A Typical Family Christmas

by Liz Davies

  Pepe, none the worse for his brief expedition into the garden, slipped past his mistress and positioned himself under the kitchen table, his nose twitching avidly and his gaze on the roasting tin sitting on the counter.

  With a huff, Beverley returned to the living room, satisfied that her pooch was in no immediate danger.

  ‘Mark my words,’ Helen sniffed. ‘She’ll be back in that chair. She’s hardly moved from it all day while I’ve run myself ragged trying to help her daughter out. Did you see the tree I bought, and the decorations? I threw out those scruffy old things and replaced them with some lovely new ones.’ She sniffed again. ‘I must say, Kate didn’t seem all that appreciative.’

  ‘I’m sure she is,’ Brett hastened to reassure her. He was pretty sure his wife wasn’t (from the mood she appeared to be in) but he couldn’t face his mother’s sulking; not after the day he’d had.

  ‘Come and see.’ Helen ushered him out of the kitchen and into the living room, sending him a meaningful look when her prediction of Beverley sitting in the armchair once more had come true. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ She nodded towards the tree.

  Brett winced. God, he bet Kate hated it. They always had a real tree, but he supposed what with the mothers turning up early, his wife hadn’t had a chance to buy one. Brett felt a faint wave of nostalgia course through him – he used to like the tradition of visiting the garden centre and each of them picking out a new bauble. He stared at the generic gold and red shiny plastic decorations, and wondered what had happened to all those carefully chosen ones... didn’t his mother say she’d thrown them out?

  Shit, she had said that. He’d better go and retrieve them before Kate found out. She’d go ballistic.

  At least the lights were pretty, all twinkly and white. Kate always insisted on multi-coloured lights, to go with the multicoloured and totally miss-matched decorations.

  His wife did have a point, he mused, staring at his mother’s tree – this one was generic, corporate. It was similar to thousands of others in offices and shopping centres all around the country. It might be attractive but there was nothing individual about it. Never mind, he decided, it was up now, and there wasn’t any point in causing a fuss. He just wanted to get Christmas over and done with without incident.

  Crash!

  It came from the kitchen.

  ‘What the hell...?’ Brett pushed past his mother, wondering if she’d left something in the oven and it had exploded, although the noise sounded more like something had fallen.

  He shoved the door open, registering the resounding thump as it banged against the wall, and came to a halt.

  Pepe was crouched over the leg of lamb, which was now lying on the floor, meat juices sprayed across the tiles, the roasting tin upended next to it. The dog wore a cat-got-the-cream expression and was worrying at the joint, tearing bits of meat off as fast as his sharp little teeth would let him.

  Helen let out a shriek, right in Brett’s ear.

  Brett yelped, the dog growled a warning, and his mother collapsed back against the nearest counter, fanning herself with both hands, her face the most alarming shade of puce, her eyes wide and furious, like a pair of glass marbles.

  ‘The lamb, the lamb,’ she wailed.

  Beverley stuck her head around Brett, let out a shriek, and dived towards the dog, who growled even louder.

  ‘No, Pepe, no. Naughty dog! Brett, take it off him before he eats the lot,’ his mother-in-law cried.

  ‘He can bloody well have it,’ Brett retorted. ‘If you think I’m going to eat any of it when a dog has slobbered all over it, you’ve got another bloody think coming. We’ll have something else for dinner.’

  ‘I don’t care what you have for dinner – if you don’t take it off him, Pepe will be sick. He could be seriously ill,’ Beverley added with a wail.

  ‘Good,’ Helen snarled from where she was still leaning against the wall, her pretend almost-faint having had no impact whatsoever.

  ‘I’ll do it, shall I?’ Kate pushed past Brett, strode up to Pepe and wrestled the leg of lamb from him. There was one point, Brett noticed, where the dog refused to let go and was hanging on for grim death, while dangling two feet off the floor, but eventually his wife won, and she threw the joint in the bin.

  Pepe, his meal unfairly stolen, slunk out of the kitchen with Beverley hot on his heels, probably to make sure the animal wasn’t about to expire from leg of lamb poisoning.

  Brett, thinking he should do something to help, took a step towards the roasting tin, and slipped on the spilt fat. His legs shot out from underneath him and he landed with a sickening thump on the very unforgiving marble tiles.

