by AJ Taft
“A client? On Christmas Day?”
“So, Lily and I will get an hour and a half in the pub, while you lot get the dinner ready together.” David stretches. “It’s not such a bad life.”
“But I thought she wasn’t going to speak to me until I promised not to see Lily again,” says Fiona. No one speaks. “I mean, obviously, it’ll be… nice to see her.”
“Ok, ok. Time for a cup of tea,” says Stuart. He smiles at Fiona. “And time for someone else to open a present.”
In the front room, a haphazard pile of presents teeters under the potted Christmas tree. “Oh it looks lovely.” Fiona claps her hands again. “I feel terrible, I haven’t bought any presents. Who’s that big one for?”
“That’s for Lily, from me,” says Jo. “Open it.”
Lily drags the box into the centre of the room and pulls off the paper, as Stuart lights the fire. “A Nintendo Game Boy?”
“My brother’s mate got it from America. They’re not even out here yet.”
“That’s a very generous present, Jo,” says David, “You students, always moaning you haven’t got enough money.”
Jo’s cheeks redden. “I just thought it would be good when we’re back in Leeds.”
“It’s great, thank you.” Lily gives Jo a hug and then crawls under the Christmas tree and pulls out a small suitcase, with a silver gift bow stuck to the side. She hands it to David. “Ok, more presents, this one’s for you.”
“If that’s what I think it is, I don’t want it.”
“You’ve got to take it. I can’t live with it. I’m too young to handle the responsibility. Please. I can’t live with money I blackmailed off my own father, by kidnapping my little sister, scalping her and threatening to kill her. Have some respect for my karma.”
David smiles. “You deserve it to make up for all the things you didn’t have.”
“Please, you could keep it for holidays for us or something, but I really, really don’t want it.”
“Ok, thank you.” He reaches out for the case. “Technically it’s not actually mine, but it may be the closest I come to a divorce settlement.”
“There’s a slight problem,” Lily says as her cheeks fill with colour. “It’s not quite all there, we had some, er, expenses.”
Jo is reading the instructions on the side of the Game Boy box intently.
David holds up his hand. “Don’t worry. And thank you. It’s certainly better than the customary tie I was expecting,” he jokes, and then his face falls as he sees the crestfallen look on Lily’s face as she hands him another, smaller, tie sized package.
“Oh, gosh. I’m sorry…”
Lily throws her head back and laughs. “Joke. This one’s yours.” She replaces the small package under the tree, and picks up a thin, square parcel.
He opens his gift to find a 1979 limited edition picture disc of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “Oh wow, this is great. I used to really love this album. How did you know?”
“I just thought you’d like it.”
“I have something for you too.” He reaches under the Christmas tree and hands her a small package. “I bought it for you a long time ago. My mother has been keeping it safe. I never got the chance to give it to you.”
Inside is small blue box containing a tiny silver bracelet, meant for a child, but with a silver clasps that allows it to expand as the child grows older. Lily’s hands start to shake as she pulls it out of the box. She sees the engraving ‘Lily Ann 3/8/70 I think of you always.’
Lily leans over Fiona on the settee and kisses her father on the cheek. “I love it.”
“I can’t breathe,” squeaks Fiona.
“Will someone go and put the kettle on?” asks David.
“I guess that’s me and you. Come on.” Stuart says as he pulls Jo to her feet. They leave David with his daughters.
“I just want to say, girls, this is the best Christmas I could have wished for.”
“Enough with the touchy feely stuff already,” laughs Fiona, as she crouches down to the Christmas tree again. “There’s loads more here.”
When Jo and Stuart return with the tea tray, they eat Danish pastries and chocolate croissants, while opening the rest of their presents. Jo gives Fiona tickets to see Jasper Carrott in concert, and David has bought Jo a copy of Allen Carr’s, The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. It’s gone eleven o’clock by the time everything has been opened. While Lily and Fiona take turns playing Tetris on the Game Boy, Jo nips upstairs and gets dressed. When she returns to the living room, she is wearing her coat.
