I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Tom Becker

  “Thanks,” I say, following her round the cycle barrier and out on to the street.

  “Any time.” And I hope she means it – I’ve had conversations before where the person’s gone back to ignoring me once we’re in uniform.

  We’ve nearly reached my old house and I wonder about telling Amy that this is where I used to live, before I moved in with my nan…

  Until she stops. Right on the drive.

  “So,” she says, tucking the strands of hair that have blown loose behind one ear. “This is me.”

  *

  The first thing I notice is that the door’s shut on the coat cupboard when it should be stuffed to bursting with boots and jackets and ski-wear we never bothered putting away between holidays.

  “Kitchen’s this way.” Amy nods down the hall.

  I know, I want to say. I should have got the words out on the drive, but she asked me if I’d like to warm up and I panicked she’d take it back if she found out this was where I’d lived – and I wanted to come inside so badly…

  “Sam?” Amy turns to see I’m still stranded on the doormat.

  “I – er – shouldn’t I take my shoes off?”

  “Don’t worry about it – we’re recarpeting.”

  Recarpeting? All of a sudden I’m absurdly offended on behalf of something I never gave a second thought to. Taking my shoes off in protest, I pad through to the kitchen where marble surfaces glitter under the expensive spots Dad insisted on. There’s whining and scratching coming from the door that leads into the big back lobby and I stop in the middle of the floor to say, somewhat stupidly, “You’ve got a dog?”

  “Are you allergic?” Amy pauses. The whining escalates to frenzied barks and I shake my head. “Good.”

  As the door opens, a muscular bullet shoots through the gap, spiralling round Amy before running over to me, snuffling, barking and half jumping up at me, completely disregarding Amy’s, “Violet, no. Down. No.”

  An odd name for an English bull terrier.

  “She won’t bite.” Amy crouches down and fusses the dog, still talking to me. “She doesn’t like being shut in, but she can’t be left in the kitchen until we put a child gate up by the lounge or she’d trash the joint. Wouldn’t you, Violet?”

  Violet pants happily as Amy scrubs her knuckles on the dog’s snout.

  “Right.” She stands to open the fridge. “What can I get you? Greg’s got some craft ale if you want?”

  The face she’s pulling doesn’t make it sound appealing.

  “Tea’s fine – I’m not drinking tonight anyway.” I raise my arm and ping my rubber medical band. “Type 1 diabetes.”

  “Bummer.”

  I shrug. It is what it is – it’s not like I couldn’t drink if I was careful, I just prefer not to. I’ve had hypos ruin enough parties as a kid for me not to risk it now I’m older.

  Amy goes round opening cupboards and looking for mugs, joking about not knowing where anything is, the dog trotting after her while I stand there like a muppet. She finds the mugs in the same cupboard we used, which spins me out. It’s getting weirder by the second that I haven’t told her I used to live here…

  But as Amy walks over, Violet darts under her feet, so that Amy has to stumble to catch herself, tea sloshing out of the mugs.

  “Violet!” Amy tuts at where the tea’s soaking into her top. “Can you keep an eye on the dog while I go and sort this out? The top’s Mum’s and she’ll kill me if I’ve stained it.”

  *

  I hear the taps go on upstairs and I exchange a glance with Violet, who immediately trots off down the corridor towards the lounge. Two seconds and I’m off after her…

  But what I see stops me as effectively as a child gate would have stopped the dog.

  The lounge stretches from French windows at the back to a massive bay window at the front and I’d been expecting to see an echo of how it used to be, but this set-up is so far from familiar I could be in a different house entirely.

  Why would they put the sofa there? Or the TV? And there’s a dining table at one end, even though there’s a whole room for that on the other side of the kitchen. There’s books on the shelves instead of ornaments, mirrors instead of pictures and…

  Where’s the tree?

  There are no cards or decorations – not even a tasteful nativity scene that my nan would approve of – and the sight of it swoops through me, as bleak and melancholy as a midwinter carol.

