A Merry Little Christmas

by Julia Williams

  ‘Here, let me clean up,’ said Marianne, starting to load the twins’ dinner plates in the dishwasher. She was glad that when they’d revamped their kitchen she’d persuaded Gabriel to buy both a new dishwasher and washing machine. Both had had their work cut out since the babies had been born.

  ‘Have a cup of tea, first,’ said Jean pulling up a kitchen chair. ‘I insist. It’s a long day that you work.’

  ‘And I couldn’t do it without you,’ said Marianne, immensely grateful that her mother-in-law provided her with the support to allow her some of her old life at least. She loved the twins dearly, but she also loved her job. She’d thought at first she was lucky to be able to have both, but Mrs Garratt was certainly making it harder to feel like that. Marianne was getting fed up with the snide little comments about pulling her weight. More often than not, she was one of the last to leave work, just to prove a point. Often she wondered if it were worth it.

  Ten minutes later, while Marianne and Jean were sitting at the table having a cup of tea, each with a baby on their laps, Gabe walked in cuddling something in his arms. It was a newborn lamb.

  ‘The mother died,’ he said. ‘Found this little chap in the fields, baaing away. He’s nearly frozen to death. Steven, do you want to keep him?’

  Steven, who had been assiduously working on one of the test papers, looked at his dad in disdain. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said, ‘I think pet lambs are babyish.’

  ‘Steven–’ said Jean, but he’d got up and walked out.

  Marianne looked at Gabe, wishing she could take the hurt away from his face.

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ she said. ‘He’s just trying to find his way at the moment.’

  Gabriel didn’t say anything, but set about making a home in a cardboard box by the fire for the lamb, while Marianne cleared the rest of the dinner away, and Jean sorted the twins out.

  The evening wore away, and by the time Jean had gone home, the twins were settled in bed, the washing-up done, and the lamb comfy in his new home, it was gone eight-thirty and there had been no sign of Steven.

  ‘He’s being picked on at school, you know,’ said Marianne carefully. Gabriel was so sensitive about the whole choir school thing, she had learnt to tread warily when discussing it, lest he fly off the handle.

  ‘Is he? About what?’

  ‘His singing,’ said Marianne. ‘I overheard him telling your mum. I can’t say I’m surprised really. There are some tough little cookies in Year 6, and Steven’s so sensitive. I’m surprised no one’s mentioned it to me. That’s one of the problems being part time, I’m out of the loop.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gabriel. ‘Now I feel even worse, thanks.’

  ‘He just wants you to be happy about his choices,’ said Marianne. ‘Go up and tell him it’s okay. That you’re fine about him trying out for choir school.’

  ‘Even if I’m not?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Even if you’re not,’ said Marianne firmly. ‘It’s not about us, it’s about him. If that’s what Steven wants, we should back him all the way.’

  Ten minutes later, Gabriel and Steven were downstairs, both wreathed in identical smiles. Marianne warmed at the sight of them. Her two lovely boys, so alike and yet so different. She hated to see them at odds with each other. They were so close normally.

  ‘Can I feed the new lamb?’ said Steven.

  ‘Of course,’ said Marianne, and sent him to fetch a bottle of milk.

  ‘Well that went well,’ said Marianne. ‘What on earth did you say to him?’ she whispered.

  ‘I said I didn’t mind if he goes to that school, so long as I can get us a season ticket for Shrewsbury Wanderers, and come and take him to the football once a month.’

  ‘Bribery will get you everywhere,’ laughed Marianne softly.

  ‘Well it worked.’ Gabriel nudged her and they watched Steven across the room gently pick the lamb up and give him some milk. Not so grown up after all.

  Pippa felt extraordinarily self-conscious. She’d arranged a meeting for all the families in the area affected by the proposed loss of respite services at the Sunshine Trust. She hadn’t been sure whether anyone would come – parents of special needs children were often stretched to the hilt. Who had time to fight the system even further? And while she had been involved in numerous campaigns, from helping set up the communal village shop, to fighting for a safe crossing by the children’s school, this was different. This was her call. She’d started the ball rolling, and she was going to have to deliver.

