The Mother of All Christmases

by Milly Johnson

Palma always bought the Chronicle from the Co-op on Friday mornings before Joe and Annie picked her up. She didn’t say anything until they had reached The Crackers Yard because she didn’t want Joe to crash the car with shock. She pretended it was the first she had heard of it when she unfolded the paper whilst Joe was making the drinks.

  ‘Clint O’Gowan’s dead,’ she said. ‘It’s the lead story.’ She handed it over and Annie took it from her slowly, disbelief registering on her features. Annie read silently but her mouth moved over the words.

  ‘He died in Dodley?’ she asked, shifting her gaze to Palma and there was a question in her eyes.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me, in case you’re wondering,’ replied Palma quietly. Annie had told her to keep it between themselves that she had a past association with Clint. Joe carried a raw spot for him that would never heal.

  ‘Palma, I didn’t mean that,’ Annie hastily assured her.

  ‘I’m just saying it though.’

  Annie carried on reading.

  ‘Convicted drug dealer Clint O’Gowan, of White Street, Ketherwood was found . . . cause of death was a blow to the head . . . bundled into a wheelie bin . . . dumped in a field at the side of the railway line . . . missing since the previous night . . . People appealing for witnesses . . .’ She took the newspaper through into the kitchen and passed it to her husband.

  ‘Joe, look. He’s dead. Clint O’Gowan.’

  Annie noticed how hard he gripped the newspaper to read it, then she took in the dark scabbing on his right hand which suddenly acquired a terrible relevance. Her brain started spinning. Had O’Gowan died the same night that Joe was in Dodley picking up her takeaway? The night he took over an hour to come back. The night he’d returned with a lukewarm meal and bleeding knuckles.

  ‘Good,’ said Joe, tossing the paper on the work surface. ‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ and he returned his attention to the kettle.

  *

  Palma had a hospital appointment that afternoon to check on her anaemia, and Annie was glad she was out of the way because she needed to talk to Joe in private. She knew that whatever was troubling him was big and sensed he was trying to protect her in some way, and it frightened her why that might be. As soon as Palma had left, she walked into the office and found Joe sitting with his head in his hands.

  ‘Joe, what’s wrong? It’s something to do with Clint O’Gowan, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I knew it as soon as I saw your face when you read the paper.’ She reached for his arm and he moved it away before her hand made contact. ‘You have to tell me, love.’ Urgency in her voice now; she felt a shudder of pain through her soul.

  He lifted his head and she saw the despair etched on his face, ‘I as good as killed him, Annie,’ he said.

  *

  Effin was having his first therapy session with Alex Cousins, who he presumed would be a man but she wasn’t. She was a very nice woman, it had to be said, with a welcoming smile and a beautiful calming voice, but he’d have felt more comfortable talking man to man.

  When they were halfway through their session, Alex thought a change of position might help, because Effin had erected more barriers than there were on the Thames. Effin needed to relax before he could let her into his head and, she suggested, the best way to do that might be for him to lie on her very comfortable couch whilst she conversed with him from outside his line of sight. With his eyes closed, and her soothing tones now coming from somewhere behind him, Effin immediately felt as if his shredded nerves had climbed down off a ledge and could take a break.

  Effin didn’t realise he had given away as much as he had, chatting with Alex Cousins, but after only the first session she had it figured out that whatever was happening in his present life had deep roots in his past. She didn’t enlighten him on this for now but made notes that for the next session, they needed to go back in time, maybe to things he didn’t know he was carrying as baggage. Because somewhere in the junk file of his head lay the answer to why Effin’s mental state was in such turmoil.

  *

  Annie had never seen Joe look so crushed before. Not even when he stood shamed in court, not even when Annie was inconsolable after the adoption process was terminated with such sudden ferocity. But here he was sitting at a desk littered with cheerful novelties and he was sobbing.

  ‘What did you do, Joe? Did you . . . was it you . . . ?’ She couldn’t get the words out. Joe, her Joe? It wasn’t real. Clint O’Gowan was dead and still he was casting his stinking shadow over their lives.

