by Annie O'Neil
The way Drea said it was so forlorn, so hungry for something more than a weekly exchange of facts and figures, that it made Jess’s heart strain at the seams.
She scrambled for something to say. ‘That’s a nice thing to do. Making a trust for him.’
Drea flicked her hand in the air. ‘He doesn’t care about the money. Bloody bugger wants the trust to go towards something else.’
‘Like what?’
Drea’s gaze darkened, her manicured finger tracing round and round the top of her coffee mug, then looked up to meet Jess’s eyes. ‘He wants to start a domestic abuse safety and recovery house.’
Jess blinked a few times, the fleeting conversation they’d had about women’s refuges leaping to the fore. ‘And is there any reason you wouldn’t want him to do this?’
Drea’s eyes flared hot and bright. ‘He wants to put my name on it.’
Oh. Well. That was complicated.
Jess took a sip of her coffee.
Drea huffed out an exasperated sigh. ‘I will say this once, then we will never speak of it again. Clear?’
Jess nodded, her hands tightening round her mug.
‘Spence’s dad was gone before our relationship had the chance to develop into anything good, bad or otherwise. It was a while before I bagged another bloke, but something about my parent’s insisting I’d never find a man as a single mum made me determined to prove them wrong. The next chap was … shall we say … more complicated. Or classic. Depends upon the angle. Wooed me, told me having a kid was no problem. Promised to take care of us, love us forever, yadda yadda yadda, and then boom! One day I did or said something wrong and—’ She punched her fist out close enough to make Jess flinch. ‘I got my act together. Left. Swore it would never happen again. Went back. And then it happened again. I left again. Found another bloke. And another. There wasn’t always violence, but there was always something. Too tight, too loose, too controlling, too blasé. I was a dark-haired Goldilocks desperate to find my Mr Just Right. When I moved to the UK with Brett – the one from Nottingham – and he turned out to be a proper tosspot, I gave up. No more men.’
‘So … why didn’t you move back to Melbourne?’
‘Too late.’
‘Too late for what?’
‘Spence had already drawn his line in the sand. Told me I had chosen blokes over being a mum long before I boarded the plane and—’ Her eyes brimmed with tears which she quickly shook away. ‘Anyway. You know the rest.’
‘Building the refuge with his trust fund sounds a lot like an olive branch to me,’ Jess said.
‘He wants to make an example of me.’ Drea made a guttural sound at the back of her throat.
‘It sounds like he’s proud of you,’ Jess said. ‘For finding the strength to walk away.’
‘It’s my bloody business, isn’t it?’ Drea snarled. ‘Why the hell would I want people to know my shame? It’s humiliating. The last thing I ever, ever want to do, is advertise the fact that through all of my ‘you have control of your own destiny’ wank in my videos, the truth was, I was the weak one. I not only allowed a man to hit me, but I’d stayed after he’d done it.’
And there it was. Drea’s secret.
As if a tap had been opened inside of her, Jess fully absorbed the fact that all of the loneliness she’d felt while enduring her own shameful secret had been, not for nothing, but … Well. She wasn’t alone. Not in the slightest. Everyone had a secret. Broken dreams like Katie the nurse who’d hoped to win an Olympic medal one day only to have to realign her goals. Martha Snodgrass’s past as a fur-coat-wearing jazz singer now tucked away out of sight. Drea’s abuse. The wrongful accusation that changed Jess’s life forever. Mr Winters’ rage and unspoken anguish over his wife’s senseless death. Everyone was carrying around something in their heart that could, if they let it, make them look as if they’d been dragged through a hedge. Drea had burpeed her way out of her pain. Mr Winters had closed the door on his. Jess? She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing. Trying to move away from it?
Well, that turned out to be impossible. But what she could do was own it, and make sure she was opening her heart to others as she did.
‘Come here, woman,’ Jess walked round to the other side of the breakfast bar and pulled her friend into a hug. Drea resisted at first and then, as if her life depended upon it, hugged Jess with a fierceness that was almost frightening.
