by Neal Doran
‘I was checking to see if your wayward son was online, dear. Thought he’d be missing the smell of your sacrificial sprouts,’ Howard said with a wink, before leaning in to James’s shoulder adding, ‘although those Angry Birds aren’t going to propel themselves into those green piggies are they, eh?’
James grinned back and gave Howard a pat on the back. Her dad being a slight, wiry man, watching him and James together often reminded Rebecca of watching an old lady’s Jack Russell terrier strutting about at the park bossing around a big, cheerful family Labrador.
‘Lunch smells gorgeous already, Penny. Have you done your potatoes?’ asked James.
‘I did an extra tray, just for you.’
‘What a woman!’
Over the years, it had been while watching him comfortably chat away with her parents that Rebecca had got an idea of what James must be like at work. Comfortable in a formal setting, but able to be relaxed and friendly. Respectful without being fawning. He’d been able to do it since they first met, and throughout the five years since, he’d been able to effortlessly play by their rules. It was a trick she’d never mastered, either at work or with his parents – although they were a bit odd so it wasn’t entirely her fault. She was just amazed at James’s ability to be someone else in these situations. OK maybe not someone else, but not exactly the same as the man who would burp ‘I love you’ after his first bottle of beer and bag of Doritos on a Saturday-night-in in front of the telly.
And it had only taken about eight seconds for her dad to get in his first dig about her timekeeping, she noticed. But these things weren’t going to bother her any more, or at least not today. Today she was going to be a woman serenely with child, and not a stroppy teenager who they just didn’t understand.
‘Toot-toot!’ James murmured in her ear with a supportive hand on her bum as they filed into the house behind her folks.
‘So have you heard from Matty?’ Rebecca asked her mum as they split away from ‘the boys’ and Howard took James to see a new programme for his computer.
‘We got a call last night, it was already Christmas where he is, and he was just going into work at the hotel, and some of the people from his hostel were getting together to have Christmas dinner on the beach.’
‘Sounds like he’s having a fab time.’
‘It’s a funny way to spend Christmas, his first time away from home. I hope he’s OK. I just worry he’s not going to eat enough before drinking. Or they won’t cook something properly on the barbecue and he’ll get food poisoning.’
‘You just worry, Mum.’
‘I just remember that time he got carried away and had that barbecue chicken that hadn’t finished cooking and was terribly ill for more than a week. He doesn’t think about these things, and he won’t have anyone to look after him.’
‘That happened over a decade ago, he was seven!’
‘Still, having him ill on the other side of the world would be the last thing we’d need right now.’
‘Right now…?’
‘And the thing is, it’s got everything on there you’d ever need to know. Do you know how much data it stores?’
‘Gigabytes, I’d bet.’
‘Terabytes! Terabytes of the stuff.’
As Dad and James came back into the room Rebecca felt a fluttering in her stomach. The champagne or Buck’s Fizz question would be next, it was coming up to the time to tell them.
‘Right then!’ barked Howard, with a clap of his hands. He opened his mouth to say something, but paused, looking at Penny like he’d forgotten his next line.
‘I was just telling Rebecca that Matthew had called last night and it was already Christmas,’ said Penny.
‘Ha! Yep, yep, yep, he’ll be pissed and chasing around some poor Aussie girl with the mistletoe by now, the little bugger.’
The expectant silence returned to the room. Dad always does the big host thing, thought Rebecca, this was his favourite moment. So why was he standing there with his hands in his pockets?
‘I’ll just go and get the stuff in from the car,’ announced James.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Rebecca.
‘No, no, you’re fine. Not in your cond…’ Rebecca’s eyebrows flared at James across the breakfast counter. ‘I mean OK, you can grab the pressies.’
The couple scurried out to the car.
‘What the hell is going on in there?’ asked Rebecca as James opened the boot.
‘I know, I know, sorry, it almost slipped out.’
‘Not that. With Dad.’