“Where are you going?” asks Lily.
“I said I’d nip down to the Shelter, help them serve the tea and mince pies.”
Lily gawps at her, waiting for a punch line.
“Just for an hour or two.” Lily’s mouth is still open as the front door slams.
At quarter past one, David gets his coat on and he and Lily depart for the pub. David turns to Stuart. “You’re welcome to join us.”
Stuart turns to Fiona. “I’ll stay with you, if you want me to.”
“Yes, please,” says Fiona.
“If you’re sure you wouldn’t like some time on your own with your mum? You haven’t seen her for ages.”
“No. Thank you,” says Fiona, politely.
Chapter 40
Stuart opens the door to Fiona’s mother. She glances up and down at him. “So, you’re the boyfriend are you?”
“Well, er, I’m-”
“It’s a simple enough question.”
“I-”
“Your father is one of the few journalists in this country who can string an intelligent sentence together.”
“Ah, yes, thank you. I mean-”
“A shame he hasn’t passed his talents on to you. I’ve come to see my daughter.”
“Yes, er, would you like to come in, Mrs Winterbottom?”
“It’s Ms Hurst, and yes, thank you, I would.”
Fiona is waiting in the front room. She can hear Stuart trying to make conversation, and her mother’s curt responses as they climb the stairs. Fiona pours herself a quick sherry in the glass her dad left earlier on the coffee table. She is draining the glass when her mum enters the room.
“What are you drinking?”
“Sherry. Would you like one?”
“Your father said you’d almost overdosed on the stuff. Haven’t you learnt anything?” Ruth takes off her gloves and scarf and hands them to Stuart. “When are you coming home?”
“I don’t know where my home is anymore.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. You sound like a teenager.” She hands Stuart her coat. “It’s where it’s always been.”
Stuart leaves the room as Fiona asks, “What about Dad?”
“Your father and I have a lot to sort out.”
“I want to live with him.”
“Well you can’t. You must come home. What about school? You’ve already missed a week, which will be difficult to catch up so close to your GCSEs.”
“I haven’t got you a Christmas present. I’m sorry.”
“You can’t live with your father. He hasn’t got a house. And your grandmother hasn’t got enough room.”
“Dad will get a house.”
“On his wages he’ll be lucky to buy a garden shed.”
“I don’t care about the house, so long as there will be someone in it. You’re never there. Who would look after me?”
“Fiona, when I was your age, I was working full-time to put myself through college.”
“Well then, if I don’t need looking after, I don’t have to come home.”
“Fiona, you’re being silly. You have to live somewhere.”
“I’ll live with Dad then.”
Her mother opens her mouth to argue further, but Stuart stands in the doorway. “Perhaps this is a conversation for another day. Would you like a cup of tea Mrs, Ms Hurst? Or a glass of sherry and a mince pie perhaps?”
“Tea will be fine.” Ruth
inspects the settee, and swipes at it a few times before sitting down. As Stuart leaves the room, Ruth turns to Fiona. “He’s lied to me all these years, Fiona; he’s lied to you too. Doesn’t that make you really angry? How can you trust him again?”
“I think he’s sorry and he’s willing to make it up to Lily. You should meet her, Mum, she’s great.”
“Over my dead body.”
“She wants to get to know Dad. Her mum’s just died. She hasn’t got anybody else.”
“Oh, Fiona. She’s probably witnessed our standard of living and decided she’d like a slice of the pie. How do you know she is his daughter? She could be making the whole thing up.”
“I’ve seen her birth certificate. And the wedding album.”
“The wedding album.” Ruth stands up again. She walks over to the window and looks down on the street. “What was she like? His ex-wife, I mean.”
Fiona shrugs her shoulders. “You need to talk to Dad about that.”
“I will never, ever, forgive him for what he’s done. He’s made a complete fool of me.”
“He must have been suffering all these years too you know, having to live a lie.”