  Pippa looked around at the hugely expectant faces, all waiting to hear what she had to say. They were relying on her, all these people, to help keep the Sunshine Trust respite services open to give them the lifeline they so desperately needed. It felt like an awesome responsibility. She couldn’t bear it if she failed them.

  ‘Hallo, and thanks so much for coming,’ she said. ‘I know lots of you have come a long way’ – Shropshire being a big county, the majority of people who used the respite centre came from far and wide – ‘We’re here today to set up a campaign to try and protect our services. All of us who use the Sunshine Trust know what a vital resource it is for families to gain much-needed respite. The issue isn’t so much about the centre closing, but the withdrawal of the respite care which is funded by local government. We need to find a way of paying for these services by alternative means. So to start with I’d say beg, borrow and steal from everyone you know. If you have links with local businesses, let’s see if we can’t get them to pledge some help.’

  ‘What about lottery money?’ someone said.

  ‘We’re applying for a grant,’ said Pippa.

  ‘And telethon charities, like Children in Need or Red Nose Day?’ said someone else.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Pippa, ‘but we want this to be sustainable in the long term, so we need to find somebody prepared to fund it, run by sympathetic professionals who know exactly what is required.

  ‘We’re also petitioning our local MP, Tom Brooker, but so far we haven’t heard anything back from him. I’d urge you all to write to him yourselves, so he realises the depth of feeling about it. And you’ll all be delighted that Cat Tinsall has kindly volunteered to give us some free PR by writing a series of articles highlighting the excellent work of the centre.’

  Soon a barrage of suggestions was coming in: some helpful, some not, but by the end of the meeting Pippa felt she’d at least achieved something. It was a start. She wound up, having agreed to create a steering committee which would look into all the feasible suggestions, with a promise they would report back in six weeks.

  ‘How did it go?’ Dan hugged her as she came through the door. It felt safe and warm to walk back home into his arms. So long as Dan was there, she felt anything was achievable.

  ‘Okay, I think,’ said Pippa. ‘Are the boys in bed?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Dan. ‘Probably time to winkle them off the Xbox.’

  Pippa grinned and went into the lounge to find the boys heavily engrossed in some game that seemed to involve an inordinate amount of shooting. She extricated them from it with difficulty and shooed them up to bed.

  She climbed the stairs and checked on Lucy to see if she was asleep, and watched from the doorway as her daughter made her usual alarming snuffly noises in her sleep. Her beautiful daughter. People didn’t always see that, pitying her for having a child with such special needs. But they couldn’t see her uniqueness, or her inner beauty, or the joy she took in life. They couldn’t see how secretly subversive Lucy could be, often sharing jokes with her or Dan via the electronic keyboard they had recently bought for her, which had become her window to the world, or pulling faces when she thought someone was treating her like an idiot. It was hard, so hard sometimes, having a daughter like Lucy – Pippa would be the first to admit that. It was difficult for all families who had special needs children. But what people didn’t realise was that along with the struggle came something exceptional and different. Lucy showed her every day how to accept the
simple things in life, and to be grateful for everything she had. But she couldn’t do it without Dan by her side, or without the help she got from the Sunshine Trust. Which was why it was so important to her. Without it, Pippa knew she wouldn’t be able to cope. They had to keep it open at all costs.

  Cat woke up feeling lousy. She often did these days. She put it down to middle-aged exhaustion, coupled with being that scourge of the Daily Mail, a middle-aged binge drinker. Although of late, she’d been too tired even to manage that.