‘He was just showing me one of his heritage research programmes. He likes me to see this stuff, he’s just being nice in his way.’
‘Are you doing this deliberately?’
‘What?’
‘The atmosphere! I had to get out of there.’
‘That was about ninety seconds. Are you trying to set some sort of new record?’
‘Something’s going on. Did Dad say anything to you?
‘Just the usual. He’s really getting into the family tree stuff this time, said it’s good to get away from it all.’
‘What did he mean by that? Get away from what?’
‘Come on. You’re just edgy about telling them, let’s go and spread some joy, eh? That M&S bag for life’s got the stuff for your folks.’
James bounded up the stairs with the overnight bag, while Rebecca slowly headed back towards the kitchen. As she walked in she saw her mother’s eyebrows flare at her dad, and her dad hop slightly.
‘Presents, oh goodie!’ said Howard clapping and rubbing his hands together as James reappeared by Rebecca’s side. ‘Right then it’s officially Christmas. Drinkies time. Champagne or Buck’s Fizz?’
‘Straight up bubbly for me please,’ said James grinning, while looking Rebecca in the eyes.
‘Just an orange juice for me please,’ she said, bouncing on her heels gently, her tingly fingers fluttering by her side.
Meaningful looks bounced around the room. Rebecca’s parents looked at her, tentatively checking they weren’t jumping to conclusions. Penny looked at Howard, fiddling with the wire on the champagne bottle. James stepped across to link fingers with Rebecca, and grinned at his in-laws with a cheeky look on his face. Penny was already in tears.
‘Something you two want to tell us?’ asked Howard. ‘You’re not on those anti-bi –’.
‘I’m pregnant!’ Rebecca said.
There was a delighted shriek and gruff cheers as Penny and Howard swooped on their daughter. James had never seen the two of them move so fast as congratulations and garbled questions built up on top of each other, Rebecca answering half of one before moving on to the next, speaking garbled happy nonsense. Then the attention turned to him, with hugs and back slaps and laughter.
‘A toast! Drinks for those drinking,’ declared Howard. ‘And juice and a seat for the new mummy.’
‘To be,’ added Rebecca, taking the seat being offered at the kitchen breakfast bar, while her parents fussed with glasses.
‘To the new master Winfield,’ pronounced Howard. ‘Or miss. Mzz, I suppose. Do you know what he’s going to be yet?’
‘They won’t know that kind of thing yet, dear,’ said Penny. ‘Always getting ahead of himself. No patience, your father.’
‘It’s still very early days yet. Only seven weeks so, y’know, there’s still a chance it won’t… We probably shouldn’t really be too…’ said Rebecca, unable to complete the warning.
‘We’ll be fine,’ said James, with an arm around her, while Penny surreptitiously tapped the counter top. ‘I’m practising my breathing already.’
‘It’s going to be fantastic. And they’ll get an idea of what they put us through, isn’t that right, grandma?’ said Howard.
‘Oh, don’t,’ said Penny with a giggle. ‘Grandma! I’m going to have to book in with the hairdressers for a heap of maintenance work now if I’m going to be a grandma.’
‘Blue rinse?’ asked Rebecca.
> ‘I’ll have to stock up boiled sweets,’ said Penny.
‘And you’ll have to get loads of–’ James was about to make a joke about knitting doilies for ornaments before he remembered the Collinses’ lounge was already full of the things ‘– loads of wool, for booties.’
‘Booties! You remember how many of those your mother made before Becky was born?’ Howard said to Penny, before turning to the kids. ‘We had a house nearly as tiny as yours, just full of them. And you never wore the blighted things! Pulled ’em off, had the occasional suck on one.’
‘I’ve still got them somewhere if you’d like them,’ offered Penny.
‘They’re not going to want those old moth-eaten things,’ Howard said.
‘It’d be lovely to see them if you can dig them out,’ said Rebecca.
‘Retro’s very in, from what I’ve read in the parenting magazines,’ added James.
