She’d liked the money, though, he thought with a wry grin: the money that had allowed them to move to the beautiful Georgian apartment in Edinburgh. She’d liked the clothes she’d been able to buy for herself and the girls, and she’d liked having help around the home. All those things cost money and he’d been good at providing it. But what was the real cost? Had he lost the very thing he’d been working so hard for?
‘Here we are,’ Catriona said, entering the room with a heaped tray of food and breaking the negative spiral of his thoughts.
‘That looks fantastic,’ he said, watching as she put a very full plate of eggs, bacon and the rest of the works on the table. She then placed Chrissa’s plate of buttery toast and scrambled eggs next to her after helping her to clear her pens away.
‘Lexi?’ Catriona said.
‘Ah, yes, let me find her,’ Iain said, leaving the room in search of her. He found her sitting on the staircase looking miserable, her phone in her hand.
‘I couldn’t get a signal,’ she said.
‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘we’ll try and find somewhere later, okay? Maybe take a drive out.’
She seemed to cheer up at this and followed him back into the dining room.
‘I’ve made you a hot chocolate,’ Catriona told her.
Lexi sat down next to her sister. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Is there anything else I can get you?’ Catriona asked, tucking a strand of her long red hair behind her ear. It really was the most extraordinary colour, Iain couldn’t help thinking, as warm and vibrant as a blazing fire in the heart of winter.
‘Girls?’ Iain said.
‘No, thank you,’ Chrissa and Lexi said together.
‘Looks like we’re all good, thank you,’ Iain said with a smile before diving into his breakfast. ‘So, what do you two want to do today?’ he asked his daughters as Catriona left the room.
Chrissa gave a little shrug as she ate her eggs and toast.
‘Lex?’
She looked up from her hot chocolate. ‘Do we have to do anything?’
‘We’ve come all this way,’ he said.
‘But what’s there to do in the middle of winter in the Highlands?’ she asked.
‘We could go for a walk around the loch,’ he suggested.
‘Really?’
‘It’s beautiful out there whatever the weather’s doing. We could wrap up warm. It would be fun.’
‘You have a really weird sense of fun, Dad,’ she said.
*
Catriona allowed the MacNeices plenty of time to finish breakfast before she and Fee cleared the table together.
‘How did you get on with Lexi yesterday?’ she asked her daughter.
‘She’s cool,’ Fee said. ‘She has so many clothes and they’re all really nice. And her dad buys her really expensive things like designer sunglasses and watches and stuff.’
‘Don’t keep saying stuff,’ Catriona said. ‘Be more specific.’
‘Aw, Mum – we’re on holiday now and you promised to stop being a teacher.’
‘I’m not being a teacher; I’m being your mother.’
Fee groaned. ‘All right then – things. Her dad buys her all these things!’
‘And?’
‘What?’
‘What’s your point?’ Catriona asked her daughter.
‘There’s no point. I’m just saying.’
Catriona took a deep breath, realising that her insecurities had got the better of her because she knew that she couldn’t buy her children lots of designer stuff. Things. They shopped in the sales. They bought second-hand. They wore clothes until they had more holes than material. That was their life. Not for them was shopping on Princes Street buying ridiculously expensive labels.
‘Okay,’ she said to her daughter, ‘but I don’t think those things make her happy.’
Fee looked at her mum. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, I’ve never seen a more unhappy young woman in my life, have you?’
‘She is rather glum,’ Fee said.
‘Things or stuff don’t make you happy,’ Catriona told her daughter.
‘What does, then?’
‘Family, friends, home, a job you love,’ Catriona said.
Brody came into the dining room with his pet rat, Hank, on his shoulder. ‘What are we talking about?’ he asked.
‘What makes us happy,’ Catriona said.
‘Hank makes me happy,’ he said, tickling the toffee-coloured rat.
‘He makes my skin crawl!’ Fee said, giving one of her theatrical shudders.
‘What else makes you happy, Brody?’ Catriona asked as they took the dishes through to the kitchen.
