Together by Christmas

by Karen Swan

  ‘It’s not them catching my eye that’s the problem. It’s me catching theirs – and keeping it.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not asking for much, I don’t think – just a nice smile and kind eyes.’

  ‘A nice smile and kind eyes are exactly what you deserve.’ She leaned into him affectionately. ‘Don’t worry, she’s out there somewhere. And you know what they say – you’ll probably find her when you’re least expecting it.’

  ‘Ha, I won’t hold my breath.’

  She looked at him sadly. Poor Noah. He was a big-hearted man, gentle, sweet and loyal – and always firmly in the friend-zone.

  ‘And you? When are you going to find someone?’

  She glanced at him quizzically. ‘I’m not looking, Noah.’

  ‘For the record, I’m not buying what you’re saying about this Sam guy. I don’t believe it was nothing to you – he got under your skin. You want the happy ending, Lee.’

  She smiled determinedly back at him. ‘Yes. And I’ve already got it. Jasper is my happy ending.’

  Noah looked back at her sceptically. ‘And what about when he grows up and – I hate to break it to you – he leaves you? You know all boys leave their mothers in the end.’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ she smiled, waggling a finger at him. ‘That’s why you’re his godfather. The second he turns eighteen, you’re going to sit on him for me and stop that from happening.’

  ‘Oh, I see!’ he laughed. ‘Okay. Well, slight expansion of my godfatherly duties – but anything for y—’ He stopped talking, a small frown on his face.

  ‘What?’ She looked back, following his line of sight towards the hallway.

  He looked confused. ‘. . . Nothing. I think it’s just the kids mucking about.’ He turned back to her, refilling her drink from a bottle on the table. ‘So when are you going back to work?’

  ‘Oh, not till the new year now. With everything that happened with Harry, I told Bart to cancel everything in my diary and shut up shop for the holidays. He’s gone to Morocco with his partner for ten days—’

  ‘Mama!’ She turned to find Jasper tearing through the doorway. ‘Mama!’ He raced towards her, holding a present in his hand. It was a small box, wrapped in pale-blue paper and tied with a green ribbon. ‘Father Christmas came and he gave me this!’

  Lee looked over towards Liam, chatting closely with Mila. It was just like him – Uncle Smooth – to arrange for Father Christmas to come and dole out gifts to the kids.

  ‘He said it was especially for me! Can I open it?’

  She hesitated, preferring he waited till the morning, comme les Anglais. But several of the other kids came tearing through with theirs too, ripping off the paper. It would hardly be fair to make him be the exception to the rule. And he was having such a fun time. ‘Okay fine, just this one though.’

  Jasper pulled off the ribbon – which thankfully hadn’t been double-knotted, the cause of so much frustration and tears in their house – and let it waft to the floor. He tore at the paper and looked at the plain card box. It had its own lid on, like a hat.

  ‘Look inside then, silly; he didn’t just give you a box,’ Lee prompted as he stalled.

  But he kept on staring at it, suddenly reluctant to see what was inside.

  ‘. . . Jasper? What is it?’

  He looked up at her and she sank down to her heels in one movement, eye level with him, knowing something had happened. He cupped his hand around his mouth and said something into her ear.

  ‘. . . What?’ she asked, her voice sounding hollow. She looked back at him, feeling strangely weightless. ‘No, darling, they’re different.’

  She rose to standing again, but Jasper just kept on nodding slowly, contradicting her.

  ‘What did he say?’ Noah asked, seeing the way their eyes had locked in silent communication.

  ‘He said Santa Claus and Sinterklaas are the same person,’ she murmured.

  ‘Oh no,’ Noah smiled. ‘That’s a common mistake for the non-Dutch, but I can assure you, Jazz Man, they are very definitely different people.’

  But as Jasper pulled off the lid and they looked in to find a very old, loved, bedraggled Ducky curled up on tissue paper inside, Lee knew they were one and the same.

  She ran through the apartment, rushing to the front door and staring out into the communal hall, looking up and down for a sign of him. But no one was to be seen on the winding stairs, just a large potted olive tree at the bottom and expensive fresh wreaths decorating the doors, Liam’s own embellished with real pine cones and holly berries.