After securing a promise to meet later that night in advance of the advent event at number 15, Drea left, Jess pulled on her bobble hat, then tugged on her coat and headed to Mr Winters’.
‘Thanks for inviting me in. I didn’t mean to take up much of your time.’
‘It’s all right, lass. It’s nice to make a proper pot of tea every now and again.’
‘It’s really nice,’ Jess took another sip of the aromatic liquid as proof that she meant it.
‘Lapsang souchong,’ said Mr Winters. ‘It was Anne’s favourite.’
‘Wow!’ Jess smiled, impressed. ‘Your wife knew how to spot a trend.’
Mr Winters forehead crinkled. ‘We first had it in China. Years back, of course.’ He gave a soft laugh. ‘Anne liked it so much she brought a kilo of it home with her. Couldn’t find it anywhere in the UK back then. Not in these parts anyway. It was—’ he did a little mental arithmetic ‘—1979.’
‘You went to China in 1979?’
He nodded. ‘We used to go all over. Brazil. Australia. Madagascar. Never took a business trip without her, up until the children arrived, and even then …’ He drifted off, eyes dropping to his teacup as if it might hold the remains of his sentence.
‘Did the children come, too?’ Jess prompted.
He shook his head. ‘No, Anne was with them most of the time, but her parents had come to stay so she could take the trip to China with me. It had been our anniversary, you see.’ Again, his eyes dropped to his teacup.
‘And what was it you did, exactly? That took you to all of these places?’
‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll find it very glamorous,’ he said with a wave of his hand.
‘I teach children how to manhandle crayons,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sure whatever it is you did – or do – will sound glamorous.’
‘Don’t you make fun of yourself. Teachers are some of the most valuable members of society we have. Anne often spoke of training as a teacher.’
Jess smiled her thanks. Based on his age, she was guessing he and Anne were married back in the 1960s. When children came along, women had often stopped work, unlike in her own parents’ 1980s marriage when ‘having it all’ was the goal. There could’ve been another reason of course, but she didn’t want to pry too much. Either way, she liked how he was speaking about Anne so freely. It had to be difficult. Or, perhaps, a long-awaited joy. His son and he had fallen out thirty-five long years ago. Longer than Jess had been alive. She couldn’t imagine not being able to talk about someone she loved as much as he clearly had loved Anne. Decades of silence because of guilt over something that ultimately he never could have known.
‘I designed and sold vending machines,’ Mr Winters said, giving the teapot a swirl then offering Jess a top-up.
Jessica laughed, delighted. ‘Seriously? How cool is that?’
Mr Winters pulled a face. ‘Cool? I don’t know if I would’ve put it that way, although …’ A soft smile teased away the frown lines. ‘My boy Robert used to love it.’
‘Oh?’ Jess said, desperate to ask a million questions about Robert and whether or not Mr Winters was interested in extending an olive branch to him via Will or any other way. In fact, she would’ve loved to ask a million questions about his entire life, but, as she did with the children at school, she let her silence do the talking.
After the teacups had been refilled and the tea tasted and nodded over, Mr Winters said, ‘Did you know there’s a vending machine in C
hina now designed specifically to sell live hairy crabs?’
She grinned. ‘I didn’t even know there were live hairy crabs to vend!’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised at the things that end up for sale in a specially designed machine. Pizza, burritos, mashed potatoes, cars. All sorts. You need to think outside the box to put it in the box, as it were.’
The pride with which he made the statement made Jess smile. She imagined him saying it to his son and then, had he had the chance, his grandson. A scratchy tickling began at the back of her throat. Before it could gain purchase she cleared it and asked, ‘What was your favourite place? To visit.’
‘Scotland,’ he replied without hesitation.