Ruth turns to face her daughter, her fists clenched at her side. “You sound like the stupid client I had in my office two days ago. Standing in front of me with a black eye and half her front teeth missing, making excuses for her big bully of a husband; I’ve heard it a thousand times. I will not be one of those women.”
“Dad would never hit you,” says Fiona.
“It’s not about violence. It’s about trust; breach of trust. It doesn’t matter whether it’s through lies or fists. The result is the same.”
“But it’s happened; we can’t just pretend it hasn’t.”
“Fiona, I spent most of my childhood watching my father beat the living daylights out of my mother,” says Ruth, turning to face her daughter. “So don’t talk to me about forgiveness.”
“I didn’t-”
“I lived in fear of him killing her. Not because I’d miss her; that thought didn’t even cross my mind. I lived in fear of him killing her because I was terrified that if she wasn’t there to soak up his fists, he might start on me. And she always, always, forgave him. Stayed with him right until he died; pathetic.”
Fiona sees the tears glisten in her mother’s eyes and it hits her like a slap across the face. Her cheeks burn. “I didn’t know…”
“Yes, well, you don’t know everything. Which brings me back to my original point.” Ruth collects herself with lawyerly efficiency. “You have to come home. Please, Fiona. Try and see this from my point of view. I’m not certain he was even divorced at the time of our marriage. Can you imagine how embarrassing this is for me, professionally? I will have to instruct solicitors in my own marriage.”
They hear Stuart whistling ‘Jingle Bells’ loudly to warn of his arrival. The door opens and Stuart steps inside with a cup of tea and a hunk of chocolate log on a plate. “Do you take sugar, Ms Hurst?”
“No.”
Stuart places the cup of tea in front of Ruth and then sits down on the settee next to Fiona. “Was it a difficult journey?” he asks Ruth. “To get here I mean.”
Ruth doesn’t answer. Fiona stares at the carpet.
Stuart stands back up again. “Do you two want to be alone?”
“Yes,” says Ruth. “Please.”
“Did you want a cup of tea, Fi?”
Fiona looks up at Stuart as if she’s only just noticed him. “No, I’m fine.”
“Stuart, please leave us alone for five minutes,” says Ruth.
“Fi?”
Fiona looks up at him again. “Fine,” she says, unsure as to what his question is. Stuart almost runs from the room.
Lily’s face is flushed red from the cold as she and David make their way back to Stuart’s flat. “Stuart said she only stayed an hour,” says Lily.
“You mean we needn’t have had those last three pints? Shame,” says David, as they let themselves into the flat with the spare key. Stuart and Fiona are in the front room, lying together on the settee. Fiona is in her pyjamas, her hair damp. They’re watching a ‘Miss Marple’. “Your mother didn’t stay long,” says David. “Was everything ok?”
“Yeah,” says Fiona, without removing her eyes from the screen.
Lily hovers by the door. “I’ll just go and switch the oven on.”
“Would you put the kettle on while you’re there?” asks David, taking off his coat and settling into the armchair. “What’s happening? Aw, we’ve seen this one before, haven’t we?”
Lily slips out of the room and shuts herself in the kitchen. She switches on the oven and takes off her coat. “I’m really lucky,” she says out loud, to the foil wrapped turkey, “I’ve got a whole new sister and a whole new dad. I don’t need anyone else.”
Lily glances at the instructions Stuart wrote out last night, so that they could all assume equal responsibility for the preparation of Christmas dinner. Lily’s remit is the turkey and Brussels sprouts. “I can’t covet every bit of her life. She’s been generous to share her dad, I don’t know if I would have been the same. And she’s forgiven me for snogging her boyfriend.”
“He’s yours.”
Lily starts and turns around to see Fiona is standing behind her. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Consider him my Christmas present to you,” says Fiona.
“Shut up.”
“I mean it. He loves you and he deserves a beautiful girlfriend.”
“Ok, too weird,” says Lily, stuffing the bird into the oven. She wipes her hands on a tea towel. “You’re freaking me out.”