‘Erm, my computer,’ he said, ‘my phone.’
‘See, Mum,’ Fee said, ‘that’s stuff.’
‘But what is he using his stuff for? To talk to friends, right?’
‘I guess,’ Brody said. ‘Why?’
‘Mum’s trying to persuade me that expensive stuff doesn’t make you happy.’
‘Is this her way of saying that our Christmas presents are all home-made?’ he asked.
‘No!’ Catriona said, plonking the plates in the sink and placing her hands on her hips. ‘I’m just trying to say that there are other things in life which matter more. Like seeing a beautiful sunset or watching an eagle high above the mountain.’
‘As long as you don’t try and fob those things off on us as Christmas presents,’ Fee said.
Catriona threw the dishcloth in the sink. She knew when to give up in defeat.
*
The walk around the loch wasn’t a complete success, Iain had to admit. It was much further than it looked from the windows of the castle and the December wind pummelled and pounded them, causing earache, watering eyes and – even worse – tatty hair. By the time they got back to the castle Lexi was in a foul mood, pulling her beanie from her head and cursing her father for her knotted locks.
‘Just look!’ she cried.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s going to see you.’ As soon as the words were out and he saw his daughter’s face, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say.
‘You just don’t care, do you?’ she said, before stomping up the stairs to her bedroom.
‘What does she think I don’t care about?’ he asked Chrissa whose tattered locks didn’t seem to be causing her quite as much angst.
‘Her,’ she said.
‘But why would she think that?’ he asked. ‘Chrissa? Tell me. What’s she been saying?’
‘Nothing,’ Chrissa said. ‘She doesn’t talk to me. She says I’m too young.’ Her whole body seemed to sink with this statement. ‘Why am I so much younger than she is, Daddy?’
Iain wrapped her up in a warm embrace. ‘It’s just the way things worked out,’ he said. ‘We wanted you much, much sooner, but you weren’t ready to make an appearance.’
‘And Lexi was ready to make an appearance?’
‘More than ready,’ Iain said, thinking of the day when Dawn had announced she was pregnant. They’d been living in the tiniest of flats on the outskirts of Edinburgh and panic had almost got the better of them. But they’d ridden it out and had fallen in love with their little baby girl as soon as she’d arrived. ‘Perhaps I should talk to her.’
Chrissa shook her head as if she was trying to dislodge a wasp from her ear.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Not when she’s like that. She’s mean when she’s like that.’
‘Oh, right,’ he said.
‘Everything okay?’ Catriona asked as she came into the hallway, Bagpipe the deerhound following.
‘Still trying to work that one out,’ he said.
‘Lexi?’ Catriona said.
Iain nodded. ‘We went for a walk around the loch and her hair got messed up and I’m afraid I made a comment that upset her.’
‘Would you like me to talk to her?’
‘No, no, no,’ Iain said hurriedly. ‘This i
sn’t your problem.’
‘It is if it’s under my roof,’ she said, her mouth curving up ever-so-slightly at the edges.
‘I can’t expect you to step in here,’ he said.
‘But I do have some experience with teenage girls,’ Catriona said, ‘and I really don’t mind.’
Her kindness touched him deeply and he was so desperate to try and find out what was wrong with Lexi that he was utterly helpless to refuse her offer, and so he nodded and watched as she walked up the stairs with Bagpipe charging ahead.
CHAPTER 6
Catriona couldn’t help feeling anxious as she reached Lexi’s bedroom door which was resolutely closed to the outside world. She paused, gathering her thoughts. What exactly was she going to say to this beautiful, sad girl? She really wasn’t sure. But she knew she had to do something. The mother in her had kicked in the moment she’d seen the lost girl standing in her hallway on arrival and she knew she had to reach out to her.
‘You wait here, Baggy,’ she said to the deerhound who looked up at her with his mournful chocolate-coloured eyes as she knocked lightly on the door.
