by Sue Watson
Suddenly I heard her, a faint groan from somewhere near the oven, and I shot over to the sound, the acrid smoke now burning the back of my throat.
As I got nearer to the oven I could see she was half slumped over it. ‘Oh Sam, I left them too long... they’re burned... they’re burned...’
I grabbed her around the waist and she yelped a little and probably suffered severe whiplash as I hurled her over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift. I don’t know where I got the strength from, my legs were buckling beneath me, but I had to get her out of there and I pushed hard against the smoke and the dead weight and the burning pain in my eyes and throat. Finally reaching the door, Jacob ran to open it but I screamed at him to get back and we all landed outside in the snow, the smoke chasing us like a dragon through the door.
We lay on the ground, both gasping. I was telling Jacob we were fine, but tears were running down my face as I looked at Tamsin.
Then the fire brigade and an ambulance arrived and the fire was soon put out. It was all very dramatic and emotional and I wept as I watched with relief and worry. Tamsin was shaken, but seemed okay and I insisted I was fine; the paramedics wanted to take Tamsin to the local hospital, but she refused, telling them she’d been through much worse and just needed a decent cup of coffee. She kept asking if anyone had any Sumatra Wahana on them. They probably thought she was feeling the after effects of the smoke and speaking in tongues – or asking for something illegal. I didn’t even try to explain, just assured the paramedics and firemen that I would look after her.
They eventually departed, leaving us sitting on the floor in the bakery. I looked at my sister, her beautiful clothes were ruined and her hair was singed and smoky. I noticed a graze on the side of her face where she’d fallen into the oven. ‘Oh Tam, your hair, your face...’ I was expecting her to start thrashing about, her appearance was always so important to her, this could be the last straw.
‘Oh it doesn’t matter about my bloody hair,’ she said. ‘Sam, the bakery... I’ve destroyed it... it’s all my fault.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘The main thing is we are all okay, it could have been so much worse.’
‘I must have fallen asleep... the cakes are burned... the truffles you’d started...our biggest order. What are we going to do now?’
‘I don’t know, but I think it might be time to cut our losses and admit defeat, love,’ I sighed. In the madness of making sure Jacob and Tamsin were alright I hadn’t considered what the fire meant for the business and it was slowly beginning to dawn on me.
We sat among the carnage of the fire, two women who’d both been to hell were back in the middle of it again. The kitchen was blackened, the oven was ruined and the coffee shop area was smoke damaged. The White Angel bakery was finished and I sat in the middle of the room just taking in all the damage. Then I thought about Mrs J’s prediction that three bad things were going to happen to us - perhaps she was psychic after all?
22
Random Acts of Christmas Madness
Tamsin
It felt like a death, another loss. Poor Sam – her lifelong dream was in ruins. The bakery couldn’t bake and so would now be closed. What else could we do? There was no money for a new oven, and the insurance would take a lifetime to come through. Sam was calm and kind and kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, but I knew she was devastated, and I could barely look at her. I felt so guilty and I hated myself... however many times Sam said it was her fault for using old faulty ovens, I still felt responsible.
‘Will you call our customers who have orders for Christmas and tell them we’ll have to cancel?’ Sam asked me.
I nodded, she obviously found the prospect of making those calls too painful. I couldn’t bring myself to do it straight away, but I did think on my feet and discreetly phoned the women about the huge truffle order, telling them we’d had a call from the wife of a footballer in LA. I hinted she was a fashion designer and once belonged to a famous girl band and we had to do her order first as it needed to get to her in Beverly Hills. I said she’d asked me to ask them if they minded receiving their truffle orders a little later as a favour to her? Of course they were falling over themselves to oblige - a late order of truffles was no problem, a privilege in fact. I put the phone down with a smile – until it dawned on me I may have to call a week later and cancel completely – which celebrity or member of the royal family could I blame that on?
I was worried about Sam, both emotionally and physically. I would have expected her to rail against this, go skip-hunting for ovens and bake those cakes against all the odds, but for once she didn’t.