‘Parenting magazines? None of that stuff in our day, was there, Pen? Just that book by that fellow with the sci-fi name.’
‘Dr Spock,’ said Penny.
‘Doctor, mister, one of those. Like something out of the Star Trek. What was it I used to say to you all the time?’
‘We’re having a baby not a Martian.’
‘Martians make more sense than teenagers though – you’ve got all that to look forward to!’
The two couples stood there, smiling at each other, both having drifted closer during their chat. Penny and Howard side by side with an arm wrapped around each other, James behind Rebecca on her stool, an arm on her shoulder. Sharing memories and a future.
‘We’re so excited. Lovely to have some good news,’ said Howard.
‘That’s a hundred times you’ve said something like that today. Is something going on?’ Rebecca snapped.
‘Something like what? We’re just happy for you, Becky,’ Howard said.
‘We’re fine darling, honestly.’
‘Well now I’m really worried,’ said Rebecca.
Howard and Penny started a semaphore conversation using the top half of their faces, her fluttering eyelids pleading for a reprieve, his eyebrows resigned to getting it over with. Watching them James got an inkling that Rebecca might have had a point that something funny was going on.
‘Now, who’s for a top up?’ Howard asked, clearing his throat. With a wet rattle, he pulled the champagne bottle from the bucket of melting ice and poured more drinks for everyone. Rebecca hesitated before refusing the bottle hovering over her drained orange juice glass.
‘You can’t get anything past my girl, can you?’ smiled Howard. Rebecca’s grip got tighter on James’s hand.
‘Maybe we should wait til –’
‘Mum,’ said Rebecca.
‘Best to do it now, dear,’ said Howard, ‘in fact it’s a good time. This sort of good news puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it?’
He looked around the room expecting acknowledgement of the wisdom, but could only see anxious faces. He smiled his best authoritative smile, and picked up, then put down his champagne.
‘Your old man’s got himself in a bit of trouble with the law.’
Rebecca pulled her hand away from James, and hunched forward in her seat, stifling a shiver.
‘Your father was arrested last week,’ added Penny. ‘I wanted to leave it until at least after dinner.’
‘What…what was it?’ asked Rebecca. ‘The company?’
‘What? No, nothing like that,’ said Howard.
‘It’s a misunderstanding. Mr Maplestone has recommended us a very good expert in the area,’ Penny said.
‘Were you stealing?’
‘We’ll get it sorted out before you know it, all going to be absolutely fine. In a way it’s quite fascinating, the procedure,’ Howard said.
‘Your dad had been out, there was a mix-up, that’s all.’
‘Have you been charged, are you on bail, what’s going on?’ Rebecca tensed and shrugged away as James put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Just let your dad…’ he said.
‘There’s lots of technical terms for it, sound terrible. Very Victorian. Almost funny when you think about them.’
‘Just tell me what’s going on, Dad.’
‘Persistently importuning, lewd conduct, outraging public decency. Like Dickens…’
‘Dad’s been doing a lot of research himself on the internet.’
‘Jesus, are you having an affair or something? You didn’t…assault someone did you?’
‘They offered a caution, but apparently that would involve an admission of guilt, and of course nothing happened,’ said Penny.
‘What the fuck is it?’
‘There’s no need for that sort of language, Rebecca,’ said Howard. ‘You should know that I’m going to be challenging a ridiculous accusation of a public order offence that’s on shaky ground from the start.’
‘I didn’t want legal terms I wanted—’
‘It was the train station. I was caught short, there was a big burly copper in there. He got the wrong end of the stick. I was accused, I think the word on the street is, of cottaging.’
The room went silent. Rebecca went pale. Then she jumped from her seat and ran to the downstairs toilet, where the three of them listened as she noisily vomited.
‘I think that might be the start of morning sickness,’ said James.
Chapter 3
‘Fucking hell, what has he done?’