‘Lexi?’ she called softly. ‘It’s Catriona.’ She waited a moment and then opened the door which, thankfully, wasn’t locked. The room looked dark and gloomy with the thick velvet curtains shut against the morning and Catriona instinctively walked over to draw them.
‘Please don’t,’ Lexi said. She was resting on her bed with her arm across her face.
‘Are you not feeling well?’ Catriona said, suddenly anxious as she let the curtains fall back into place.
‘I’m fine,’ Lexi said.
Oh, how Catriona hated the word “fine”. How often did people use it when it was quite clear that they weren’t fine? That they were about as far removed from fine as it was possible to get? If she had her own way, the word “fine” would be locked away in the deepest dungeon along with “stuff”.
‘Dad sent you, didn’t he?’ Lexi said, sitting up and pushing her hair out of her face.
‘He’s worried about you.’
‘He doesn’t want to talk to me.’
‘I think he wants to talk to you more than anything else in the world, Lexi.’
The girl’s dark eyes held her own and there was a rawness of emotion in them that made Catriona want to reach out and hug her.
‘Will you talk to him?’ she asked her, daring to reach out and squeeze her hand.
‘I don’t think I can,’ Lexi said in a little voice.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because he’s never around.’
‘He’s around now,’ Catriona said.
‘But I feel like I don’t know him,’ Lexi said and it was the saddest statement that Catriona had ever heard.
‘Well, that’s why he’s made this time for you now,’ she said.
Lexi gave a little shrug of her shoulders. They were much too thin for Catriona’s liking and she made a mental note to make sure Lexi was well fed for the duration of her stay.
‘Just because we’re all stuck here together, it doesn’t mean I have to talk to him. He wanted to come here, but I didn’t.’
‘But he’s making a real effort,’ Catriona said, ‘and you’ve got to try and meet him half-way.’
Lexi swung her legs off the bed and got up. Catriona watched as she walked towards the dressing-room table and picked up a photo in a frame she’d brought with her. She looked at it and her gaze instantly softened.
‘Can I see?’ Catriona asked and Lexi held the frame out towards her.
‘It was at the house we lived in before we moved to the New Town. I was ten and Chrissa was two.’
The two girls in the photo were sitting on the floor beside a Christmas tree bedecked with multi-coloured baubles and lights. But it wasn’t just them in the photo. A dark-haired woman was sitting between them, smiling up at the camera. She was wearing a claret-coloured dress and a necklace of glowing amber beads. She looked like a heroine from a Pre-Raphaelite painting and Catriona was instantly captivated.
‘It’s a beautiful photo,’ she said, handing it back to Lexi who gazed into the photo as if she hoped she might melt into it. ‘You miss her, don’t you?’
Lexi nodded. ‘They’re separated and Mum’s living in America. It’s horrible,’ she said with a sniff. ‘Not America – that’s really cool. But I hate not seeing her every day and I hate that she doesn’t ring every week now. She did at first, but not anymore.’
‘It must be difficult for your dad too,’ Catriona said gently. ‘Think about it. He must miss your mum just as much as you do.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lexi said. ‘He’s too busy to miss anyone.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He just thinks about his work and he’s always late home.’
‘But that doesn’t mean he’s not missing you. He probably wants to be home with you but can’t be.’
‘Why are you defending Dad like this? You don’t know him.’ The look of anger on Lexi’s face instantly aged her by a decade.
‘I’m trying to understand him, that’s all. Like I’m trying to understand you now.’
‘You’re an adult – you’re going to side with him,’ Lexi said, reminding Catriona just how young and insecure this girl was.
‘That’s not a very fair assumption,’ she said. ‘Your dad might think I’ll side with you because we’re both female but that doesn’t make it true, does it?’
Lexi looked lost. ‘I don’t know,’ she said and she flopped down on the bed again, her shoulders sagging. ‘Why is everything so complicated?’