‘Really? Wow. I would’ve thought with all of your travels you would’ve—’
‘No,’ he cut her off with a shake of the head, his eyes taking on a distant faraway look. ‘We travelled so much throughout the year, Anne always liked to stay here in the UK when it came to taking Robert on holiday.’
‘And is that why he lives there now, do you think?’
Jess clapped her hand to her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say anything about him at all let alone the fact she knew he lived in Scotland.
Mr Winters eyed her silently for a moment then said, ‘Will mentioned he’d been in touch to thank you for forwarding on the letter to me. In his card.’ He nodded towards the window ledge where, sure enough, there was a card with a Highland cow draped in Christmas lights.
‘He did?’ she squeaked.
‘Aye, he did.’
‘And … have you been in touch with him at all? Will?’
Arnold shook his head in the negative. Jess’s heart sank. That was a shame. If his emails were anything to go by, Will seemed a really positive, amazing young man. A grandson anyone could be proud of. ‘Were you planning on it? Getting in touch?’ Already she could picture Will rustling round this big old country-style kitchen, putting together an elaborate, but not highfalutin, Christmas meal for the two of them.
‘I don’t think so,’ Mr Winters said.
‘Why not?’
‘Would you?’ Mr Winters asked, that familiar edge of rancour cutting his words more crisply as he delivered them. ‘If you were in my shoes?’
Jess chewed on the inside of her cheek. It was a fair question. She hadn’t rung Amanda yet. Not because she was scared of her friend, it was more … she was scared of facing the past she used to have. She’d been so swept up in the culture of being a St Benny’s teacher, there was a part of her that wondered if she’d deserved it. Not the punch, obviously, because no one deserves to be punched in the stomach, but … maybe she’d lost sight of what really mattered.
The thought scraped uncomfortably across her conscience. Ethan had mattered. His life had mattered. Still did. Which made her blurt, ‘It might turn out all right.’
Mr Winters’ leather shoes scraped across the linoleum flooring as he crossed his arms defensively over his chest. ‘Tell me, lass. How would you explain to the grandson you’d never met that the reason his father, my son, has not spoken to me in thirty-five years, is because I killed his grandmother? I killed the most beautiful, patient, kind, loving woman the world has ever known, and you think my grandson would be impressed by that?’
‘No! I mean, you didn’t kill her. The diabetes did.’ Jess protested.
‘In Robert’s eyes, that’s precisely what I did.’
‘But you weren’t to know. It’s awful, yes, but none of you knew she had diabetes, let alone the signs to look out for if she was going into a coma.’
Mr Winters gave a violent shudder, as if hearing the word afresh was akin to hearing them the very first time. ‘I knew she wasn’t feeling well.’
‘You said you’d take her to the GP. She didn’t want to go.’
‘I should’ve insisted.’
‘Why? She would’ve insisted otherwise,’ Jess leant forward, forearms on the thick wooden kitchen table between them.
He tipped his head back and forth in a way that suggested he had been over this sticking point a million times before.
The pain in his face was palpable. Jess could hardly bear it. How he’d lived with this burden of guilt for so long and remained even remotely human was beyond her.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said.
‘Try telling that to Robert.’
‘Maybe he knows.’ Jess shrugged.
Arnold gave her a sharp look.
‘Why else would Will have reached out to you? Maybe his father – Robert – expressed some remorse about what had happened between the two of you, but doesn’t know how to make the first move?’
‘That’s his move to make,’ Mr Winters said stubbornly.
Jess was guessing the same stubbornness was why his son hadn’t got in touch. That, or what Will had said was true. That Robert never spoke about Mr Winters and it was purely out of personal interest that Will had sought him out.
Jess gave the inside of her cheek another chew. Now that Arnold knew she knew about Will, there had to be a way to bring them together. She’d ask Drea, but given her track record in the complicated-relations-with-offspring department, she would probably suggest a free airline ticket and a don’t-hold-your-breath policy.