James could tell Rebecca was stressed by the swearing. She almost never swore, except when she was freaked out about something, and then she wouldn’t stop for hours and days on end. Not that he’d needed a handy pointer to tell him his wife was a little het-up on this occasion.
‘Fuck.’
They were driving further into town, from the leafy streets of Harrow Hill to the slightly scruffier leafy streets of Kilburn.
‘Did they say anything more to you?’
‘Darling, it was brutal, we talked about everything but. We were pretending like nothing had even happened. I’ve never heard so much polite chit-chat from people who’ve known each other for thirty years.’
‘Huh. It’s like the Christmas when I was fifteen, and they got all upset when Matthew told them he knew about Santa. I got the blame somehow, then after a blazing row it was back to endless discussion about how tasty the sprouts are.’
‘It’s such a shame really, to only have them once a year. I hear the secret’s in the blanching.’
‘There really isn’t any need for them to be fucking soggy I hear.’
It wasn’t entirely true that Howard’s arrest hadn’t come up for the rest of the day. In fact, between showing James hugely optimistic financial models for his company and 3D diagrams of car engines that neither of them really understood, Howard had been quite keen to talk about the case. It seemed he was winding up to make a bit of a crusade of it, maybe even scaling back on his work commitments to study up and represent himself.
But James figured this wasn’t something that Rebecca needed to know about right now – Howard would probably change his mind on that. And he certainly wasn’t going to tell her about how it had actually happened that her dad got arrested. Having to hear about bladder challenges for a man of Howard’s age’s, and getting nudges in the elbow about the perennial effects on a man’s anatomy of the bumpy track on the non-stopping Amersham train, had been a worse experience than having to shower with him the time they played tennis at his club.
Now it was the second part of their Christmas family extravaganza, Boxing Day at his mum and dad’s, or Ben and Margaret, as they preferred him to call them.
‘Just a few hours and we’ll be home,’ he said. ‘They have to go out this afternoon, a memorial event for some atrocity or other that happened this time twenty-five years ago.’
‘What memorial is it?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘What happened?’
‘Don’t care.’
Rebecca shrugged that that seemed a
fair enough response. James was permanently cynical about his parents’ humanitarian efforts. She’d never heard someone so uncharitable about people who chose to spend Christmas Day helping at a soup kitchen, but over the years she’d learned to see his point.
‘Darling,’ James said in as plummy an accent as he could manage, ‘what do you say we blow off the lefties and go and get pissed on vodka in the park?’
‘A delightful idea, darling,’ said Rebecca, ‘but I’m not sure that’s such a jolly good idea in my delicate condition.’
‘Hungover, eh? Better make it dry sherry and a quick bunk-up in the rhododendron bushes. That’ll get you spiffy again.’
‘Darling, there’s something I think you should know.’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Well, darling.’
‘I’m listening, darling.’
‘You see, darling…’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m pregnant, darling.’
‘Crikey.’
They grinned at each other, breaking out of ‘Sebastian and Jemima’. James stretched across to give her knee a squeeze and hold her hand while the traffic was stopped.
‘How did that happen, eh?’
‘You were there at the time, chum.’
‘I remember it well. I’ve taken some notes so I don’t forget for the 21st birthday party.’
‘How lovely.’
‘Told you we should have recorded it on my phone.’
‘Mum was as damp as we expected about the whole thing,’ said Rebecca.
‘Damp? She was torrential! You were upstairs, we were bailing out the kitchen with buckets. It was how the turkey was so moist. Basted with a grandmother’s tears.’
‘Well that could’ve been because of…’
‘Come on. We’re focusing on us today,’ said James.
‘The three of us,’ said Rebecca.
‘Or possibly four. Or five.’
‘What do you think you married? A Dalmatian?’
‘There’s a word I could use there about you, but it would be demeaning and sexist and I respect you too much as a human being,’ James said, imitating the way they pretended his parents spoke.
Speaking of some kind of bitch, thought Rebecca.