  “Sam?” Amy’s voice makes me jump. There was a time when no one could possibly have snuck up on me in this house. When she sees Violet looking guilty on the sofa, Amy snaps her fingers and the dog scuttles shame-tailed back to the kitchen.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I tried to stop her.” And then, “Where’s your tree? Or … are you, like, not into the birth of Jesus?”

  Amy laughs. She’s changed into a big jumper that’s sliding off one shoulder, the cuffs curled round her fingers. “Totally into it, but Mum’s old-school. Nothing up until Christmas Eve.”

  “Not even cards?” Although the answer is all around, on the empty mantelpiece and windowsills.

  Amy waves a hand at a sprawl of envelopes in the middle of the dining-room table. “Waiting to be opened on the twenty-fourth. Mum insists it’s tradition to leave it until the last minute, but she’s like that whatever the time of year.”

  As we head back to the kitchen, I ask where her mum and Greg are.

  “Some Christmas ball back home – or where home used to be. In Edinburgh.” Amy sips what’s left of her drink before registering my confusion. “Someone needs to dog-sit.”

  “And they were fine leaving you on your own?” I can’t imagine either of my parents being so cool about it – even less so my nan. It was hard enough persuading her to let me stay over at Bazza’s.

  Amy nods. “It’s not like I’m going to have a party, is it? I don’t know anyone.”

  “You do now.” I raise my mug in a ‘cheers’ kind of gesture.

  “Do I? All I know is that you don’t like your nan keeping bread in the fridge.”

  “It’s a very important detail.” But the chill I’m going for is ruffled by the way the tops of her cheeks crinkle when she smiles. I gulp my tea carelessly and cough. “So – er – what do you want to know about me?”

  “Anything – what you like to do for fun, what’s your favourite film or food or animal. What superpower you’d choose. Where you grew up…”

  “Here.” I say it before I chicken out.

  “OK, that was a bad question…” She hasn’t understood.

  “I meant here.” I point down at the floor. “In this house.”

  She thinks I’m joking. You would, wouldn’t you? But then she gets that I’m not.

  “Why didn’t you say?” Amy stares at me like there are more secrets to see.

  “Seemed a bit rude to bring it up … like, ‘Oh, come for a drink in my house,’ and I’m all like, ‘Actually, that used to be my house,’ and –” I’m floundering – “it seemed weird.”

  She doesn’t say anything and whatever groove we’d found is lost as I turn my mug round, imagining the handle ticking off seconds on the face of a clock. When a minute has passed, I say, “Bazza might wonder where I’ve got to…”

  Like he’s even noticed I’ve gone.

  “Maybe you should head back, then,” Amy says without looking up.

  “Um – can I use the loo before I go?” I sound like a little kid.

  “You know where it is.” And I can feel her gaze following me out to the back lobby. Stepping over Violet’s bedding and into the cloakroom, I find everything the same as ever, right down to the brand of liquid soap. Closing my eyes, I rest my weight on the sink. I wish I hadn’t come inside, spoiling my memories of the past with looking at the present, comparing lives as if there’s a choice between one and the other. This isn’t my home any more and all I’m doing is cocking everything up.

  Amy’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen when I come ou
t.

  “Are you going back to the party because you want to, or because of me?”

  “Um…” I say, because I’m that articulate.

  “I mean, you can, but don’t leave because you think I’ve got the hump about the house. It’s not a big deal.” She narrows her eyes. “Unless you stalked me at the party just for this?”

  “You were the one who spoke to me!”

  “A good stalker would have orchestrated that.” Her head’s tilted, lips twisting prettily to the side as she suppresses a smile.

  “I’m not a good stalker,” I say, grinning as I add, “I’m deeply mediocre.”

  I get a laugh for that and when Amy tucks her hair behind her ear, I see she’s pinked up a little, even though it’s cooler out here, surrounded by windows and tiles.

  “Well, if Bazza’s not going to miss you too much, would you like to hang out a bit longer?” She sounds careless, but I think of her going to Bazza’s party because it was better being alone in a crowded room than being alone in an empty house.