  Where the hell was he? There were no footsteps on the stairs that she could hear, no drafts from an external door opening. Confused, she stepped back into the apartment and closed the door behind her, feeling her breath coming heavily, her emotions running high. Had she overreacted, jumped to the wrong conclusion?

  ‘Lee?’ Noah peered around the doorway, Jasper beside him. ‘Everything okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Sorry, I . . . I just . . . wanted to see for myself.’ She looked at Jasper and forced a shrug. ‘I’ve never seen Santa Claus before, so . . .’ She couldn’t understand it. She’d been so sure.

  Noah frowned, seeing straight through her bluff, but he didn’t press her on it in front of Jasper.

  She put a shaking hand to her head, trying to pull herself together. ‘Look, I’m . . . uh, just popping to the loo but I think then we should start saying our goodbyes, Jazzy – it’s getting late.’ Just like that, her good mood had gone, her bright evening of determined celebration soured by the blots on her soul – invisible to the naked eye, perhaps, but like shadows on an X-ray, they attacked her from within.

  ‘But I don’t want to,’ Jasper whined.

  ‘Oh. Don’t you want Santa Claus to bring you presents?’

  ‘He already did. He brought Ducky back.’

  ‘Well, you must want other presents too, I’m sure? And wouldn’t it be awful if he came down our chimney and you weren’t even there?’

  He shrugged, looking sulky but also perturbed by that prospect.

  ‘Come on, bud, let’s have one last mince pie before you go, they’re delicious.’ Noah put a hand on Jasper’s shoulder and led him back into the sitting room, as Lee walked into Liam’s bedroom and over to the bathroom door. It was locked.

  ‘Great,’ she muttered to herself, sinking onto the bed and waiting, leaning on her arms splayed behind her, her head tipped back as she stared up at the ceiling, trying to bring her heart rate back down. She’d been so sure when she’d seen Ducky . . . there was only one person who could have given him back. She supposed Sam must have given it to Liam to return to her and he’d given it to Santa Claus?

  . . . But no – Jasper had recognized him as Sinterklaas; he knew they were the same person.

  She heard the bolt slide back and lifted her head.

  ‘Sorry, I was just—’

  Silence thundered as they stared at each other, Sam looking so very normal – and not like someone who could destroy two lives, just like that – in jeans and a shirt.

  ‘Lee—’

  But she was already charging towards him, her arms outstretched and palms flat against his chest, pushing him back into the bathroom again. He staggered backwards against the marble vanity unit, dropping the bag he was carrying, one red velvet arm flopping limply over the side. She stared at it contemptuously. ‘How dare you!’ she shouted. ‘How dare you go anywhere near my son!’

  Sam put his hands up in surrender. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘I don’t want your goddam sorry! I just want you to stay the fuck away from my son, do you understand me?’

  He stared back at her, visibly drawn since their last meeting – that kiss in the car park, the altercation on the ice . . .

  ‘You have no right to go anywhere near him! You don’t speak to him, you don’t give him things, you don’t even look at him!’

  ‘I know. You’re right. I just—’

  ‘No! No justs! No buts!’ She glowered at him, hating h
im, hating what he’d done to them. ‘. . . Don’t you think there was a reason why we didn’t ask for the toy back? His most beloved, precious belonging? Because that’s how much we wanted never to have anything to do with you ever again!’

  He looked away, swallowing hard. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Stuff your sorry! Just stay away from us!’ she cried, her voice breaking on the last word, tears threatening as all her frustration and all her anger disgorged in a single furious stream. He’d ruined it, something that could have been good – more than good. Their few days together – not just the two of them but the three of them – they’d been the best she’d ever known. They’d felt like a family, even though their time together could be counted in mere hours, and now she and her son felt the diminution of going back to what they’d been before, just the two of them . . . He’d spoilt that now – they knew what they were missing. They weren’t enough any more. Didn’t he see that?