  ‘Oomph!’ The breath whooshed out of his lungs, and he lay there winded.

  Kate, his formerly loving, tender wife (it had been a while, he was forced to admit) stepped around him to pick up the roasting tin, threw that in the general direction of the sink, grabbed a roll of paper towels, and proceeded to wipe up around him.

  The last thing she did before striding out of the room once more, was to grab a handful of the takeaway menus which sat on the shelf above the kitchen table, and throw them at him.

  As a flurry of glossy folded menus fluttered down onto this chest, all Brett could think was, Merry effin’ Christmas.

  Chapter 18

  Sam was in his element. ‘The dog ate our dinner,’ he giggled for about the fourth time. ‘You wait until I tell Jack. He’ll be well jeal.’

  Portia blew in through the front door just as Kate was unpacking the delivery, and she could hardly contain her delight when she saw what was for dinner. ‘Pizza! Yay! And it’s not even the weekend. You can come again, Nan.’

  Kate wasn’t sure which grandmother Portia was speaking too, and she didn’t care as long as the child was playing nice. She knew it wouldn’t last, though. Portia hadn’t seen the blow-up bed in Ellis’s room yet, and neither had Ellis, because she was still out.

  Kate prayed it wasn’t noticed until after they’d eaten. She honestly couldn’t face a showdown right now.

  ‘Right, everyone, help yourselves,’ she said, opening the boxes and taking lids off dips.

  Somehow it didn’t seem right to eat pizza and everything that went with it at the dining room table; it was usually a sit on the floor and dive in kind of meal, with the various boxes and cartons spread out around them. But Kate didn’t think Helen would contemplate sitting on a rug to eat her evening meal, and Kate wasn’t sure her mother could get down that far, or if she could, whether she’d be able to get back up again without the assistance of some mechanical lifting equipment.

  Kate normally loved pizza from Domino but this particular meal had developed a subtle flavour of disappointment and disapproval, which affected her appetite.

  Everyone else appeared to be enjoying the selection of pizzas and sides – although enjoying was the wrong word to use when it came to Helen as her mother-in-law picked and poked at everything on her plate with a long-suffering expression on her face. Beverley wasn’t doing much better, as Kate’s mum was systematically picking all the toppings off every single slice of pizza, before eating the mangled remains with an if-I-must expression on her face.

  ‘That lamb would have tasted so much better than this rubbish,’ Helen said, carefully trying to lift a slice out of the box with a knife and fork, instead of grabbing it with her fingers like a normal person. ‘It would have been better for the children, too, I don’t believe in feeding them junk food.’

  ‘You could always have trimmed off the bit the dog ate,’ Kate said, sarcastically.

  ‘Certainly not!’ Helen retorted with a theatrical shudder. ‘That’s disgusting.’

  Portia sniggered and Sam gave his sister a nudge.

  ‘I was joking,’ Kate pointed out. ‘We don’t have junk food that often.’

  ‘I’ve seen the contents of your freezer,’ Helen said. ‘There are enough frozen chips in there to feed the whole street, as well as chicken nuggets and sausages.’
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  ‘Nana is the junk food police,’ Sam said, stuffing a large slice of meat fest in his mouth with one hand, and vigorously scratching his armpit with another.

  ‘Don’t do that at the table,’ Helen said. ‘You’re behaving worse than a chimp.’

  Kate could have told her it was the wrong thing to say to an eleven-year-old boy, if her mother-in-law had taken the trouble to ask her beforehand. But Helen never asked, she only lectured, so the words were no sooner out of her mouth, than Sam was bouncing up and down on his chair, doing a monkey impersonation complete with sound.

  ‘Does he have to make so much noise?’ Beverley implored. ‘It’s bad for my nerves.’

  ‘He’s a child, Mum, of course he makes noise,’ Kate said, then turned to her son. ‘Just not at the table, eh?’

  Sam carried on scratching, although the silly noises and the bouncing stopped.

  ‘Anyone would think he’s got fleas,’ Helen pointed out.

  ‘Pepe hasn’t got fleas,’ Beverley said indignantly. ‘I have him wormed and treated for fleas three times a year, I’ll have you know. And he goes to the parlour every two weeks; he’s cleaner than you are.’

  ‘I sincerely doubt it,’ Helen retorted.

  It was Sam’s turn to snigger. ‘Just think, if people had fleas, like dogs do,’ he began, but his paternal grandmother cut him short.