  ‘That night when I went for the Chinese. I had just come out with the order and I saw him, across the road at the side of the pub there, walking up the High Street. I knew it was him straightaway because he has been in my head for years, but he didn’t see me until I was at his side. And then he turned to me and he recognised me and he smiled and he said, “We meet again, Mr Pandoro”.’

  Annie couldn’t feel a beat in her heart.

  ‘Did you hit him, Joe? I understand why, if you did.’

  ‘I wanted to . . . but . . . no, I didn’t,’ said Joe and Annie’s heart kicked hard, as if his denial had restarted it. But now she was confused.

  ‘It happened so quickly . . . I saw his face change. He was looking over my shoulder and then he started running and I was knocked off my feet . . . two men came from nowhere, out of the pub, I think, shouting at him . . . shouting his name. They disappeared up an alley that goes to a field and I . . . I . . . I don’t know what made me do it, Annie, but I followed them. I saw one of the men shaking his hand as if he had just hit something and he was laughing and he said to the other, “Well that was easy.” That’s when I noticed him lying on the grass, face down and I knew . . .’ Joe took a deep breath ‘. . . I knew he was very hurt. And I was glad. And I went back to the car and I started to drive home but . . .’ Joe sighed, buried his head in his hands again, jabbered a mouthful of heartfelt Italian. ‘. . . I had to ring someone, I couldn’t . . . not do it. I took out my mobile but . . . God forgive me, I was afraid I’d be traced. They’d find out our history, we’d be dragged into it all again. So I drove to the call box in Hodroyd. I rang the police and an ambulance from there and then I hit a wall with my fist because I felt ashamed that I might have had a part in something that I had imagined so many times in my head. I shouldn’t have driven off, I should have rung straightaway. Because I didn’t, they couldn’t find him. Because of me, these men had the chance to hide him . . . move him like rubbish into a bin . . . a bin! Oh God. I might have saved his life had I . . . had I not . . .’

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ Annie threw her arms around him. He was shivering, her dear kind Joe. ‘This wasn’t your fault. You should have told me all this when it happened.’

  Joe was distraught, inconsolable. For years Clint O’Gowan had been dangling on the edge of Annie’s consciousness: turning up in the newspaper with a mention, bringing him back to the forefront of her mind when he’d sunk to the back; through his association with Palma, or a chance sighting and now this. She wasn’t going to let him ruin another moment of their lives. She wasn’t going to let him bind his rancid self to her husband through guilt.

  ‘Joe Pandoro, Clint O’Gowan is dead and it was nothing to do with you. Let him go, love. In nine weeks max we will have our baby, he didn’t stop us having one. He was a hurdle in our lives and we cleared him. Because of you, you’ – she forced him to look at her – ‘his family will at least be able to bury him. Think of that. You did more for him than he deserved. Your conscience is clear. You’re a good man, Joe.’

  ‘I was going to hit him. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been pushed out of the way.’

  ‘Yes you do, because you could have punched him, but you didn’t, you held back. What ifs can drive you mad, Joe. What did happen is that someone else killed him, not you. Don’t let him spoil anything for us anymore. He is gone and we are here. Think of us and the future, not him and the past.’ She lifted his hand and placed it on her stomach and said again, wi
th gentle firmness. ‘Let him go, Joe. Let him go.’

  Chapter 52

  Palma was thirty weeks pregnant now. She had her bag packed at the side of the door in case the baby came early: big T-shirt nighties, big pants, big bar of fruit and nut, nursing bra, nappies, cotton wool balls and nappy bags, a magazine to read. She had everything she and her baby could possibly need in the house, not only for those early days, but beyond. She had built up the cot and fastened the mobile of pastel-coloured farm animals above it. Sometimes she wound it up and let the tinkly lullaby play and she imagined her tiny daughter smelling of Johnson’s baby powder snuggled up in her pink ‘Gracie’ blanket closing her eyes and falling to sleep.