‘That’s the way of the world,’ Catriona said. ‘We think we’ve got it all worked out and that our place in it is safe and secure and can’t be shaken but that’s the precise moment when it can. It happens to everyone, you know?’
Lexi turned her pale face to look at her. ‘Has it happened to you?’
Catriona nodded and took a deep, steadying breath as she sat down on the bed. ‘It has. My husband died two years ago.’ As the words were spoken, she could feel her hands beginning to shake. She still found it so hard to talk about.
‘Oh, no,’ Lexi said.
‘That’s one of the reasons it’s so hard for me to see you and your father so distant with each other. You know, Lexi, the bond between a father and a daughter is so special and I know Fee would give anything to have her father back.’
‘What happened to him?’ Lexi dared to ask.
‘He had cancer,’ Catriona said, and she saw tears rising in Lexi’s eyes. ‘Now, I’m not telling you this to make you sad or to make you feel sorry for us all. We’re coping. It’s not easy and the time around Christmas is always especially difficult. Andrew loved Christmas and we always did something special and silly. But I think you should know that life isn’t perfect and that we all have to go through something that’s going to rattle us, whether that’s a difficult decision we have to make or a divorce or a death. It’s all part of life and we have to get through it as best as we can.’
They sat in silence together on the edge of the bed, a blast of hail pattering on the window, making the bedroom feel even cosier with its curtains drawn against the inhospitable day. Catriona got up and switched the bedside lamp on and the room was bathed in its warm glow.
‘Light is very important,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t allow yourself to sit in the darkness for too long.’
Lexi looked up at her as if understanding.
There was then a strange whining from the hallway and the bedroom door was pushed open.
‘Why’s your dog doing that?’ Lexi asked, turning to see Bagpipe’s face appearing in the doorway.
‘He knows when somebody’s upset and he joins in.’
Lexi was on her feet, walking across the room with the speed of somebody on a mission.
‘Don’t cry,’ she told the dog, bending so that she could wrap her arms around his great hairy neck. ‘I’m not crying anymore.’
*
Catriona found Iain in the living room which had been given to his family for their exclusive use during their stay. He’d lit the fire and was sitting nursing a cup of strong-looking tea.
‘How is she?’ he asked as soon as Catriona walked into the room.
‘Where’s Chrissa?’ she asked.
‘In her room.’
Catriona nodded and sat down on the sofa opposite him and Bagpipe lay on the floor by her feet.
‘She’s upset,’ she told him.
‘She’s been nothing but upset for the last three years,’ he said. ‘Upset and angry and resentful. I don’t know what to do or say. Everything I try seems to be shot down by her. God, I’m doing a bad job!’ His hair had flopped over his face and his cheeks were blazing red in frustration. Or maybe it was his proximity to the fire, Catriona thought. She couldn’t be sure.
‘You’re not doing a bad job,’ she told him.
‘How can you say that? I’m not even coping on a basic level because I can’t communicate with her.’
‘She needs you to be patient with her,’ Catriona said gently. ‘She’s almost a woman now and she’s hasn’t got the person she was closest to in the whole world near her. It’s obvious that she idolises her mother.’
‘You can see that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Catriona said. ‘She showed me a photo of her. She was holding it as if it was the most precious thing in the world to her.’
‘The Christmas photo? She brought it with her?’ Iain ran a hand through his hair which didn’t exactly straighten it out, only pushed it in a different direction. ‘She really misses her, doesn’t she?’
‘Were they close?’ Catriona asked.
‘Dawn adored her girls. Spoilt them rotten too. They were her world. Well, until they stopped being her world.’ Iain gazed into the flames of the fire and Catriona was just wondering what was going through his mind when he started up again. ‘I think she’d been unhappy with me for some time. I know I didn’t spend enough time with her and she’s the kind of woman who needs to have somebody around her all the time. I was at work day and night and the girls were at school. I think she just got jaded and bored. I tried to talk to her so many times, but she’d made her mind up. I could feel this coldness settling between us for months before she finally left.’
The Christmas Collection Page 10