  ‘That’s not a suitable conversation for the dinner table,’ she said, loftily, then went off on a completely different tangent. ‘I could have dished up the roast potatoes and vegetables.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Even Brett was flummoxed by this comment.

  ‘With the pizza,’ Helen explained. ‘It would have saved them going to waste. I hate throwing food out.’

  ‘Ew, cabbage with ham and pineapple on stuffed crust? No thanks, Nana.’ Portia wrinkled her pierced nose.

  ‘If you ate more vegetables you mightn’t look so peaky,’ Helen retorted.

  ‘Mum, what does peaky mean,’ Sam wanted to know.

  ‘Pale and slightly ill-looking,’ Kate replied.

  ‘That’s funny, Nana.’ Sam was chortling. ‘Portia is peaky, Portia is peaky,’ he chanted, then he changed it to, ‘Peaky Portia, Peaky Portia,’ until his sister threw a slice of garlic bread at him.

  ‘Sam, that’s enough,’ Kate said. ‘Portia, stop throwing food.’

  ‘He started it,’ Portia whined. ‘Anyway, I’m not pale, It’s my makeup.’

  Helen snorted. ‘I thought make-up was supposed to make you look prettier. Yours just makes you look ill.’

  Portia’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m a Goth. I don’t expect you to understand. You’re too old.’ And with that, she pushed her chair away from the table, got to her feet and flounced out of the door, but not before she’d grabbed another slice of mushroom, pepper, and sweetcorn thin and crispy on her way.

  Kate took a deep steadying breath as her mother-in-law tucked into a generous portion of garlic bread. ‘I thought you said you had a dairy and gluten intolerance,’ Kate said to her. ‘You do realise garlic bread has both in it?’

  ‘I never said such a thing,’ Helen replied, chewing carefully.

  ‘You did! I bought you some gluten-free bread especially.’ Kate was holding onto her patience with both hands.

  ‘Nonsense. I’ve never been intolerant of anything in my life!’

  Kate bit back the obvious retort.

  Before she could say anything less antagonistic, Ellis put in an appearance in the form of barging in through the front door, yelling, ‘I’m just going to get my charger,’ and darting up the stairs.

  Oh, shit... Kate began to count, one, two, three.

  ‘Mum!’ Ellis’s shriek could probably be heard on the moon. ‘What’s this blow-up bed doing in my room?’

  Kate winced as her eldest child thundered back down the stairs.

  ‘What?’ That came from Portia, who hadn’t ventured into her sister’s room to steal anything so far this evening and therefore hadn’t seen the new sleeping arrangements. More thundering.

  Ellis burst into the living room first, Portia hot on her heels. ‘There’s an inflatable mattress in my room and I want to know what it’s doing there,’ Ellis ranted, her hands on her hips and her eyes flashing.

  ‘It’s obvious, stupid,’ Portia said. ‘They expect me to sleep in your room. Huh! I don’t think so.’

  ‘Don’t call your sister stupid,’ Brett said, and Kate practically snarled at him.

  Trust him to focus on the least important thing. The girls called each other far worse things than “stupid”, and name-calling was the least of her worries right now.

  ‘Why don’t you make Portia sleep on the living room floor?’ Ellis suggested, pulling a face at Portia. ‘She can sleep there just as easily as she can bunk down on the floor in my room, and it would mean I don’t have to put up with her all night. Do I have to think of everything around here?’

  ‘Ellis, I’m not having your sister loll about in the middle of the living room until lunchtime. It’s not fair on everyone else,’ Kate said.

  ‘You’re just being selfish, making me have her in my room. Why don’t you have her in yours, if you’re so worried about where she’s going to sleep?’

  ‘I know,’ Portia said to her sister, ‘why don’t you sleep on the living room floor?’

  ‘I’m the oldest. I should have certain privileges. It’s not fair.’ Ellis stamped her foot.

  Kate stared at her daughters in dismay. Brett kept his eyes down and his mouth occupied by cramming it full of meat feast with added spicy chicken, so he didn’t have to speak to anyone, least of all have to deal with the situation. Kate sent him a furious look.