  She could hold everything together away from the hospital, keep all her worries and fears packed away in the maternity bag in her head. All her life she’d been able to put on a front, pretend that her life wasn’t crumbling behind a brave façade. She’d gone to school like normal kids, doing her adding and subtracting and no one ever knew that every day, she was terrified she’d arrive home and find her mother with her head smashed against the stone hearth or in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. She’d washed and ironed her school uniform, pretended to herself that her mother had waved her off looking pristine, when in reality she hadn’t seen her for days. She’d pretended to everyone that being in care was no big deal, when she was dying inside with shame. Then Grace Beresford had come along. She’d never had to pretend anything with her. But Grace was gone and she was on her own again, pretending that everything was fine in Palma’s world.

  She finished reading the Chronicle on the bus home from the hospital. On the back page there was a full report on Tommy Tanner and how his training regime had cranked up considerably now there were only seven weeks until the defence of his title: hard runs every day – sometimes three miles, sometimes ten – eight to ten rounds of sparring every night with tough southpaws to prep him for fighting with Frank Harsh, the contender for his title. And then . . . words that were magical to her: On Monday, Tommy returned from a week-long intensive training camp in Poland. He hadn’t been in the country when Clint had met his end. She felt a bomb of relief detonate inside her, but it was too dark a place there for its flash to last long and it was snuffed out two lines down by a quote from Tommy: ‘I have nothing in my mind but what is happening on 23 December. The only face I have in my head is Frank Harsh’s. There is no room for anything or anyone else.’ He had said the words to the newspaper but she knew they had been meant for her.

  The Daily Trumpet would like to apologise to Mr Gilbert Philips for an article that appeared in the Gardening Special supplement last weekend for unfortunate wording under the photograph where he was won best in show for his giant peonies. He did not win best in show for his giant penis as the article stated. We apologise for any embarrassment sustained by Mr Gilbert.

  Chapter 53

  Effin worked late on the Sunday, mending the hole in the grotto floor, though he had absolutely no idea how a trickle of water could have rotted the wood as badly as it had. Come next weekend, Winterworld would be open seven days a week in the run-up to Christmas. They were already in the first week of November and he had no idea where the year had gone to, but he wished it would hurry up and bugger off because it had been awful. Next year would be better. Angharad had persuaded him to take a cruise – three whole weeks. Seven nights sailing across the Atlantic where he would be forced to rest, seven nights sunning himself in the Bahamas and then seven nights home again. He didn’t know how to relax without doing anything; but he’d have to learn. His elder son was getting married and Angharad was on a diet so she could compete in the fashion stakes with the mother of the bride. She’d lost four stone so far and was looking less like a middle-aged woman – whom it had to be said he loved dearly – and more like the foxy young thing he had married. But whatever was wrong with his mind had spread to other regions and his trouser soldier wouldn’t stand up on duty. He was far too young for that to happen and he knew that Angharad, who had always been so wonderfully demanding where sex was concerned, was looking forward to making that cruise ship rock.

  He’d checked the wages seven times now to make sure they were right and not cocked up like they were again last week. He couldn’t understand how he could have got it so wrong: Thomas, who’d only worked one day had walked away with more than Arfon and Mik combined, who had worked their bollocks off. This time, he’d taken no chances and saved the calculations to a memory stick, after being shown how to do it by the Missus, and mailed them to himself as a backup. But it was all so time-consuming and brain-knackering.

  After he had finished for the evening, he locked up the office, pulled his car keys out of his pocket and set off walking out of the side gates when he heard a noise to his left. Just a small one but he’d always had the ears of a bat. It was a noise with an echo attached, as if it had been made in a cave and so there was only one place around here that it could have come from. He turned towards the source of it, Santa’s Grotto, where he had spent more time than he’d wanted to today, repairing the dratted hole that had so mysteriously appeared. He’d mended it, checked it was mended and then mended it a bit more, to be absolutely sure. A herd of morbidly obese elephants could tap dance on it now.

  ‘Hello,’ he called. He was answered only by silence.

  ‘That you, MacDuff? I’m watching you watching me, you bloody haggis, just so that you know.’

  Still nothing.