  A sob escaped her for what he’d done. ‘You broke his heart! A little five-year-old boy who put his trust in you and looked up to you, and you just tore him apart.’ Hot tears fell, only making her angrier because it wasn’t just for herself that she was crying, but her son, heartbreak rising in her like a bear coming out of hibernation. She shook her head, hating the pity she saw in his face. ‘Don’t look at me like that! You disgust me! I’ve seen angry men in my life and you’re as bad as the worst of them. You’re a monster, just like your father.’

  ‘No!’ His voice, so placatory before, growled in protest. ‘I’m nothing like him.’

  ‘I saw what you are,’ she sneered, staring back at him, hoping he could see the pity in her face. She – they – would move on, eventually; but he would always be this man.

  She turned to leave. She had said everything she had to say to him, her hand already on the door-knob—

  And then his hand on hers, stopping her.

  ‘Get off me,’ she shouted, whipping her hand away and squaring up to him, threat in her eyes.

  He lifted his hands up like a soldier in surrender, removing any semblance of physical threat.

  They stared at one another.

  ‘Lee, I know what you think of me,’ he said slowly, carefully, and she knew he was trying to de-escalate things, to calm her down. ‘You hate me and I . . . I accept that. I don’t blame you—’

  ‘Big of you.’

  His eyes flashed at her sarcasm. He took another breath. ‘. . . But there was more going on than you knew about, and Jasper, he got caught in it for just that one moment.’ His voice wavered slightly. ‘You know I would never deliberately do anything to hurt him. Never.’ He pressed a hand to his heart. ‘It’s crushed me, knowing what I did. I’ll never forgive myself for it.’

  ‘Good. I hope you suffer.’

  He stared back at her with a devastated gaze, seeing her anger, her walls, knowing she would never let him back in.

  Her hand was back on the doorknob again. This time, she was the one doing the leaving—

  ‘I had a brother.’

  Her feet stopped at the past tense, remembering something Aggie had said to her, something that had jarred at the back of her mind. Evert’s waited their entire lives for this moment.

  ‘He killed himself seven years ago. He was fifteen months older and he was . . . everything, to me.’ His voice wavered again as he spoke to her back. ‘He was called Pim, named after the man who put together the first Elfstedentocht, which, alone, tells you pretty much all you need to know about what it was like for him, growing up. My father put all his hopes and all his dreams onto him, burying him with pressure – he had to be the smartest, the fastest, the strongest boy in school.

  ‘I wasn’t strong like him. I was dyslexic, school was a nightmare; I was a dreamer, with no idea of what I was good at or what I was going to do with my life. Pim took the brunt of our father’s attentions so that I wouldn’t have to.’

  Lee turned and looked back at him, hearing the tension quaver in his voice, seeing the strain in his muscles as he held himself still, all but his finger which tapped anxiously on the counter.

  ‘By the time Pim was fifteen, my father had finally accepted his chance had passed and Pim winning it for him became his obsession instead – diet, training schedule, social life . . . Pim went along with it for years. But when the winters were so warm, year after year . . . he wanted to have some fun.’

  He was quiet for a long moment, staring at his feet, his jaw sliding slowly back and forth. ‘I don’t know what happened exactly but they got into an argument; I think it got physical, because Pim left. Just went. He didn’t come home for nine months.’ His eyes narrowed, like he was trying to see something in the bathroom tile. ‘Everything was different after that. He was different, like something had broken inside him. He’d laugh and joke and go through the motions of being happy but there was a sort of . . . flatness to him. His smiles never reached his eyes any more. I thought he’d snap out of it, that it was just a phase.’

  His silences grew longer, his breathing becoming heavier and deeper as something big, something traumatic rolled through him.

  ‘I don’t think it was coincidence that he used Dad’s shotgun.’ The statement hung like cordite in the air. ‘And I don’t think he’d—’ He looked down, sliding his jaw forward slightly, like it was a brake. ‘I don’t think he’d intended for me to be the one to find him . . .’

  Lee’s hand went to her mouth. She knew exactly what he’d seen that day. She knew too well what weapons did to flesh and blood . . . wanted to be the guy that makes it all okay . . . wasn’t sure if I could . . . Suddenly she understood. She wasn’t the only one living with trauma.

