by Helen Rolfe
Gran pointed to a Christmas card on the mantelpiece. ‘From the bin men,’ she told Audrey.
Audrey screwed her nose up. ‘Another person’s trash is someone else’s treasure?’
‘I don’t think they got it from a bin,’ Gran admonished with a roll of her eyes. ‘One of them popped it through the door, said we’re the first to remember them in the whole of the seven years he’s worked this area.’
‘Well done to The Kindness Club,’ Audrey said proudly. ‘Was it the man I was talking to this morning?’ Gran nodded. ‘He was nice.’
Without even leaving the house, Gran was slowly becoming a part of the community whether she realised it or not. ‘Where’s Mum?’
‘Out Christmas shopping.’ Apron on, Gran headed back into the kitchen calling over her shoulder, ‘She worked all day but headed off to find an outfit, something about attending a friend’s wedding on Saturday.’
‘Talking of Saturday, I’ll be out in the evening.’ Audrey followed after her to see milk in a pan and proper chocolate melts ready to go. ‘Hot chocolate?’
‘When your mum gets home,’ Gran smiled. ‘Where are you off to on Saturday?’
‘Friends are going for a movie and pizza, that’s OK, right? It’s not a school night. It’ll be a great way to celebrate the end of term. We’re breaking up so close to Christmas this year.’
‘I don’t know why schools can’t give the kids a bit longer at Christmas; they wear you out these days. Who’s going on this pizza and film night?’ she asked in the next breath.
‘Oh, just the usual,’ Audrey shrugged. And to avoid being specific, she went off to get changed, which took for ever because it involved stopping every other minute to message Alex. Luckily she didn’t have any homework set for tonight so she could let her concentration go, especially after today’s science test. For once she thought she might have done well in it, possibly down to the fact she’d actually revised.
Sam was home by the time Audrey came downstairs. Darkness had descended over Mapleberry, leaving only the streetlamps outside and Audrey put the tree lights on and switched the main light in the lounge off. With the fresh hot chocolates, with extra chocolate curls laid on the frothy tops until they vanished into the hot liquid, all three of them sat around the table comparing their days.
‘I found a bit of ketchup on the carpet by the sofa when I was vacuuming up pine needles today,’ Gran admitted. ‘Must’ve been Layla from fish and chip night.’
Audrey saw her mum’s mouth twitch in amusement. ‘Did the mark come out?’
‘It didn’t, but don’t worry, I dragged the sofa over it.’
Sam took a sip of hot chocolate to hide a smile. Back in the summer Gran would never have reacted so flippantly. She moved on to telling them both about the wedding she’d been invited to in Cheshire, near where they’d once lived. ‘Funny how Sophie from my primary school ended up living so close and I never realised until I came back down here. She got in touch a couple of months ago on Instagram and we’ve been messaging ever since.’
‘You don’t mind going to the wedding alone?’ Gran asked.
‘Not now she’s told me I’ll be seated on a table of ten, all of whom are single.’
‘Oh no, they’re not going to try to pair you up with anyone, are they?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. Great, now I’ll be nervous. What do you think I should do with my hair – up or down?’ She clutched some of it to give the impression of what it could like if she used pins and some styling and Audrey found herself offering to help.
‘I could do your hair and make-up, if you’ll let me.’
‘She’s good, I can vouch for that.’ Gran touched her hair, part of the grand make-over and although Audrey hadn’t been the one holding the scissors, Gran liked to remind her that it had been her magic that introduced a bit of style.
‘Would you mind, Audrey?’ Sam used her spoon to scrape out the last remnants of chocolate from the mug.
‘Happy to do it. I’ve got some big rollers we could put in that would give it some bounce, and I think leave it down, the colour’s good already and it’s more you.’ It was a softer look for Sam too. Sometimes it looked too harsh when she scraped her hair up, and Audrey was all for curating a more relaxed version of her mum who used to be a giant stress ball before they moved down here.