  Maybe having my nan around isn’t as bad as the alternative.

  I message Bazza to let him know where I am as Amy makes more tea, talking all the while about her old house – tall and narrow with more staircases than floorspace. I like the burr of her voice, the way she smiles or laughs at the things she says, and I could sit here, feet resting under the hot bulk of a bull terrier, and listen to her all night long. When her words slow to silence and she looks at me across the table, her eyes sparkle and I notice the way one of her teeth crooks over the other.

  “So, do you want to have a nosey, then?” Amy nods to the door.

  *

  Amy says the dining room will be her mum’s office because Greg’s already snagged the other one. She means the den.

  It’s upsetting to see a room designed for pleasure put to use as an office: the flatscreen replaced by a world map with coloured threads pinned across the oceans; a printer and paper shredder, and piles of files and folders where there should be a sofa and beanbags. Greg’s desk takes up so much space that it’s hard to imagine a pool table ever fitting in here.

  But if you look closely enough, if you know what you’re looking for, you can still see the faint spatter on one wall where Theo opened a can of Coke I’d shaken up, and the burnt spot on the carpet where I dropped a match.

  “I spent a lot of time in here,” I tell Amy.

  Upstairs, the dog – who Amy’s become lax about disciplining – potters into the master bedroom and wuffles around the carpet, but I’m drawn towards a different door, one pin-pocked and blotchy from Blu-Tack.

  “This was my brother’s room.” I scan the walls, remembering pictures that aren’t there.

  “It’s going to be my sister’s,” Amy says.

  “Where’s all her stuff?” The only thing in here is a futon.

  “With her, at uni. She’s putting off coming back to a house she doesn’t feel is hers.” There’s a lot of feeling behind that sentence.

  “It’ll feel like yours soon,” I say.

  “Will it?” Amy looks so sad that I push myself harder to find something that will help.

  “It’ll feel like yours once you discover its secrets, when you come home and know by the shape of the silence whether there’s anyone else here, when you stain the carpet or mark the wall. It’ll feel like your home when your sister’s back and you’re putting up old decorations somewhere new, building a bridge between the Christmases you used to have and the one you’re having now…”

  It’s the most I’ve said since I set foot inside and I trail off because somewhere along the line I stopped talking about Amy’s new home and started talking about mine – Nan’s. A home where the owner let us put up a tree too big for the front room so we’d have enough branches for all our old ornaments. A home where our cards are crammed on to shelves we don’t own as if they’re as important as the ones addressed to Nan.

  Amy looks at me and I heat up under her scrutiny.

  “Could you introduce me to the house?” she says with a smile. “I’d like to get to know it better.”

  I start with the creaky spot on the landing, moving on to the step you can trust on your way down, but not on your way up. In the bathroom I show her the secret ledge behind the boiler and the knack to flushing the toilet. Then we get to my room – Amy’s room – where tonight’s full moon casts shadowed gridlines on the carpet. Before Amy can reach for the light, I guide her to the spot by the window.

  “Feel that?”

  “Yes,” she says, and I become hyper aware of the soft material of her jumper on my skin, the cold moonlight bleaching us into black and white.

  “The hot water pipes run under here.”

  “Violet’ll like that.” Amy shifts to look through the faux-leaded glass to the back garden below, asking me what the neighbours are like.

  “That side’s an old couple who are well into gardening – I used to help them out, cutting the grass, lifting things, weeding and whatever. Washed their car, too.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “Not that nice – I got paid. I was saving up for a watch.” I pull back the sleeve of my top to show her. The face is scratched and the strap needs replacing, but this watch was the first thing that truly belonged to me. The first thing I earned without Dad swooping in and making up the difference.

  “My dad wants to buy me a new one for Christmas,” I say.

  “I like this one,” Amy says quietly.