She’d lost her dream, her future, the one thing she’d clung to since Steve’s death and it broke my heart to see her like this. She said she’d already paid the rent on the bakery until January so we all had somewhere to stay until then, but we’d have to find work and somewhere to live after Christmas.
Sam said she could go back to teaching, and I decided the only thing for me to do was to sell my stuff. Mrs J offered to come with me so I asked Gabe if he could drop us off at The Rectory and we could go through what was left and what was sellable. And so it was with a heavy heart I headed back to The Rectory again and while waving Gabe off I tried to explain to Mrs J why we were there.
‘We need to do an inventory,’ I said.
‘An in what?’ she asked.
‘We need to go through everything in the house we can sell, and catalogue, box, and label it all. Then we write each item down on a spreadsheet under different classifications and...’
‘I thought I was here to do some light dusting?’
‘You are,’ I said, abandoning my plan to have Mrs J as assistant, it would be far quicker to work alone. If she wants to dust, let her dust, I thought.
I had spent most of the afternoon listing and boxing stuff that we could sell and was just about to start on the dining room when the doorbell went and my heart almost stopped.
I wasn’t quite sure what the exact arrangements had been with our creditors and our solicitor. I wasn’t even sure if I should still have the keys and be allowed access and was worried I’d be caught. Those bailiffs were very passionate about their work and if I was trespassing, then God help me, I’d be all over The Advertiser the following week being hauled from my home with a coat over my head like some has-been z-lister. Those men could enter from anywhere – like a scene from the Embassy siege. Big, bald-headed men landing on roofs and windowsills, crashing through windows shouting ‘We know you’re in there,’ so at the sound of the doorbell I hurled myself onto the floor, keeping well down. Fortunately, the floor was polished oak so I was able to slide seamlessly along on my back, using my legs to propel me forward. My aim was to avoid the big window in the door, should anyone decide to press his bald head against it for a nosey.
I was shimmying along the hall floor between rooms when I heard a rustle at the front door, and an envelope dropping onto the mat. Looking up, I came face to face with Mimi staring in the glass, mouth open, just watching me slide along the floor like an insane person. I didn’t know what to do, so put my nose in the air and continued to slide forward into the piano room like it was the most natural thing in the world.
For a while I lay face down under the piano, not quite sure what had just happened but wondering if I’d had a breakdown. Unfortunately Mrs J was in there dusting the piano and the look of surprise on her face matched Mimi’s as she got down on all fours to inspect me.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing now?’ she asked, screwing her eyes up like she couldn’t believe what she’d just found while dusting.
‘For God’s sake Mrs J – a woman can’t even slide on her own oak floor and lie under her own baby grand without everyone wanting her story,’ I huffed indignantly. From under the piano.
‘You make me die laughing you do,’ she said, almost to herself while carrying on with the dusting.
I ignored her and stayed under the piano until I was sure Mimi had g
one, then I leaped into the hall and grabbed the thick silver envelope Mimi had posted. As I opened it, I found a stunning purple invitation adorned in silvery Christmas glitz inviting ‘Tamsin plus one’ to celebrate Christmas at Mimi’s Musical Evening: ‘A celebration of Christmas in song.’
‘The bitch!’ I hissed to no one, or so I thought.
‘Who are you complaining about now?’ Mrs J called from the other room.
I screwed the invitation up and threw it in the bin. Christmas had always been mine. ‘I owned Christmas,’ I said out loud. I was the one who held the musical evenings and the festive soirees – this was just rubbing salt in the wound. And how fickle they all were! We’d always gasped in amusement at Mimi’s exploits, I’d laughed behind my hand along with the others at her pole dancing, her penchant for purple and fruit flavoured lubricants. But I wasn’t laughing now – Mimi was queen of Christmas and I was nothing.
Hurt and rage were filling my head and giving me such a migraine I had to get out – so I grabbed my keys, but just as I was leaving, Sam turned up with Hermione, Hugo and Jacob.