  A nice cup of tea, a pasty and beans then a bubble bath and a chat with Angharad before bedtime would sort him out, he decided. His bloody brain was playing tricks with him. Now he had thwarted his forgetfulness with OCD checking, it was trying to introduce ghosts and ghoulies into the equation. Well, he wasn’t going to let it. Besides, ghosts couldn’t undo holes, so he was safe to go home and forget about things. So he reckoned.

  Chapter 54

  It felt like a new week in every sense of the word to Annie. She had a lightness in her that hadn’t been there for a long time, years maybe. As if a splinter, which had wormed its way under her skin and defied reaching, had unexpectedly drifted into a position where she could pull it out. It could have been hormones of course, the same ones which had given her the energy to clean the house from top to bottom at the weekend, including changing all the curtains. Joe would have been furious if he’d seen her, but he’d gone off to do the big shop. Annie felt invincible, euphoric. She’d read about the nesting phase in her Miriam Stoppard book but she hadn’t expected it to grip her with such fervour. She wished she could bottle it and sell it.

  Joe was still wracked with guilt; he had considered driving to the police station to tell them what he knew.

  ‘Which is what exactly?’ asked Annie. ‘You saw two men who you can’t describe chase O’Gowan up to a field. If the police had any CCTV footage they’d have checked it and know that already. You owed him nothing and still you gave him more than I would have done. There’s no debt to pay, Joe.’

  He was a good, decent man who knew right from wrong and they’d bring their child up to know it too. They could guide and teach and give him or her the smoothest runway possible and hope that when they lifted their wings, they would follow the best flightpath and head for the sun. She was more than ready for motherhood to properly begin. She felt like Boudicca as she squeezed herself into the car to drive to work.

  *

  Palma took a deep breath and rang Annie’s mobile. She didn’t need to fake an ‘ill voice’ because she genuinely had one. Her throat was hoarse from throwing up, her eyes raw from crying.

  ‘Get back to bed,’ Annie had told her. ‘We’re ahead of schedule, plus Iris and Astrid are both here so now they can spread themselves out at the table if you’re not coming in.’

  Palma knew she was trying to make her feel better and she was grateful for her consideration, but it would take more than that to lift her. She couldn’t sleep for her dread of the day when she would have to give birth; sh
e was terrified of it. And it was getting harder and harder to hide the fear.

  *

  Effin was handing out the work sheets for that morning. For Arfon and Mik and their crew it was checking all the electrics. For Ifor and Stanislaw and their crew, carrying on with the snagging list; Barry and Karol, the security cameras needed looking at because they weren’t working – and for MacDuff and young Dylan, a spot of pointing. He knew that young Dylan was as happy with that job as MacDuff hated it. Effin’s morning started off well, seeing Davy MacDuff’s disgruntled expression.

  Effin found the Missus and Santa talking outside the offices. Eve was looking beautiful, Effin thought, with her stomach protruding. She reminded him of how Angharad had been at the last stage of both of her pregnancies: dark hair glossy, skin dewy and stomach the size of a beach ball.

  ‘Morning, Effin,’ she called.

  ‘Morning, Missus. How are you? You’re looking fabulous.’

  ‘I’m heavy, that’s what I am,’ chuckled Eve. ‘I’m not sure I can get any bigger.’

  ‘My Angharad said that. I thought at one point she was going to pop like a spot, but she kept on growing.’ He didn’t add that she had kept on growing after she’d given birth, too. She’d only recently started to lose her baby weight and their youngest was twenty-five.

  ‘We’re heading over to the grotto,’ Eve said. ‘The hole’s fixed, isn’t it?’

  ‘All good and mended.’

  ‘I had an idea what we can use that space at the side of Santa’s throne for. And, whilst you’re here, where do you think would be a good place for us to put a crèche in the park?’

  Being pregnant had opened up whole creative portals in her head. Her body might be tired but her head was buzzing.

  ‘A crèche? For babies?’ asked Effin.

  ‘Er . . . yes,’ replied Eve, wondering what else they could put in a crèche.