perfect, Juliet? Why cannot it just be what it will be? It is a day like any other.’
Her lie about who she was meant she couldn’t tell Marco the truth: that she didn’t want her children feeling that horrible sense of dread every time December came around, fearing that this year might be the year when it all went horribly wrong, when nothing would ever feel the same afterwards.
The sensation she’d successfully outrun for years now crept up on her. She felt the chill of it blocking out the sunshine, making her skin pucker into gooseflesh. She didn’t want to talk about this. No one in her family ever talked about this. And she’d got so good at not talking about it that she’d almost forgotten it in recent years. Her web of tasks and To Do lists had effectively had it trapped and camouflaged.
Once again Marco looked into her and saw her. Once again he asked her what she was afraid of, but this time the question was far more dangerous than when she’d been suspended fifty feet above the jungle strapped to a thin little wire.
Nothing, she was going to say, but then a stab of pain caught her by surprise under her ribs, so hard she sucked in some air and held it. She shook her head, but her mouth wouldn’t open and his face, so close to her own, grew blurry.
She didn’t want to talk about that Christmas. She didn’t want to go back. She’d spent her whole life trying to escape it, glad that each passing year pushed it further into the past.
‘Tell me...’
She began to shake her head again, but the sun was so bright, the waves so gentle, the setting so tranquil, that she started to wonder if ever there was a safe place to mention that horrible Christmas, maybe this was it.
She stared at the gently waving palm trees lining the shore. ‘It was the Christmas I was nine... We got up in the morning and everything was fine, but later in the day I walked into the kitchen and my mother was crying.’
Marco came and sat next to her. ‘Did something terrible happen?’
Juliet let out a dry laugh. ‘No, that was the funny thing, really... She’d forgotten to put the sausagemeat in the stuffing, and she was trying to scoop it all out of the tin, half-cooked, and mix the sausagemeat in and it just wasn’t working, and the more it all fell apart the more upset she got. Dad tried to tell her it was okay, but she just kept mixing and crying, and then she just sort of...exploded. She threw it all down and ran out the house.’
Juliet didn’t tell him what had been the final straw; she was too ashamed. She didn’t tell him that it was her who had set the fuse on that explosion. If she hadn’t pulled a face and said she’d decided she didn’t really want stuffing with her turkey, maybe her mother would have seen the funny side and they’d have all sat down for Christmas dinner as normal. But she had said what she’d said, and her mother had run from the house, still in her apron, and had jumped in the car and just driven away.
‘She didn’t come back until the day after Boxing Day,’ Juliet said quietly. ‘I was so relieved when I came downstairs and saw her standing in the hallway, hugging my father.’
Her father had been frantic until she’d reappeared, although he’d never shown it. Put on a brave face, had always been his motto. Don’t tell Gemma, he’d instructed her. She’s too young. She won’t understand. And so she’d played with Gemma and watched films on the TV and had pretended with Dad that Mum had just had to go and visit someone who needed her. Gemma had looked up at them both with those big blue eyes, so trusting, and had believed every word they’d said. Every lie they’d told. Juliet didn’t even know if Gemma remembered anything being wrong that Christmas, if it even figured in her memories. But then that had been the plan, hadn’t it?
All of Christmas Day and Boxing Day, as she’d smiled and laughed and pretended everything was fine, deep in the pit of her stomach she’d lived with the fear that she’d spoiled Christmas, and because she’d spoiled Christmas—the most special day of all—nothing would ever be right again.
Dad had told her she’d been very brave, his big girl, and that she was being grown-up about it and protecting her sister. And she must have done a really good job of making him think she was cop
ing with it all, because never once had her father sought to reassure her that her mother was coming back.
She supposed to him it had been obvious, but Juliet had been so relieved when she’d seen her mother again, that she’d run to her, sobbing, and thrown herself at her. Her mother had hugged her back, but after a few moments she’d peeled her eldest daughter off her and had set her back on her feet. ‘Come, come, Juliet,’ she’d said firmly, ‘Don’t make a fuss.’ And Juliet had seen the look of fear and shame in her mother’s eyes. She didn’t want to be reminded of what she’d done. As Juliet pulled that memory of that expression into sharp focus, she realised that maybe her mother had resented her for knowing the truth.
‘Years later we found out she’d had episodes of depression for years,’ she said. ‘It was just her way of coping when things got too much—she’d run away—and then come back and act as if nothing had happened.’ She’d even done it once after Juliet’s father had died, and a nineteen-year-old Juliet had spent the whole night trawling round where they used to live in Beckenham in her beaten-up first car, trying to spot her mother’s purple coat. She hadn’t told Gemma about that, either.
Her mother must have gone to the doctor when Christmas had been over, got some pills or something, because for a long time after that everything had been better. It was as if ‘that Christmas’ had just been a horrible dream that no one dared mention.
‘I suppose it isn’t just this Christmas that I’ve run away,’ she told Marco. ‘I think I’ve been running away from Christmas my whole life.’
He didn’t look shocked or horrified; instead he smiled at her then kissed her gently. ‘Then we are two Christmas runaways together,’ he whispered.
She laughed and kissed him back, turning towards him and winding her arms round his neck. ‘Today I’m happy about that. But we can’t run away for ever. One day soon we will both have to go home.’
When they pulled apart Marco wasn’t looking as carefree as he had been only seconds earlier.