‘I’m leaving just before lunch on Saturday so if we could do it in the morning, that would be ideal,’ Sam smiled.
Gran got on with making a comforting shepherd’s pie for dinner while Sam agreed on make-up colours, and Audrey made sure the fire was ready to light after they ate so they could all relax with the lights of the tree, perhaps even a festive movie.
When Audrey’s phone pinged she thought it might be Alex, but it was Layla via Charlie’s phone. She groaned.
‘What’s up?’ Sam asked.
‘Every December Layla writes a letter to Father Christmas and she puts it into the flames of the open fire. When it burns, the wishes travel up to the North Pole, or something like that.’
‘I miss the magic of Christmas as a kid,’ Sam confessed.
‘Don’t we all,’ Veronica agreed but moved on quickly. ‘Has Layla written her letter?’
Audrey turned the phone to show them the photograph. ‘You can just about see it in the flames. She wants to know if we’ve done ours. She’s really keen we all do it at the same time so the wishes go to the North Pole together.’
‘I’ll get the paper and pens,’ Gran said, ‘We’d better get a move on or she’ll be going off to her swimming lesson. They’re having some kind of end of term party tonight.’
Armed with their equipment, they each had to think of a wish. ‘It can be anything,’ Audrey prompted, ‘but we don’t need to share it; we fold them over and put them into the fire. And we’ll take a photo for Layla. She’s desperate to see it,’ she added when Layla hurried them along with another text. The girl was bossy for sure but Audrey kind of liked it. Some nights she’d dreamed of her half-siblings in New Zealand and wondered what life with them would be like. Would they hang out together like she did with Layla? Would they get up to mischief? Would they even like each other?
All of them scribbled away although Audrey’s wish hadn’t been as easy to write down as she’d first thought. If you’d asked her a month or two ago, it would be one thing and one thing only – to go to New Zealand to live with my dad. Other than that it could’ve been to get her mum out of her life, or to go to college and study to be a make-up artist. But now, she had friends, she had family, she might even have a boyfriend. She was building a future without realising it. With all of that came a certain amount of confusion, but what she did know was that all of those things had been about her. And now, there was someone else who needed this wish more.
She scribbled down her wish – to get Gran her life back. A few simple words, but it was what she really wanted. And she folded her note before placing it between two logs right at the back, making it stick out enough that Layla would see it easily in a photograph.
‘Mum, put yours in, and you, Gran.’
All three pieces of folded paper stuck out from between chunky logs as another text arrived from an impatient Layla.
‘Where are the matches?’ Sam rooted around behind the log basket, she looked on the mantelpiece and then on the windowsill.
‘Here, got them.’ Audrey picked up the box she’d found inside the log basket, but it was empty. And when her phone pinged yet again, she took a photograph of the fireplace as it was. She’d send another when they finally got the thing lit. ‘That’ll keep her quiet, at least until after swimming, when I’m sure she’ll be onto me again if I don’t send a better photo.’
When Sam’s phone rang upstairs, her mum went to answer it. Gran was alerted by the oven timer and as Audrey puzzled over how to light the fire when Gran didn’t even have a gas hob to get a flame going, she wondered what the others had written for their wishes. Had they gone for frivolous Christ
mas presents or meaningful thoughts like hers? Was she included in their wishes at all?
She could hear her mum laughing away on the phone upstairs – probably the bride-to-be; they’d apparently earned the collective nickname of ‘the gigglepots’ at primary school. Gran was making up some gravy to go with the shepherd’s pie with her attention fixed on the stove. And although Audrey knew it was naughty and told herself it wasn’t right, she couldn’t help but sneak towards the fireplace and very carefully unfold each of the other two notes in turn.
Her mum had wished for Audrey to be her friend, and Audrey just about burst into tears when she read those words. It was easy to forget her mum had a sensitive side, that she was a person who had strengths and needs as well as flaws.
But it was Gran’s Christmas wish that had her the most perplexed. As soon as she’d seen the words, when she heard Gran call for her to set the table, she put it back in exactly the same place as it had been before.
