Just for the Holidays

by Sue Moorcroft

  ‘It’s not?’ Leah reached for his hand. Remembering the kids she glanced in the direction of the bustling market and, by mutual consent, they shifted their clasped hands beneath the table.

  ‘It’s big enough.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Right now it’s Henry talking as if I have something to worry about. But my airmanship was good. It transpired that the cause of the RPM drop was that a nut had backed off, allowing an air pipe to slacken. It was disappointing work on the part of the mechanic who applied torque stripes as if everything had been tightened up and Henry ended up with a machine and a pilot out of action.’ Finishing his coffee, he returned his cup to its saucer with undue force.

  ‘I understood enough of that to know it’s bad news,’ she said, softly, reading in the lines of worry around his eyes how much of an anathema it was to have doubts hanging over him. ‘I hope the insurance company can’t find a way to blame you.’

  ‘So far as I know, they’re not even trying to! There’s no suggestion of pilot error from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch and that’s all that matters.’ He laughed, mirthlessly. ‘Hence the red flags at Henry’s tone.’

  Unthinkingly, Leah leaned forward ready to plant a consoling kiss on his cheek.

  But, ‘Look, Leah! I’m la Gothique! Très amazeballs, aren’t I?’ Natasha’s voice burst over them, high and excited.

  Executing a rapid change of direction and at the same time dropping Ronan’s hand, Leah twitched around to view Natasha wearing black lipstick, incongruous with her dewy make-up-free skin and making her look rather as if she’d been sucking a faulty pen. Leah blinked, wondering what Alister and Michele would say. ‘Mm, I suppose so.’

  Jordan had his arms full of a virulent orange oversized ball in a net. ‘I bought an exercise ball.’

  ‘Right,’ nodded Leah. ‘I suppose you do exercise that doesn’t involve screaming around a football pitch. I’m glad The Pig’s parked here so you don’t have to cart that great big thing about on the tram.’

  Jordan nodded sagely, as if he’d thought the same. Leah would lay money that it hadn’t even crossed his mind.

  Curtis, bizarrely, had purchased a double row of reproduction medals and pinned them to his T-shirt.

  Ronan looked pained. ‘What do you have on your chest?’

  ‘Nipples,’ retorted Curtis unanswerably. ‘Can we have bretzels now? They do them here as well as on the vans.’

  Helping themselves to nearby empty chairs the children managed to cram around the table, debating how many bretzels would be enough and demanding cold drinks to refresh them after trailing around the market under a sky of unbroken blue.

  ‘One bretzel each might be enough,’ Ronan suggested. And, when Jordan began to protest, ‘I thought you might like to be introduced to Flammenküche for lunch.’

  Curtis closed his lips on his own protests and even forgot his sulk. ‘Flammenküche’s awesome. It’s like the world’s thinnest pizza. You’ll love it, Jordan.’

  Jordan looked tantalised but wasn’t about to allow the promise of an as yet unseen treat deter him from his immediate goal. ‘But we still get bretzels first?’

  ‘One each,’ Leah said, firmly. Jordan was capable of stuffing his face until he literally couldn’t hold what he’d eaten.

  Ronan disappeared into the interior of the café to give their order and Jordan and Curtis began telling Leah of their adventures around the market.

  ‘Where’s the loo?’ interrupted Natasha. A little of the black lipstick had worn off already.

  Curtis pointed to the café door. ‘Right through to the back.’

  Natasha made a beeline for the facilities as Ronan and the waiter reappeared with drinks and a tray of bretzels. In the process of clearing the dirty mugs and distributing the food and drink, it took Leah several minutes to realise that Natasha hadn’t reappeared.

  Alarmed, she jumped up, leaving her fresh espresso untouched. ‘I’ll just check on Natasha.’

  Never before having seen the inside of the café it took her a few moments to thread a path between tables and cake-filled glass cabinets to a tiny ladies’ room, tucked away at the rear of the premises. ‘Natasha?’ she called.

  ‘In here.’ Natasha’s voice came from behind the wooden door, high-pitched and tearful.