  As Noel was constantly telling her, she did too much, but Cat had never been one to sit still for long, and between the demands of teen and preteen children, her poorly mother, devoted husband and her job, sitting still wasn’t always an option. Oh well, at least it kept her thin. Mind you, that didn’t stop her having a less than flat stomach, which seemed to bulge slightly more as time went by. When she was in London, she’d kept it down by a rigorous gym routine, but somehow that didn’t fit in with a country lifestyle, though regular long walks kept her fit. Now when she looked down at her stomach it seemed to have filled out, sagging more than it used to. If she didn’t know any better, she might have thought she was pregnant. But with her periods having become increasingly sporadic over the last year, it was far more likely that she was heading for the menopause and middle-aged spread. Oh joy.

  Besides, she and Noel were so knackered most of the time, sex was rarely on the agenda these days. In fact, rather shamefully, she realised that they’d probably not had any since New Year’s Eve. Must do better, she muttered to herself. Lack of sex had nearly done for them in London, when she and Noel had been so busy they’d ended up leading parallel lives. The move to Hope Christmas had cemented their marriage; she mustn’t let it slip again. Noel meant the world to her. Their relationship had become even stronger since they’d moved up here. Even after all this time, she felt her heart sing when one of them had been away from the other.

  Noel was already showered and ready by the time she got down. She kissed him as he went out of the door. Paige was preening herself in the hall mirror.

  ‘You’re not allowed make-up at school,’ Cat reminded her, before going into the kitchen where James half asleep and yawning, was crouched over his toast and Ruby was chattering away to anyone who would listen (which was nobody) about the excitements of her coming day. Of Mel there was no sign. Great. First row of the day would be getting Mel out of bed. In the past, Cat’s response to Mel’s laziness had been to make her face the consequences of being late and getting a caution. But since the bunking off incident, Cat had been terrified that left to her own devices, Mel just wouldn’t bother going to school. And with the results of her mocks showing them just how much work she needed to do, Cat felt she had to be on her case, however unpopular that made her. But as she had said ruefully to Noel, ‘I’m not here to win any popularity contests.’

  ‘Mel, are you up?’ Cat gingerly knocked on her daughter’s door.

  ‘Humph.’ A groan was the only response.

  Cat opened the door into a pit. Crikey, it was worse than normal. There was barely a piece of the floor not covered in clothes, clean and dirty, shoes, bags, books and paper.

  ‘Mel, time to get up,’ she said, ‘NOW!’

  ‘I’m just getting up,’ said Mel. ‘No need to shout.’

  ‘I’m not shouting,’ said Cat between gritted teeth. ‘But I will be in a minute. You’ve got twenty minutes until your bus goes. And by the way, when you get home tonight, I expect to see this pigsty cleaned up.’

  ‘Will you get off my case!’ said Mel belligerently.

  ‘If you behave yourself, then yes,’ said Cat restraining herself with difficulty. ‘Now get up.’ She resisted the urge to say, ‘or else,’ because she knew the response would be ‘Or else, what?’ The reality was that, short of physical violence, there was very little she could do to make her errant daughter do anything she didn’t want to. And they both knew it.

  The power was all with kids these days. Cat was sure it had been different when she was young. Then power had definitely been with the grown-ups. Just her luck to have been born into the generation which had lost the plot.

  She went back downstairs with a sigh, and an automatic, ‘Wipe that make-up off your face, Paige,’ and receiving a rushed, ‘Off now,’ from James. And then it was just her and Ruby, still chattering away, Cat guiltily noticed, wondering what exactly she had missed.

  Mel eventually appeared looking as mean and moody as her dark eyeliner would allow. There were bags under her eyes, and she’d lost weight. Cat felt a twinge of worry. Maybe there was something wrong and she was handling it badly. All the books said you should listen to your teenagers. Perhaps she didn’t do that enough.

  ‘Mel–’ she began.

  ‘Oh will you leave me alone,’ snarled Mel, grabbing a slice of toast. ‘I’m going now!’ And with that, she was out of the house, slamming the door in a whirlwind of fury and resentment.

  Cat shut her eyes, feeling sick with misery. Another successful morning.

  Ruby came over and took her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Mummy. Mel’s like that to all of us. Not just you. It’s her hormones.’

  ‘What do you know about hormones?’ laughed Cat.