Jess closed her eyes, picturing the disappointment and pain Drea had shown when she thought her son wouldn’t come. She and Arnold were such good people. And they clearly loved their children. They deserved happiness. Especially at Christmas when all of life’s darker moments seemed to grow darker still, attached to some people like unwelcome lead weights. Surely the fact that Drea had finally spoken about her past, and that Mr Winters had mysteriously opened up to her, meant something.
Mr Winters rapped his knuckles on the table and stood up. ‘Right, young lady. I’d best let you get on with your day.’
She rose, not needing more of a cue to wrap up the ‘feelings’ talk. ‘Thanks for the tea.’ She brought her mug to the sink and washed it. ‘So, ummm … do you want me to do anything?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know … it’s coming up to your night for the advent calendar and you obviously missed mine when I was planning on giving you some tips or maybe having a little brainstorm, but I’d be more than happy to—’
‘No, no. That’s not for me, duck. It’s all right for you to keep the wreaths up on the fence, but that’ll be the end of my part in all of this, all right?’
He gave her a look so final, all of the lightness she’d been feeling turned dark. ‘Will you come to any of the events? I hear it’s dreidel lessons at the Goldsteins’ tonight.’
He scrunched his nose up as if trying to remember what a dreidel was, then shook his head again. ‘No. Not for me. I’ll keep myself to myself, ta.’
Jess knew better than to push it. She pulled her coat off the back of the kitchen chair she’d been sitting in and stuffed her arms into the sleeves. Mr Winters stood behind her and helped shift it properly into place. Once again the idea of him meeting Martha Snodgrass came to mind. She was just about to pass on the ‘old farts freezing their bums off’ comment but could tell from the fatigue hitting his features that Mr Winters had had enough for the day.
‘Well, thank you for the tea,’ she gave him a wave.
‘Thank you for the company,’ he said, opening then shutting the door behind her.
Jess headed back to hers not knowing whether to feel elated or gutted. Maybe that was life, really. Part happy, part sad, and it was up to you to find a way to live with both. She turned and looked at his house, the wreaths, hung a bit higgledy-piggledy, looked like a smiley face with the lights on in the two downstairs windows as they were now.
Perhaps she needed to take a page out of his late wife’s book. Meddle with mirth. Bombard him with kindness and maybe one day, he’d find a way to reach out to his grandson and then, perhap
s, his son.
16 December
16 December
05:37
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: More news from Christmas Street
Hey Will!
Jess(ica) here.
I went onto your Insta site and OMG. Your food looks AMAZING! I have no idea what took me so long, but now that I know The Merry Victualler is utterly scrumdiddlyumptious, I plan to be an online devotee and, hopefully, take you up on that brunch offer one day. I’d offer to cook for you, but not entirely sure burnt toast and beans straight from a tin would be your jam.
I hope you’re managing to uncurl your fingers and find some life time in among all of the devils on horseback and shrimp in mink. I’m going to have to tell my neighbour Martha about that one. She is a jazz singer wrapped in mink. Langoustine, pancetta and date purée? I think Oliver Twist put it best: Please, sir! I want some more. That goat’s cheese cake with red onion jam? #DiedAndGoneToHeaven. Who would’ve known to put all of that together? You, I guess. Why aren’t there any pictures of you on Insta or your website? Camera shy or are you maintaining a ‘man behind the curtain’ mystique?
Anyway … not to take up too much of your time, I was trying to think of a discreet way to tell you I have had not one, but two proper sit downs with your grandfather, and I couldn’t come up with one. So … I have had not one but two proper sit downs with your grandfather. He also knows I know about you and that you know about me. He … he’s got his reasons for not writing back. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but I think, when you have the time, you should hear what happened between him and your father from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
There. That’s my interfering ways all wrapped up for the day. T-minus ten days and counting. Then you’re a free agent until … do Merry Victuallers cater for … ummm … epiphany? We three kings of Vietnamese spring rolls? (You can see why I wasn’t drawn to the profession …)
