by Judy Astley
Emily glared at Charlotte. ‘My sister does not sulk. And I don’t know what it’s got to do with—’
‘Emily,’ Mike said. ‘Don’t.’
Charlotte turned her full-beam smile on him, reached across and squeezed his hand. ‘Thanks, but I can fight my corner.’
‘We don’t want fights, though, do we? In or out of corners,’ he replied.
‘Oh God, this is like when we were ten,’ Emily huffed. She shoved a slab of the creamy Anna potatoes to the side of her plate and clanked her knife and fork together.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Anna said, looking faraway and smiling. ‘Doesn’t it take you back? All of us together for a lovely family Christmas and—’
‘Squabbling, being told off,’ Jimi said. ‘Whatever must our guests think?’
‘Pretty damn normal, I’d say. My mum’s always telling me off, still, at my age,’ Alec said. ‘She says I shouldn’t have married Suki, that I shouldn’t have got divorced, that I shouldn’t have given her the house … you name it, she can have a go about it. Not that you are, Anna.’
‘No, she wasn’t. Quite the opposite actually,’ Mike said, sounding frosty. Thea watched as Alec and Charlotte exchanged glances.
‘It’ll just be Emily then, been stirring things,’ Jimi said.
‘I was building a snow cat.’ Thea thought probably the safest tack was to answer Jimi’s original question.
‘A snowcat? Like a thing you ride on, on mountains and stuff?’ Elmo asked, sounding excited. ‘Is it, like, a kit?’
‘No, sorry, El. It was an actual cat, made of snow. Sean’s cat. Snowman style. I hope it’s still there in the morning. I don’t know how high up the beach the tide will go.’
‘So you were with Sean?’ Jimi asked. ‘Uh-oh, holiday romance alert, folks.’ He drew a heart in the air with his fingers.
‘Hardly,’ Thea told him, laughing. ‘You have no idea how many miles out you are on that one.’
The kitchen door opened and a sleepy-looking Milly came in. She stood looking at them all, rubbing her eyes, clutching her toy owl.
‘Mummy? Alfie can’t get to sleep. He feels sick.’
‘I’ll go,’ Sam said to Emily, pushing his chair back. ‘You stay here and carry on eating.’
‘No, I’ve finished. Let me. You won’t notice if it’s something serious.’
Sam frowned. ‘Of course I will. What do you take me for?’
‘He said he ate the sugar mouse off the tree and the sugar mouse is biting him from in here,’ Milly went on, patting her stomach. She brightened up, watching Anna taking plates to the sink and opening the oven. ‘I can smell pudding. Can I have some?’
‘It’s sticky-toffee pudding, darling,’ Charlotte told her. ‘Yum!’
‘Shut up!’ Emily hissed at her. ‘Do you think I want both of them throwing up?’
‘Sugar mice? What sugar mice?’ Rosie asked. ‘I didn’t see any. I wish I’d known – I love them. They’re the most disgusting things ever, and divine as well. One of those things you can’t resist but then feel ashamed for eating. Or maybe that’s just me.’
‘There weren’t any,’ Charlotte told her. ‘But I happened to have brought a bag of them with me and I put them on the tree. Maybe I should have put them a bit higher.’
‘I might have known it would be your fault. If he’s sick all night, you can come and do the mopping up,’ Emily said to Charlotte and she took hold of Milly’s hand and stormed out, shutting the door with a good hard bang behind her.
‘Well, that’s me told,’ Charlotte said cheerily. ‘Is she always like that? All I’ve seen so far is the miserable cow side. I hope there’s another one.’
‘She worries a lot,’ Jimi told her. ‘She should take up Sudoku. I find it calms the brain.’
‘You don’t do it to calm your brain,’ Rosie said to him. ‘You do it to opt out of basic polite general communication.’ She turned to the rest of them. ‘Try asking him anything when he’s absorbed in a bloody puzzle. It’s like he’s in a coma. Maybe it would help Emily, after all.’