Find Eddie and tell him I’m sorry, was all Gran’s note had said. And those words went around and around Audrey’s head while she found the cutlery from the drawer and positioned it beside the three placemats already at the table.
Who was Eddie? And why did Gran have to apologise to him?
‘Found some!’ Sam came running down the stairs and Audrey stood up abruptly. She must’ve looked guilty but Sam didn’t pick up on it. Instead she brandished a box of matches. ‘I had a box upstairs in the bathroom where I use my candles. Mum, come in here a second – we’re lighting the fire so we can get the picture off to Layla.’
Gran joined them, Sam lit the kindling and paper, and they watched as the flames roared into action, their wishes shrivelling up at the corners, and soon their embers took off up the chimney, carried far, far away.
And when Audrey sat down to dinner, not only did she want her wish to come true, she wanted all three of them to get what they wanted.
But most of all she wanted to know who Eddie was.
Chapter Five
Sam
Sam fastened on her badge for another Kindness Club meeting. Both Audrey’s and Layla’s schools had finished with a half day, which worked out well, because they had wreaths to make for some of the front doors in Mapleberry. It was a last-minute decision from Veronica when she saw ‘Add some surprise cheer to someone’s Christmas’ on the kindness calendar. She also wanted to do these wreaths for the people who’d sent her a card this year and told her how good it was to see a tree in her window this Christmas.
This morning Sam had worked the early shift at the café and then driven to the florist to collect the mossy wreaths that had already been covered in greenery and were ready to decorate. She’d also picked up a supply of holly and ivy, floristry wire, fresh and colourful berries, pine cones, sparkly twigs and cinnamon sticks.
‘He’s loving this,’ said Audrey, dragging a piece of silver ribbon around the lounge floor for Claude the cat to chase, pounce on, roll over with.
Veronica scooped up her cat. Since Claude had been delivered yesterday to his new home, she had been enraptured by the feline. He’d taken to her quickly enough, cautious at first, but Veronica was wrong about not knowing a thing about animals. They needed love and attention and she put no limits on that.
‘Now,’ said Veronica, ‘what will we do with you?’ She had Claude in her arms, his paws up in the air like a baby, as she took him to the study where she’d put his scratching post. ‘I’ll feed him, that’s the easiest thing to do,’ she told the others.
With Claude safely tucked away, Sam watched her mum as they worked with the accessories to make festive wreaths. Her wish in the fireplace had been for Audrey to be her friend, but if she’d been able to wish for anything extra it would’ve been for her mum to change. Not to change the woman she was, but to evolve into the woman she could be. She wanted her mum to find a peace, a happiness she didn’t quite have yet, although the appearance of Claude seemed to elicit a certain kind of joy.
Since she’d talked to her mum about Simon and Audrey, Sam sensed she had been on the verge of divulging more truths than she had realised were lurking in the background. Her mum had said Sam worshipped her dad, that he could do no wrong in her eyes, and she couldn’t deny this. Had Sam failed her mum in some way by laying all the blame at her feet? Was there more to the story than she’d been led to believe?
‘We’re good at this.’ Audrey smiled as they each took what they needed, winding and pushing extra elements into the greenery.
‘That’s because you’re arty,’ Sam complimented her, looking at the way she’d added red berries around a few silver twigs, interwoven holly with pine cones and added the same green velvet ribbon they’d wrapped the gifts in to her wreath so it was all ready to tie to a front door. Audrey had done some reconnaissance of the houses they’d chosen and they were good to go with all of them – some had hooks already there but no wreath yet, the others all had a knocker that would be easy to use to thread the ribbon through.
‘All these people who I haven’t heard of or who haven’t contacted me in years and have sent a card to say how good it is to see my tree,’ said Veronica, ‘they’ll all be getting a wreath. Well, apart from Mavis Turner, Niall Bent and the couple from number seventeen, because they all have one already.’
‘I think if we’d had to do another three wreaths, my hands would start yelling at me,’ declared Sam.