  Leah felt a wriggle of alarm. ‘Are you OK?’ And then, when Natasha didn’t answer, she knocked on the door. ‘Natasha?’ At the continued silence her heart began to pump. She rattled the handle. What if Natasha was ill? She began to conjure up visions of les pompiers being called to break down the door. ‘Natasha!’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Natasha wailed.

  Relieved to know her niece was at least conscious, Leah sagged against the panelling. ‘What’s–?’

  Just as Natasha opened the door.

  Leah all but fell into the tiny room.

  Natasha immediately slammed the door behind her and locked it again, her eyes big scared circles. ‘I’ve … started.’

  It took Leah a second to remove her attention from the oddness of being in a toilet cubicle with someone else and latch on to the significance of the words. ‘What, your period? Have you got a pad or anything?’

  Natasha’s black-lipsticked lips trembled. ‘I’ve never had one before. Mum gave me some pads to put in my drawer, ready, but they’re at home in England.’

  Heart melting at the anxiety all over Natasha’s little face, Leah pulled her into her arms. ‘Oh, sweetie, your first period? Don’t worry. I’ll go and get you a pad from my bag.’

  Natasha sniffed dolefully, her face brick red. ‘I need clean knickers.’

  ‘OK, I’ll run and find a shop. Why don’t you come out and eat your bretzel while I do, then we’ll get you sorted.’

  ‘Really, Leah? Really?’ With this savage teenage expression of scorn, Natasha unlocked the door, bundled an astonished Leah out of the room and flatly refused to do anything but remain locked in the only toilet, regardless of the potential discomfort of other café patrons, until Leah had procured the items necessary to ‘sort her out’. With the command of ‘And don’t let the boys know!’ ringing in her ears, Leah had to whizz back to the table, grab her bag, mutter about forgetting something, telegraph Ronan a ‘Don’t ask!’ look and dash through the market to the pharmacy on the other side of the square, then hunt out a stall arrayed with underwear in pastel-coloured rainbows.

  By the time she’d finally coaxed Natasha to rejoin the party, Jordan was hinting about another bretzel and Leah’s coffee was cold. ‘Right, shall we get off to the tram stop?’ she suggested, to give Jordan and Curtis something else to think about had they intended to demand what had taken so long. Natasha was silent as they made their way out of the square. Leah held her hand as she had when she was a little girl and made sure of seats together on the tram.

  ‘I want to talk to Mum,’ Natasha muttered in a wobbly voice as they whooshed smoothly away. ‘I feel all weird.’

  Leah whispered back, ‘It might be better to wait till we get back tonight and you can have some privacy.’

  ‘Can I go into the annexe, then, so Jordan won’t hear?’

  ‘Of course. But it’s all perfectly natural and Jordan’s old enough to know that it’s something that happens to us girls.’ She gave Natasha a reassuring squeeze.

  Natasha’s voice rose to an angry squeak. ‘But he’ll make fun! And he’ll tell Curtis.’

  As Leah could easily envisage both of these things she put up no further argument. ‘OK, don’t worry about that now. You can ask me anything you want to know, of course. But maybe,’ she added, ‘not when we’re on a tram full of people with the boys wondering what we’re whispering about.’

  Natasha’s mood flipped and she giggled, a little colour returning to her face. ‘Let them wonder. It’ll do them good to know that the world doesn’t revolve around them.’ With this wise pronouncement, which sounded exactly like one of Michele’s sarky comments, she settled into pensive silence to gaze out of the windows as t
hey continued their smooth journey into the ornate city of Strasbourg.

  Focused on hospital visiting, previously they hadn’t seen much of what Ronan termed ‘the many pretty bits’ of Strasbourg. This time they alighted at La Place de l’Homme de Fer with its glass structure like a suspended stadium roof and where the armour-clad ‘iron man’ gazed out from a ledge above a pharmacy. Ronan led the way among tall picturesque buildings with steep roofs, past the painted carousel in Place Gutenberg, which earned more than one longing look from Natasha, until they reached the old half-timbered buildings of Rue Mercière, leading to the towering Gothic splendour of Cathédrale Notre Dame. Then it was hard to do anything but gaze up at the cathedral, carvings seeming to grace every inch of the centuries-old building.

  It took only ten minutes of culture before Jordan switched his thoughts to more important matters, running an assessing eye over nearby pavement cafés. ‘When’s lunch?’