‘Jesus, what’s she got to worry about?’ Charlotte burst out. ‘She should try being a self-employed singer living in a two-roomed flat at my age with a wine habit to support, an overdraft the size of Portsmouth, a son who prefers living in Australia – oh, and a very much part-time lover who’s still living with his wife.’ She stood up. ‘No pud for me, thanks. But you all carry on. I’ll be back to do my bit with the washing-up, but right now I’m going outside for a fag. I may be gone some time.’ She headed for the door then looked back at Alec. ‘You coming for one, matey?’
Alec looked a bit shifty then asked Anna, ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
She shook her head. ‘No, of course not. You don’t need my permission, Alec.’ He shuffled out of his chair and went into the hallway, trailing behind Charlotte. There was silence at the table for a few moments.
‘Going well then, so far,’ Mike said to Anna.
‘Yep. Couldn’t be better,’ she replied.
This was all she needed. Emily sat on the bed beside Alfie and rested her hand lightly on his forehead. His skin felt warm and dry, but then it was a bit stuffy in the room so that could be the reason, or at least part of it. She hadn’t wanted the window open in case of chill draughts and the possibility of the breeze blowing snow onto the children’s beds. The combination of snow and children sleeping at night alarmed her. She could barely admit even to herself that this was because it reminded her too much of the most gruesome fairy tales. She knew it was ridiculous, because the worst that could happen was that if snow did blow in, it would only result in a soggy duvet, but she couldn’t help thinking of the Babes in the Wood: lost, cold and frightened and being covered with leaves. And then there was the Little Match Girl – no shoes, dying on a snowy pavement for want of a few pennies for food and some shelter. Even now, as a logical grown-up, the thought of it made her want to cry. Cold and snow were about struggle, about not surviving. It was all too unbearable and made her heart hurt.
‘Mummy, is it Christmas yet?’ Alfie half-opened his eyes.
‘Not yet, darling. How do you feel?’
‘My tummy hurts.’ Alfie rubbed at his stomach. ‘The mouse is eating me and going chew, chew.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Milly said from the other bed. ‘You’ve already eaten it, so it’s dead. It can’t come alive again, that would be stupid.’
‘Not stupid,’ Alfie protested, starting to sit up.
‘Lie down again, Alfie, let me look at you.’ Emily lifted up his Superman pyjama top. No rash. That was a relief. Through a gap in the curtains she could see it was snowing heavily again and into her imagination rushed the scenario of a rash that could be meningitis, an ambulance that couldn’t negotiate the snowy lanes. It could all happen so fast. Children could— No, she wasn’t going to do this. She must deal with the here and now, and stop projecting.
‘I don’t think I feel sick any more,’ Alfie said. ‘Need a wee.’
Emily picked up her son and took him to the bathroom. The moment he was beside the loo, he was thoroughly sick into it. Holding her breath, she looked down to see if there was anything alarming among the hideous pink and white mush. Not just one sugar mouse then.
‘You didn’t eat any berries, did you, Alf?’ she asked, having a sudden horrific thought. That sodding mistletoe, maybe it had shed a few of its berries on the floor. Mistletoe was poisonous, wasn’t it?
‘He only had the mice.’ Milly came into the bathroom. ‘And the white chocolate money. All of them. I don’t like white chocolate.’
‘Better now,’ Alfie said, looking rather pleased with himself. ‘The mouse has gone. Did Santa come yet? We had a sleep.’
‘One sleep has to be a whole night,’ Emily told him. ‘In the morning there’ll be presents. Milly, I’ve put a clock by your bed. Will you see if you can both stay in bed till the little hand is on the seven? Please?’ It was a hopeless request and she knew it. They’d be
dragging their stockings along to Emily and Sam’s room long before the night was over. She’d go to bed right now, herself, just to get as much rest as she could, but there were the stockings to fill and to sneak into the children’s room, and at this rate it would be midnight before they were deeply enough asleep. It was no good leaving it to Sam. Even though she’d got presents wrapped and in separate, labelled bags ready to go into the stockings, he was quite likely to get a bit random with the filling and forget whose were whose. He wouldn’t think it mattered, but it did – she’d gone to a lot of trouble with them.
‘How’s the patient?’ Sam’s face appeared round the bathroom door.
‘He vommed all the mice. I didn’t,’ Milly boasted. ‘I had just as many but I’m not ill.’
‘You got lucky then,’ Sam told her, ‘because it’s not a good idea to sneak off and stuff your faces with things you haven’t been told you can have. It could have made you very ill, you know.’