  ‘Ellis, Portia, you’ll do as you’re bloody well told,’ she hissed. ‘I don’t care if you don’t like it. Portia, you’ll sleep on the air bed in Ellis’s room, and Ellis, you’ll just have to suck it up. Mum, you can have Portia’s room. As soon as we’ve finished eating, I’ll put some fresh sheets on the bed.’

  There, that told ’em, she thought. But of course, it hadn’t. She should have known better.

  ‘I don’t want to put the girls out,’ Beverley said, giving Helen a sly glance out of the corner of her eye. ‘It’s not fair to oust Portia from her bedroom. I slept really well in your bed, Kate.’

  I bet you did, Kate thought uncharitably. Their nice, huge comfortable bed, with its en suite and its dormer window with the fantastic views. Who wouldn’t sleep well in a bedroom like that?

  ‘Your mattress is better for my arthritis than the one in Portia’s room,’ Beverley added.

  ‘How do you know, Mum; you’ve never slept in Portia’s bed.’

  ‘No, but I’ve sat on it, and it’s awful hard on old bones. If I have a flare-up, I won’t be able to travel.’ Beverley’s smile was radiant.

  Kate heard the sub-text, and so did Helen by the sudden look of horror on her face. If Beverley didn’t get to stay in Kate and Brett’s room, she was threatening to stay until the New Year.

  Dear lord, take me now, Kate pleaded silently. She wasn’t sure how much more of this she could deal with.

  Ellis and Portia, sensing victory, fist-bumped each other in a rare show of sisterly solidarity, before going their separate ways, leaving Kate open-mouthed and close to tears in their respective wakes.

  Helen silently fumed, knowing it was useless to object; Beverley tucked into what was left of her decimated pizza with a serenely smug smile; Sam stared at all of the adults in turn, a chocolate-chip cookie halfway to his mouth, his eyes wide; Brett gave a resigned sigh and reached for a spicy chicken wing and a couple of potato wedges.

  Kate sat there, feeling blindsided. Dear God, what on earth had just happened? One minute she’d been reading her girls the riot act, the next she’d had the rug pulled from underneath her and was now very much on the back foot.

  She knew she wasn’t making much sense, but the situation itself didn’t make much sense. Her whole bloody family didn’t make m
uch sense. Her life didn’t—

  ‘Ow! Damn and blast!’ Kate felt a set of sharp canine teeth sinking into her ankle as Pepe took his revenge for Kate taking the leg of lamb off him, by giving her a quick nip when her guard was down.

  It was at that point she took herself off to the bathroom for a bit of a cry.

  Chapter 19

  It wasn’t like Brett to bunk off work, but he’d seriously had enough, and he wasn’t just referring to work, either. Sleeping on the sodding air bed again hadn’t helped his mood or his back. Since when did it become a thing for the lower spine to play up? His hips hurt too, and he briefly wondered if he would need a hip replacement in the future. If he did, he’d lay the blame on having spent two nights on the floor. OK, he’d actually slept on the sofa the night before, but it hadn’t been that comfortable, either.

  He’d also cut himself shaving and had left the house with a piece of toilet paper dabbed on the nick. He hadn’t bothered with breakfast because the ache in his back made him feel a little nauseous. Besides, there was no coffee left in the jar, so he hadn’t been able to make himself a hot drink, then the car had needed de-icing, and he’d discovered that one headlight was out.

  ‘Bugger it,’ he muttered, reached for his phone, and called in sick.

  Then he had no idea what to do with the rest of his day. He could hardly go into Worcester, because someone might spot him. Pershore was out of the question for the same reason, and besides, Kate knew most of the people who shopped there, and someone would be bound to shop him.

  He sat there for a moment, his breath steaming up the inside of the windows, while outside they began to refreeze. He’d go to the garden centre, that’s what he’d do. He’d buy a newspaper and sit in their little café and read it. All day, if he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  It was far too early for it to be open, though, so he decided to drive to the nearest retail park where there was a greasy spoon café, and treat himself to a fry up. A big plate of bacon, sausage, and eggs should see him right, then he’d have a coffee and a cake at the garden centre, and read the adverts pages where jobs were listed. He didn’t expect there’d be much he could reasonably go for, not if he wanted to maintain the family’s current standard of living (and he did want to do that), and especially not at this time of year, but at least he’d feel as though he was taking a step in the right direction. His New Year’s resolution would be to find another job, one without The Abyss in it, breathing down his neck with her unrealistic demands.