“It makes it fairer. I don’t have to feel guilty for being the one that had a dad. I took one man away from you and now you’ve taken one from me. We’re even.”
“I said, you’re freaking me out,” Lily shouts, pushing the oven door shut with her foot.
“But that’s it. Do it again and I’ll kill you.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s up to you. But I think you should give it a chance.”
Lily puts her hands over her ears and starts singing, “La la la la la,” at the top of her voice. Fiona shakes her head and goes back into the front room. Five minutes later, Jo appears in the kitchen, her cheeks flushed with the cold, her hat pulled down over her ears.
“You’ve been gone hours. Where have you been?” asks Lily. “You were supposed to be in charge of stuffing. Have you read the schedule?”
“Alright. What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
Stuart is carving the turkey three hours later, when the doorbell rings. Lily goes down to answer it.
“Jo?” Lily shouts up the stairs. “There’s someone here for you.”
Jo appears at the top of the stairs, wearing a red V-necked T-shirt that Lily hasn’t seen before, and a beaming smile. The blonde policeman from the night Fiona disappeared is standing at the bottom of the steps, clutching a bottle of wine and a box the size of a brick, wrapped in gold paper.
“Hi. Come on up. Everyone, this is Andy. Andy, this is everyone.”
Stuart comes out of the kitchen and joins Fiona and her father at the top of the stairwell. Lily looks up at Jo, with her mouth open. Jo giggles. “I said he could come for dinner. Is that alright with everyone?”
Chapter 41
Alice stands in the bay window of her front room, watching the robin take the crumbs she put out onto the bird table this morning. A Jack Russell sits at her feet, its hopeful gaze shifting every few seconds, between a ragged tennis ball and Alice’s face. Alice absent-mindedly kicks at the ball again, and the dog scoots off after it, bringing it back less than five seconds later. “Go away, Tess. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
When she sees David’s car pull round the corner into the cul-de-sac, she takes one quick glance around the front room, and plumps up the cushions on the settee.
“You’re late,” she says as she opens the front doo
r. David is leading the way down the short garden path. She shoos him out of the way, so that she can watch her two granddaughters, arm in arm, as they make their way from the car to the front gate. Tess bounds out, racing up to Fiona and jumping up at her, getting its little body almost up to Fiona’s chest height.
“Where have you been?” says Alice to David, as she watches Fiona fuss over Tess.
“Sorry,” says David, lifting the bags across the threshold. “We had a very late night.” He winces as his mother cuffs him round the back of the head, despite the fact she’s more than a foot shorter than him. “Don’t, I’ve got a bit of a headache.”
Alice opens her arms to Lily; her hands shaking so much the silver bangles on her arm jangle a tune. Lily allows herself to be embraced, breathing in the scent of lavender. “Let me look at you,” says Alice, stepping backwards. “My goodness.”
“This is all I could have wanted for Christmas,” Alice says, as she directs the girls into the kitchen. Tess keeps jumping up at everyone, desperate for attention. Alice turns to David, “Put the dog in the garden, will you? And take those bags upstairs. Did you remember the air bed? Why don’t you blow it up now so it’s done with?”
“I thought I might have a cup of tea-”
“Oh go on, then I get some time with my granddaughters before your dad gets back from the shop.” David sighs and climbs the stairs.
Alice joins the girls in the kitchen. “I sent your granddad to the shop. I wanted a little bit of time with you on my own first. Would you like a mince pie?” She pulls the oven door down and pulls out a tray of freshly baked mince pies. “Isn’t this wonderful, Fiona? You will never be lonely again, ever. You will always have someone to talk to.”
“Well if you’d have been more honest with me, Granny,” says Fiona, “I’d have had someone to talk to a long time ago.”
Her grandmother’s cheeks flush red. “I know, I know. But what could I do? It was your foolish father. I could have killed him for what he did.” She brandishes the fish slice she was using to lift the mince pies. “I would have done, if he hadn’t have been so heart-broken. I was very sorry, Lily, to hear about your mum.”