  ‘Yeah, actually,’ Curtis agreed. ‘We need Flammenküche.’

  Reluctantly, Leah turned away, as Ronan observed, drily, ‘The inside of the cathedral’s just as stunning, if you’re ever here without starving teenagers.’

  Heading for the river where petunias gave the bridges lace edges they found shade at a riverbank restaurant where tourist-packed barges glided past. Leah felt more relaxed than at any time during her stint as Deputy Mum. With Ronan to take on French language matters she even began to feel as if she were truly on holiday in France, his knee brushing hers beneath the table and the kids laughing and joking amiably and not winding each other up.

  The Flammenküche, exactly like the world’s thinnest pizza, as described by Curtis, was indeed awesome. Leah chose a topping of goats’ cheese drizzled with honey and found it meltingly delicious.

  Natasha, the impact of her rite-of-passage event apparently fading along with her black lipstick, embarked on her usual cascade of questions. ‘Ronan, Curtis says you fly helicopters along the River Thames in London. That’s the one on EastEnders, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ he agreed, gravely. ‘Most of the area either side of the river is too densely populated for single-engined helicopters to be allowed to fly over, and following the river saves me getting lost.’

  ‘Do you see the London Eye? I want to go on that.’

  ‘The Eye, the Shard, the Gherkin, St Paul’s, Tower Bridge, the boats on the water and the traffic crossing the bridges. It looks great, London laid out beneath you.’

  Natasha beamed winningly at him. ‘Can you take us on the helicopter, please?’

  Ronan’s dark eyes twinkled above the rim of his coffee cup. ‘I’d love to. We just need to wait till I get back to work and we pay my boss a couple of hundred quid each.’

  The winning smile vanished. ‘How many hours is two hundred quid for?’

  ‘Less than half.’

  ‘Less than half an hour?’ Natasha gave him an incredulous look. ‘Call me when the price comes down.’

  Ronan laughed, the breeze running its fingers through his hair. ‘Helicopters are expensive things to buy and run.’

  ‘And especially to crash,’ interposed Curtis.

  The smile slid from Ronan’s face. He let his gaze rest on his son for several long moments. ‘A forced landing is definitely costly in all kinds of ways, especially if the pilot gets hurt,’ he agreed, softly.

  Curtis flushed.

  ‘Have you had a crash?’ demanded Natasha, eyes alight with excitement, the tension between father and son – appropriately – whooshing over her head.

  Ronan explained so briefly that it drew a verbal line beneath the subject.

  But it was as if Curtis’s remark, obviously intended to hurt, had changed the tenor of the afternoon. Leah tried to lighten the mood by promising that if they could find a shop selling balloons she’d show the kids how to make chocolate bowls later but Curtis withdrew morosely and Jordan and Natasha set their personal switches to ‘bicker’.

  Ronan, too, was quiet. Leah saw him rub his shoulder. ‘I have paracetamol in my bag.’

  ‘I can’t be taking painkillers all the time.’ He tagged on a smile, as if aware of sounding short.

  Leah glanced at her watch. ‘I ought to take the kids to see their father anyway, then you can get home and rest up.’

  As they divided up the bill, the fun part of the day definitely over, Leah found her now familiar anxieties crowding back in about when Michele would return and what would happen at the end of Alister’s stay in hospital.

  She was shocked out of her thoughts by a sudden bellow from Jordan. ‘Ow, Natasha! Cut it out!’ Clamping his hand to his left eye, he glared at his sister with the other.

  Natasha stared back with a horrified expression, then looked down at her hand as if astonished at it.

  Aghast, Leah could draw only one conclusion. ‘Natasha, did you just hit Jordan?’

  A dark red tide swept up Natasha’s face. ‘No,’ she denied, unconvincingly. ‘I just, um, high-fived him … in the face.’

  Curtis snorted a laugh. ‘An eye-five? Mega excuse.’

  Leah heard her voice crack out far too loudly. ‘Nat-a-SHA!’

  Around them, people stopped and stared. Natasha burst into tears, tucking her hands into her armpits as if to make them safe. ‘Jordan was picking on me and calling me Gnasher,’ she wailed.