  ‘Paige says I’ll get them when I’m grown up and then I’ll understand,’ said Ruby. ‘But Mel has them a lot and that’s what makes her grumpy.’

  ‘Right,’ said Cat, giving her youngest daughter a hug. At least she had Ruby, sweet, innocent, chatterbox Ruby. How little had she realised just a few short years ago how much tougher parenting was going to get. She should have made the most of it when she had the chance. Cat cleared away the breakfast things, and tried to put the row behind her. Mel would have probably forgotten it by the time she got home. Maybe she’d be in a better mood then. Then again, maybe not.

  Chapter Five

  Cat got out of the car and walked up to the doorway of an imposing Victorian house, which was the main HQ of the Sunshine Trust. It was a gothic, grim-looking building – but as she went across the threshold and was introduced to Kim Majors, the centre’s director, Cat quickly realised that appearances could be deceptive.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming, Mrs Tinsall,’ Kim said, holding out her hand. She was a small round, cheerful kind of person, bubbling with goodwill. Cat warmed to her instantly. ‘We’re so grateful to you for letting us tell our story.’

  ‘Call me Cat, please,’ said Cat. ‘And it’s my pleasure. Pippa Holliday is always singing your praises, and I know what a difference the respite care makes for her and Dan. I’m pleased to be able to help, if I can.’

  ‘Let me show you around,’ said Kim.

  The house was huge, but felt comfortable and homely. The rooms were brightly lit and cheerful, and Cat was amazed at the general air of fun. There was a games room, where two boys in wheelchairs whizzed back and forth playing table tennis, a soft play area, with younger children enthusiastically hurling themselves about, and several lounges, in which children, some in wheelchairs, some not, were lounging about, chatting or watching TV.

  ‘These are our chillout zones,’ said Kim, ‘the kids can come and relax here on their own, or when their families come, they have plenty of space for private time. During the week we often arrange recreational pursuits, like games evenings. For a lot of our children, it’s about being heard – people look at them as if they are stupid, when it’s their bodies which don’t work so well, not their minds. That’s not true for all of them of course, but it is for the vast majority.’

  The tour of the home took over an hour, including showing Cat round some of the more modern buildings where the children who lived here permanently stayed, and an impressive hydrotherapy pool, where Cat witnessed a child with severe muscular dystrophy getting the chance to stretch her muscles and just enjoy the water. Cat was impressed by the range of activities available to the children and could see what a vital resource it was. Kim was an informative guide, who clearly found her job rewardin
g. She explained that the respite care service had only been in place for a few years.

  ‘You remember the good old days, when the government had so much money sloshing around they could pay for it? Now of course that’s no longer the case. And as we’re a charity, we’re having to work harder and harder for donations. We could really do with a generous benefactor. Unfortunately, as things stand we won’t be able to keep the service going if our funding is withdrawn.’

  ‘That would be terrible,’ said Cat. ‘I’ll do my best to drum up interest. I know one or two documentary film makers who might be interested in this kind of thing. I’ll sound them out, see if any of them are interested in doing something about this issue.’

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ said Kim.

  ‘I can only try,’ said Cat. ‘I’m so impressed by everything you do here. And really humbled too.’

  It was true, Cat reflected, as she got in the car to go home. She did feel humble. Watching the dedicated staff, treating a child with muscular dystrophy in the state-of-the-art hydrotherapy pool; observing a teacher communicate with her class purely through sign language; seeing a nurse gently turn a child who was on permanent ventilation. This place was incredible, and helped so many people. Cat had always been aware how incredibly fortunate she was to have four bright, healthy children, but today she sent a silent prayer of gratitude for her good fortune. Those families, like Pippa’s, who needed the Sunshine Trust’s help so badly, had so much to contend with. Cat had very little to complain about by comparison. Even with a stroppy teen.

  ‘Hi Pippa. You’ve been busy again.’ Vera opened the door of the village shop with a cheerful smile, as Pippa came in with her latest supply of cakes.