Emily smiled at him. ‘Daddy’s right. You mustn’t do it again, you promise?’
‘I promise,’ Alfie said.
‘Milly?’
‘I s’pose.’
‘No, you don’t suppose, Milly, you promise, OK? And you stick to it. It is a rule,’ Sam insisted.
‘I promise.’
Sam took Milly back to bed while Emily washed Alfie’s face and got him to rinse his mouth and brush his teeth. She fervently prayed that this was a one-off and that he wouldn’t spend the night being sick every half-hour. She’d put the child-alarm on and hoped all she’d hear from it would be soft, even breathing. Tomorrow promised to be a long, long day.
At last the children were tucked up and on their way back to sleep and Emily and Sam left the room, softly closing the door behind them.
‘Thanks, Sam, for the back-up,’ Emily whispered as they went down the stairs and waited in the hallway for a moment before rejoining the others.
‘Just being the hands-on dad,’ he said, putting his arms round her. ‘Nice mistletoe, isn’t it?’ he went on, glancing up and nuzzling the side of her face.
‘It is,’ she said, her mouth getting closer to his. ‘Very impressive.’
‘Hey, you two, stop snogging and get in here!’ Jimi called from the sitting-room doorway. ‘Trivial Pursuit is under way. That Alec is winning and he’s ganged up with Charlotte who is arguing about the answers. Mum said she wishes we’d gone for Pictionary.’
‘Do we have to?’ Sam asked. ‘We fancied an early night.’
‘Oo er, get you. And you with early-rising kids. Such stamina. But hang on. Come over here for a sec. I want to know something.’ They followed Jimi into the second sitting room and he closed the door.
‘What’s up?’ Sam asked. ‘Are you worried about Santa burning his boots in the chimney?’
‘No – I just want to know about the sleeping arrangements. Where’s Mum sleeping?’
‘In her room,’ Emily informed him.
‘So where’s that Alec bloke sleeping?’
‘In the spare room.’
‘So that leaves Charlotte – where, exactly?’
‘In Dad’s room.’
‘Really? So he is sleeping …?’
‘In Mum’s room.’
‘Oh.’ Jimi looked confused. ‘So our parents have two new – what? Lovers? Partners? Boyfriend/girlfriend? Though that sounds all teenage.’
‘How about “gatecrashers”?’ Sam suggested with a grin. ‘Certainly in Charlotte’s case.’
‘But either way, the new whatevers have to put up with our parents sharing a bed! Where does that leave the divorce?’
‘Same as before, I expect. It’s only about beds and being polite to us all. It wouldn’t really be very good manners, would it, to shack up with a new body in front of the rest of us,’ Sam said.
‘Embarrassing, too.’ Emily shuddered. ‘When it comes to my parents, I really don’t want to know.’
‘They’re not quite ready to take on the full-Scandi mode yet then, any more than we are. But hey, I suppose it’s none of our business really,’ Jimi concluded. ‘Anyway, to the Triv game in hand. Come on.’ He opened the door and waited for the other two.
‘I really think we could just duck out of that and go and see about being Santa,’ Sam demurred, pulling Emily after him towards the door.
‘Not a chance. It’s on the schedule for tonight and we’re not allowed to argue with that. What is writ is writ,’ Jimi declared. ‘And besides, mate, it’s your go.’
*
Three bottles of wine down, two cigarette breaks for Charlotte and Alec and two tiptoed trips up the stairs by Sam to check on the children and the final game was almost over, at long last. Thea really wanted to go up to her room and diddle about mindlessly on Facebook in peace and quiet. The game had gone on too long and they were a rowdy lot. Rosie was rubbing her temples and had gone to her room in search of painkillers and managed to ‘forget’ to come back. Thea didn’t blame her; what was it about quizzes and board games that brought out such an argumentative side to people? The answers were on the other side of the cards – so what was the point of challenging and insisting you were right? It was fine by her that the answer to What is the world’s most common non-contagious disease was tooth decay but Charlotte and (amazingly) Anna wouldn’t accept it because they questioned whether decay was actually a disease.
‘Would you have accepted it if they’d written “dental caries”?’ Jimi asked.