  And I nod, because I do, too. There was a time when I measured how valuable stuff was by how much it cost, but when they got divorced – when we had the chat about money and how we didn’t really have any – it made me think about all those things Dad had spunked money on … sports equipment and TVs and computers and pool tables. Things worth nothing when you can’t afford a home to put them in.

  Amy frowns at my watch. “Is that the real time?”

  “No, I like to sync with a different time zone to the one I’m in.” I’m getting better at this flirting business.

  She slaps me lightly on the arm. “Violet needs to go out.”

  *

  The cold has more weight to it than before, pressing through the material of my jacket. I stand with Amy at the top of the back steps, watching the ghost-white blur of the dog, zigzagging around the lawn.

  In my mind, though, I’m the one who’s on the lawn. I’m mastering a Pelé flick and learning to control the ball with my chest. I’m a child with a pump-action water pistol, fighting with my friends. I’m a dutiful son carrying a tray of iced drinks to where my parents laze in the dappled shade of the trees that line the back fence. I’m a big brother, yelling at Theo to come in for tea. I’m a teenager, standing here with a girl and wondering what it would be like to kiss her.

  “Violet!” Amy calls out. “Where are you going…?”

  She puts one hand to her mouth and lets out a short, painfully sharp whistle that the dog ignores, her solid behind wagging away as she dives through a bush.

  Amy groans, but I’m grinning.

  “Come on!” I run across the lawn, holding out my hand for Amy to join me. “There’s one more secret to show you…”

  There’s the gentle slap of feet on the grass, then her hand, hot from her pocket, slides into mine and I’m pushing back familiar branches, bare and scratchy, to show Amy the gap running between the bushes and the fence.

  “This used to be our special tunnel,” I half whisper, thinking of the few summers where Theo’s idea of fun overlapped mine and we would come back here to hide from our parents.

  The dog’s up ahead and I tug Amy with me, glancing back to see her smiling wide and bright in the dark, a dry leaf caught in her hair.

  “I’d have loved this place as a kid,” she says. Then she squeezes my hand and adds, “Kind of love it now.”

  At the end of the fenceline I let go to push aside more branches, stamping across the back of the compost heap, following Violet as if she’s
the one who knows where we’re going. Amy and I are squashed over and panting, breath as loud as the rustle of the bushes and the crack of twigs beneath our feet. We reach the far corner of the garden – inaccessible by any other route – and emerge into the space beneath the tree that stands there.

  Amy squints at the sky through the web of branches as she walks towards the trunk and runs her palm over a series of thick lines scored into the bark.

  “Is this where you measured yourselves?”

  “It was Theo’s idea.”

  Mum had painted over the doorframe where she’d been measuring us and he’d wanted somewhere more permanent. Somewhere our history would live on no matter how many coats of paint went up. Somewhere that belonged to us … and now belongs to someone else.

  I look at Amy for a long moment, appreciating how she’s quietly allowed me to relive the ghosts of Christmases – and springs and summers and autumns – past. It’s something I’d like to repay.

  “Let’s measure you,” I say.

  It’s not exactly accurate, using the flat of my hand as a measure and gouging a line with the keys from my pocket, but that’s not what matters.

  “You’re almost as tall as me,” I say, not looking at the tree, too distracted by the girl, taking in the strong line of her eyebrows that, even now, have a slightly sarcastic slant to them, her eyes curving up in the corners like she’s teasing me with just a look.

  I’ve never wanted to kiss a girl as much as I want to kiss Amy Sparrow and I let that feeling push me closer until her breath becomes mine and our lips meet, her hands on my jumper pulling me in…

  And her dog barking and scrabbling up my leg.

  We part, shy and breathless and smiling, and we leave our tree – our kiss – and push back through the secret tunnel until the three of us are out in the open air once more. Amy points to the snow spots in the sky, drifting down, light as ash on the air.

  “Amy,” I say, my heart stuttering at the way she turns to look at me. I reach into my pocket and pull out my keys, unwinding one from its split ring and holding it up. The key to the front door that I cut for myself – the one I kept secret because I wanted to keep the house.