  Though Ronan ushered Curtis ahead to give Leah space to deal with the situation it took the remainder of the trek to the tram for her to dry Natasha’s tears and wheedle out of Jordan, in turns embarrassed and truculent, that he’d not only called Natasha ‘Gnasher’ but told her she was a stupid little turd with no brains.

  Patting her red eyes with a tissue Natasha gulped, ‘And that’s why I hit him.’

  Leah fixed her gaze on Jordan. ‘Do I need to dig further back in the conversation to discover why you spoke to her like that?’

  After a couple of moments to reflect, Jordan shook his head.

  ‘Natasha?’

  Natasha shook her head, too. Evidently, neither of them was convinced that their place in the squabble was on the moral high ground.

  Leah, borrowing what had always seemed a really useful technique from Alister, said firmly, ‘Right, let’s have hush from you both for a few minutes,’ and fell into silence herself, giving her charges not only time to wish their spat undone but to a) see that she wasn’t going to pronounce lightly and b) wonder what came next. In fact, Leah was wondering the same.

  Miserably out of her depth, she followed the bobbing shoulders of Ronan and Curtis ahead. This guardian thing really sucked when it didn’t go well. It had been dropped on her with no training or handbook so how was she supposed to know how to handle its challenges? She thought longingly of the peace and quiet of a product development kitchen where there might be a raft of rules and protocols but also a pleasant temperature and she was left alone to make important decisions about whether a chocolate was more delicious when made with ground almonds or ground walnuts.

  As that life currently seemed as distant as the moon she fell back on the bantering relationship she’d always enjoyed with her niece and nephew. ‘Look, I know things are a bit crap but hurting each other’s feelings just makes them crapper. So please stop, because you’re making things crapper for me, too.’ And, inspiration striking, ‘I don’t want to have to waste the time you’ll have with your dad in asking him to speak to you both.’ Masterstroke.

  ‘Because that will crap things up for him too,’ Natasha hiccupped, searching for a dry piece of her sorry-looking tissue.

  ‘Totally.’ Jordan hung his head.

  ‘OK.’ Leah gave each of them a hug. She suspected Alister would have ended the conversation with a frosty, ‘Which one of you knows they should apologise first?’ but that was probably advanced parenting. She was nowhere near that level.

  When they reached the tram stop everyone queued quietly to get their tickets stamped by the little machine before hopping aboard the silver tram. Ronan and Curtis, heading straig
ht home, remained in their seats when Leah took Jordan and Natasha off at Hautepierre to trek through miles of antiseptic-smelling corridors to Alister’s bedside. There, they found a smiling woman in a navy suit already ensconced in the visitor’s chair. Alister was propped up against his pillows, booted leg atop the covers.

  ‘Ah, here’s my family,’ he said. ‘Hello, Jordan, hello, Natasha! And this is my sister-in-law, Leah Beaumont.’

  The smart lady rose to her feet and introduced herself as Myriam Lemaitre, who worked in hospital administration. While Alister chatted to the kids Myriam made explanations to a bemused Leah in English. ‘M. Milton’s insurance company desires me to complete a questionnaire so they can understand what is the best action to take upon his release from hospital.’

  Leah felt a surge of relief at this first hint of progress. ‘It’ll be great if someone can clarify the situation.’

  Alister sent the kids off to the cafeteria with enough euros to buy bottles of water and instructions to be back in half an hour when, he hoped, the paperwork would have been done. Leah was glad to note that she wasn’t the only one who kept teenagers entertained by giving them something to drink or eat. As they left, she sent them both a stern look, which she hoped conveyed Do this without arguing or fighting.

  Myriam Lemaitre opened the formalities by confirming Alister’s personal details then got down to the nitty gritty. ‘At your home in the UK, you live with others?’

  ‘Not in the UK, not presently.’ Alister, looking embarrassed, sketched in the brief facts of his recent separation.

  She glanced at Leah. ‘You do not live together?’

  Leah wondered how much clearer Alister had needed to be about living alone. ‘No, I’m his sister-in-law. We don’t live together.’

  Back to Alister. ‘Before your accident, you had intended to stay in France for how long?’ She noted his answer. ‘In Kirchhoffen?’ Another note. ‘And, here in France, there are others in the household?’