‘No. Tooth decay isn’t a disease,’ Charlotte argued. ‘It’s carelessness.’
‘You could say the same about syphilis,’ Sam said.
Mike laughed. ‘But contagious, though, that one. Definitely.’
Anna gave him a sharp look.
They were down to the final question. If Charlotte got it right, she’d win. She looked very gleeful and eager at the prospect. Thea silently wished her an easy question so they could all stop playing. Jimi read it out. ‘Which bridge do you cross to get to Kew Gardens?’
Charlotte hesitated. ‘Well, it depends where you’re coming from. I mean, if you’re coming from Surrey it would be Richmond Bridge, but—’
Jimi turned the card over. ‘Nope. Kew Bridge.’
‘Richmond wasn’t my final answer,’ Charlotte reproved him. ‘You were too quick off the mark there. I was only talking it through. Of course I know it’s Kew Bridge! But they didn’t even ask which river. Or which road you might be on. If you’re on the A316 you’d go over Chiswick Bridge and turn right.’
‘Sorry, I had to accept your first answer.’
‘Back me up here, Mike!’ Charlotte demanded, getting up and pouring herself another half-glass of red.
Mike shrugged. ‘Sorry – can’t challenge the question-master.’
Charlotte stomped round the room. She kicked a sofa and Thea heard her do a kind of low, furious growl, like a cat issuing a final warning to a teasing child.
‘OK, Mum, your go,’ Jimi went on, ignoring the dramatics, and picking out the next card. ‘What did Walter Raleigh’s wife carry in her bag for twenty-nine years after his execution?’
‘Jesus, I don’t know. Hang on, let me think.’ Anna closed her eyes in concentration.
‘You said Jesus,’ Charlotte challenged, pointing at her and waving her glass at a near-spill angle. ‘Jimi has to take that as the answer.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Chazz, you can’t carry Jesus in a bag,’ Mike said, laughing at her.
‘Don’t you dare sneer at me, Mike. Of course you could carry a Jesus. A model of one. Like a good-luck thing. A crucifix would be perfectly reasonable.’
‘His head?’ Anna guessed.
‘A Jesus in a bag is more likely than a head in one,’ Alec said. ‘Even if head is right.’
‘It is right,’ Jimi said. ‘Manky and disgusting it would be, but it’s the right answer. Mum’s won the game and we can all go and sleep and wait for Father Christmas to come. Phew.’ He started putting the game away in its box while Charlott
e still grumbled from the sofa about bias and unfairness and how it was good manners to let guests win. Emily’s eyebrows went up at that but she didn’t actually point out that Charlotte wasn’t the usual definition of a ‘guest’. Thea was glad she’d managed a bit of restraint there. For all Charlotte’s breezy bravado, her position in the household could hardly be a comfortable one, and besides, she liked her.
In spite of her tiredness, and probably too much wine over the evening, Thea lingered after the others had said their goodnights and left the room. Alec and Charlotte went back to the porch for a final cigarette, Jimi had gone for one by the back door on his own, and she sat on the rug by the remains of the fire along with the carrot for the reindeer and Santa’s mince pie. She checked her phone for messages. There were a few Happy Christmases from friends back home, but nothing from Rich, which in true contrary style, she quite minded about even though she didn’t want to hear from him. Did he, she wondered, have any memory of the significance of tomorrow’s date other than it being Christmas Day? Would he have any tiny twinge of ‘what-if’ about it? She clicked on his contact details and her fingers hovered over the phone’s keyboard.
If she sent him a Merry Christmas message now and he then sent one back to her in the morning, she’d never know if he’d simply been responding to hers or if he would have sent one anyway. Also, it looked needy. Regretful. Lonely. She no longer was any of those things, not when it came to him, not now. She switched off the phone and got up. She batted down the embers of the fire with a poker and put the guard across. Then she went to switch off the Christmas-tree lights, waiting first to take in the sight of the heap of wrapped presents beneath it, at the back the big bulk of the wrapped bikes that would so delight the little ones, though possibly not as much as if there wasn’t nearly a foot of snow in the garden and no real chance of immediately playing outside on them. She took a quick photo with her phone, switched off the lights, then the room lights and went to the kitchen to get a cup of tea to take up with her.