‘Veronica has good hand cream in the kitchen,’ Layla told her. ‘We bought it for her last year – it’s proper gardener’s hand cream.’
‘Is that right?’ Sam went and found the hand cream as Audrey tied the last bow onto another wreath. Layla’s artistic skills had been flamboyant, adding way too much but Audrey had tactfully shown her how less could indeed be more.
Audrey and Layla pulled on their coats for operation Add a Wreath as Claude sensed he was missing out on all the fun and came trotting through to the lounge again. Veronica scooped him up before he could get up to too much mischief and followed the girls to the door.
‘Remember,’ said Veronica, say “From Veronica at number nine”, and then if they say anything else, just add, “Merry Christmas”. And make sure the one with the tartan bow goes on Morris’s door,’ Veronica added before they set off along Mapleberry Lane and beyond. ‘And stay together, it’s dark.’
They went away giggling.
Sam hadn’t missed the way her mum talked about Morris, how her cheeks pinked up a little every time she said his name. Not a bad-looking chap, as it happened, and from reading his comments on Facebook she had no doubt he had a good heart.
Sam put the rest of the wreaths out on the front door step for the girls to collect and do round two. ‘You like this man, don’t you?’ She ran a finger up and down Claude’s cheek as he purred in Veronica’s arms in the hallway.
‘Morris? He’s nice.’
Sam shut the front door and followed her mum through to the kitchen. ‘I’m happy for you.’ She picked up some of the ribbon off-cuts and stray pieces of twig.
‘And I for you,’ she added, to Sam’s surprise. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed the way Charlie looks at you.’
‘He’s a lovely guy.’ With her mum’s arms out of action thanks to Claude, Sam took out a dustpan and brush to rid the table of whatever remnants the wreaths had left behind and reached for a cloth to start wiping it down.
‘Lovely – that’s it?’
Sam tried to hide a smile and let her hair fall around her face to hide any sign she might be giving away about how she felt when it came to Charlie. There was no way she could introduce romance in her life any time soon, she had plenty to deal with for now, so she’d just have to do her best to dampen her feelings when he was around.
‘Are you going to do anything about it?’
Sam put the rubbish into the bin, carrying on as normal to throw her mum off the scent. She hadn’t talked to her mother about boys even when she was a teenager, let alone now as an adult. ‘I’m not go
ing to do anything apart from pour myself a glass of wine and relax.’ She held out a glass to Veronica. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked when her mum shook her head.
‘I haven’t touched a drop in years. Although I was thinking perhaps you could get a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream for Christmas. I always liked that, with lots of ice.’
‘Done, consider it on the list.’ Sam peered in the freezer, found there were no ice-cubes and filled each of the trays she found in the cupboard. ‘Now we’re prepared.’
They sat and talked about the food they’d have for the big day, their first family Christmas in a long time, except there would always be certain people missing. But for now, this was enough. Usually Sam and Audrey had Christmas at home on their own, one year they’d been to Jilly’s, but mostly Audrey sat through the dinner and scarpered with friends in the afternoon.
Audrey was back less than an hour later after delivering all the wreaths. She’d already taken Layla home. She stroked Claude between the ears, he was comfortably curled up on the arm of Veronica’s chair, paws tucked beneath him, eyes sleepily opening every now and then to check his surroundings. He’d well and truly made himself at home.
‘Did anyone catch you in the act?’ Sam wanted to know when Veronica went to the bathroom.
‘One person. Morris,’ she whispered conspiratorially.
‘What’s he like? I’m desperate to know.’
‘He’s lovely, like you said, a total silver fox. When I said who sent the wreath you should’ve seen him – it looked like all his Christmas wishes had come true.’
‘Whose Christmas wishes?’ Gran came back and settled into her chair, and Claude’s tail lifted in a sign of approval.
‘Morris,’ said Audrey smugly. ‘I met your man.’
‘Oh be off with you, he’s not my man.’