  He dropped his head down, leaning against the vanity unit and taking several deep breaths before he looked back at her. ‘I’m not telling you this because I want your sympathy. I’m just trying to explain that . . . I wanted to win for Pim and I lost sight . . . I lost sight of what really mattered. Winning that race was never my dream. You and Jasper are.’ He looked straight at her but she couldn’t speak, not a word.

  ‘I was determined to get you back, to try to explain it all to you then and make you understand and forgive me – until I heard about Harry. And that was it; I knew you had bigger things to deal with than my apology.’ He closed his eyes, the ball in his jaw pulsing. ‘I told myself I just had to wait, but as the days went by and he still wasn’t released, I realized the moment had gone. You don’t trust easily and what I’d done, to the most treasured person in your life . . .’ His voice broke and he coughed into his fist, pressing it to his lips for a few moments, steadying himself. ‘You hated me. Of course you did. I did too. And I know it’s too late now, too much has happened.’

  She stared at him, feeling like she was being held in a vacuum. It was hard to breathe, to move . . .

  He cleared his throat again. ‘But when Liam said he wanted to surprise the kids with a visit from Santa, and asked if I could lend him the costume I’ve worn on the hospital visits . . . I saw an opportunity to try to make it up to Jasper, that was all. I knew he’d be missing Ducky and I thought perhaps I could “send” a message through Santa saying how sorry I was. I thought he needed to hear that, even if you didn’t.’ He blinked, staring back at her with burning eyes. ‘That was all I came to do tonight, I swear.’

  She nodded, believing him. ‘. . . Okay.’ It didn’t excuse what he’d done, but it did explain it at least. She’d seen enough of his father to understand the negative impact on both sons’ lives. She couldn’t hate him now.

  She stared back at him, her heart beating erratically, her mind racing but finding no clear path to follow. She felt on the edge of a precipice – one word, one step forward and she knew she would fall. Headlong in love with him. Into his arms. But there would be no turning back and that terrified her. She needed an escape route. She had always needed that. She couldn’t move.

  He looked like he wanted to say something else but he closed his mouth again and stood up. ‘I
should go. It’s better if Jasper doesn’t see me.’

  She felt the fibres in her muscles flinch, defensively. He was going? Already?

  She watched in silence as he picked up the bag again, taking away the Santa disguise and walking past her to the door. Her heart thudded harder with his every step. She knew she had to say it but she couldn’t.

  He didn’t look at her again as he crossed into the bedroom, didn’t turn back as he stepped into the hall, almost gone—

  ‘I lied to your father.’

  He stopped and she could read the puzzlement in his hesitation. He turned back to her. ‘. . . What?’

  She stared into the silence, her mouth hanging open, scarcely able to believe she’d done it. Said the first words, taken the first step.

  She felt the blood rush in her head. ‘Yes, I . . .’ Could she do it? Go on? Could she be brave like him, and put it all out there? ‘I’ve never . . . used a zoom lens . . . It’s . . . it’s cheating.’ Her voice was wavering and she knew she was growing pale as she willed him to make the connections, make sense of the clues she was giving him so that she wouldn’t have to say the actual words.

  ‘. . . Zoom lens . . .?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her breathing was rapid. Shallow. ‘. . . That jihadi in the picture was never . . . three hundred metres away from me.’ She swallowed, feeling almost faint. ‘. . . He wasn’t even three metres—’

  Silence exploded like a fireball, engulfing them both and rooting them to the spot. Then the bag dropped from his hand and he strode back to her, a look of such sorrow on his face it knocked her backwards. ‘Lee.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said quickly as his hands were upon her arms, tears spilling onto her lashes. ‘I’m okay. I’ve got Jasper. He made it all okay.’

  ‘But . . .’ He frowned, pain a spasm across his face. ‘He’s . . . he’s . . .?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘. . . No?’

  She swallowed, knowing she had to say the words at last. Name it. ‘Jasper wasn’t conceived from the rape.’

  Sam’s face slackened, relief interwoven with bewilderment, fear, pain, dismay . . . ‘But . . .?’