‘We thought we’d come and get you,’ she said, walking into the hall. ‘You weren’t answering your phone. I was worried... after the fire and everything that you might...’
I nodded and tried to be bright for the kids. ‘Sorry, Mimi’s stalking me,’ I said. ‘I turned off my phone.’ I suggested Hugo take Jacob into the spare room upstairs where some of Hugo’s old toys were and Jacob could choose what he wanted. Sam wandered up with them, probably to supervise – it was a wise move, who knew what Hugo would produce from behind his wardrobe?
I went into the kitchen where my lone kettle stood and decided to make a final cup of tea before packing it away for the last time. Hermione wandered in and nodded at me before going straight to the fridge. Of course there was nothing in there and despite it all we giggled.
‘Automatic response,’ she smiled. ‘No wonder I’m such a porker.’
‘You’re not, your beautiful...’
‘You okay, Ma? Shouldn’t you go and see a doc or something?’
‘No – just a little smoke inhalation, a few smoke-singed hairs. I’m fine – it’s the bakery that’s died.'
‘Shame ... it was so cute, like a fairytale shop, you loved that bakery.’
‘Yes I did, I do - but I feel for poor Auntie Sam, she’s put so much into it.’
Hermione nodded earnestly.
‘But what about you? Are you okay, darling?’ I asked, aware that so much had been happening I hadn’t spent enough time with my kids since they came home for the Christmas holidays. Some Christmas!
‘Yeah I’m okay... well no, I’m a bit pissed off to be honest, Ma.’
My heart sank. I thought the kids had been coping a little too well considering their world had come crashing down and their father had abandoned them.
‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s bloody awful isn’t it... how everything’s just turned to... well, shit.’
‘I know, Ma... pure, evil shit... I am so done with it all...’
I put my arm around her.
‘Talk to me, Hermione, tell me how you’re feeling.’
‘So I am just about ready to come off “snapchat”, as for Twitter... jeez. Note to people with genitalia as their profile picture – I DON’T follow back. I mean, Billy no mates... saddos. Seriously?’ With that, she slammed the huge fridge door and slumped on a stool at the island.
‘Darling... when I said tell me how you’re feeling... I was talking about the house and Dad and everything.’
‘Yeah... Oh God... yeah... totally. Shame about the place in France... and as for Dad, WTF?’
‘Yes quite. What does that mean?’
‘What the fuck, Ma... I mean seriously?’
‘Mmmm. Don’t swear, Hermione.’
‘Ma, I’m eighteen, you can’t tell me what to do.’
‘I know I fucking can’t,’ I said, suddenly overwhelmed by it all. ‘I can’t tell anyone what to fucking do anymore.’
She looked shocked; ‘Hey enough with the mouth, Ma. Are you feeling okay?’
‘Yes,’ I smiled and reached for her hand. ‘Whatever happens in your life, Hermione – promise me you’ll do what you want to do. Don’t do anything just to please a man – be yourself… or you’ll lose yourself.’
‘Preach it, Ma... no guy tells me what to do...’
‘Yeah and keep it that way,’ I squeezed her hand. ‘So, are you staying at Sam’s tonight, love?’
‘Nah, going over to Kate’s.’
‘Oh Kate with the lovely red hair? How is she?’
‘Good. She’s heteroflexible now.’
‘Oh. Really?’ I picked up my phone feigning calm indifference. Heteroflexible sounded complicated and rather messy – whatever it was – and given my problems with the internet I wasn’t Googling that. After a financial meltdown, the breakdown of the van and now the fire, I assumed we were done waiting for ‘event number 3’ (after Mrs J’s premonition that 3 bad things were going to happen to us). I hoped number 3 was the fire and not my daughter screaming out of the closet and running off to some lesbian love nest with Kate. I watched as my daughter gazed into her phone – and despite my new laid-back approach to life, I had to ask, the mother in me needed more details. ‘So... heteroflexible? What does that... entail? Exactly?’
‘You’re straight, but shit happens.’
‘Indeed,’ I held my breath and counted to ten, just hoping that letting my lovely daughter spend the night at Kate’s wasn’t inviting that ‘shit’ to ‘happen’.
I looked up from my phone, but she’d gone. The little girl who used to sit on my knee and demand my attention, my bedtime stories and my love was now big enough to find it all somewhere else. My heart ached for the children I once had.
Mrs J wandered in and I handed her a mug of Darjeeling.
‘So... it’s all gone tits up again?’ she said with her usual hallmark of tact and good taste.
‘I suppose you could say that.’
‘Meant to tell you. The two gay lads came over before and moved a load of fancy Christmas stuff into the other room – don’t suppose you’ll have much use for it now.’
‘Mrs J, I’m not dead – I still intend to celebrate Christmas.’
‘With a bloody big reindeer? What you gonna do? Ride ’im to Lapland? You make me laugh you do.’
‘So glad I can entertain you,’ I smiled politely, concerned that Heddon and Hall had completely lost it.
‘I hope they haven’t bought some ghastly giant inflatable reindeer – that’s just what I need right now.’
Mrs J laughed loudly at the prospect, and told me it was my own fault for wanting everything and then forgetting I’d ordered it. She had a point which was annoying - in fact she was often annoying but I didn’t know what we’d do without her. I’d told her I couldn’t pay her, but she was good enough to be there for me, dusting, vacuuming and providing a running commentary on my life. I think she was on autopilot and programmed never to stop dusting and talking.
She insisted I go and have a look at the decorations, and wandering into the den I was overwhelmed at the sight before me.
Mrs J was right – a beautiful white reindeer big enough to ride on was standing proudly in the middle of the room, surrounded by glitter curtains, huge white snowflakes, baubles of every size and several small trees. In the dim light of the room everything sparkled, and despite knowing we wouldn’t be able to use any of this now – the little child in me gasped!
Heddon and Hall had planned further festive decoration after the ‘Christmas lights switch on’. Unfortunately, as I’d paid for it all in advance and not cancelled, the stuff had been delivered regardless of the fact I didn’t live here anymore. The good news was it meant more stuff to sell, but the thought of selling off this perfect white Christmas broke my heart.
‘Oh it’s just... exquisite,’ I whispered, walking around the white sparkle. Running my hands along softly fold
ed piles of shimmering gossamer, twinkling glass, I stroked the reindeer as though it were alive. Despite everything – here, after all, was Christmas.
‘Bugger me it’s a big un in’t it?’ Mrs J was suddenly at my side.
‘Yep, a huge beast... I don’t suppose your Lawrence would like it for his shed?’ I laughed.
‘He’d think I was as mad as you if I went home with that,’ she was nudging me and laughing along.
‘Yes I am a bit bonkers, aren’t I?’
‘Well, you’ve always been over the top – but you’re a good lass really.’ I glanced over at her and in that instant I saw such tenderness in her eyes. I’d never seen that even from my own mother.
‘Ha ha... I don’t know what we’re gonna do with you. You break the van, jump on Gabe, set fire to your sister’s business and...’
‘Thank you Mrs J I don’t need the list – and I didn’t “set fire” to anyone’s business... as for Gabe...’ I started.
‘And you’re still talkin all posh... you’re all fur coat and no knickers, our Tamsin,’ she laughed as she left the room, ‘our’ Tamsin hanging in the air. And despite the fact she was criticising me as usual, the ‘our’ made me feel all warm inside.
I walked towards the small window and watching the falling snow spiralling from the whitest heavens, I made a wish. Sam and I used to make wishes on snowflakes when we were little. Funny what you wish for when you’re a kid – mine was always that Dad would allow me to pour his drink. I loved how important it made me feel and how close I felt to my dad. As an adult I could see how heartbreaking it was that this was the only way a little girl could feel close to her father. Why was I allowing his ghost to haunt me still?