Make My Wish Come True

by Fiona Harper

  Gemma frowned. ‘Which one’s Uncle Tony?’

  ‘Gemma! You’re missing the point! I would never have invited so many if I’d thought you weren’t going to be here to help me.’

  Juliet slumped down into a chair and laid her head on the kitchen table. Her right temple had started to throb right about the time Gemma had announced she had tickets to fly to St Lucia on the eighteenth and she was worried something was going to burst if she didn’t try to calm down a bit.

  She felt like crying. Really crying. Not that eye-fanning, tissue-dabbing kind of crying, but the kind of sobbing that made one sound like a demented baboon and produced lots of snot.

  Gemma swore softly, and Juliet heard the sound of a kitchen chair scraping on the flagstones before the rustle of fabric confirmed that her sister had joined her at the kitchen table. ‘I didn’t realise...’

  Juliet lifted her head and stared at her sister. ‘You never do realise, that’s the problem.’ It was high time Gemma took responsibility for her actions. Juliet wasn’t going to let her off the hook because she’d mumbled out an apology and made puppy-dog eyes. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Gemma wailed. ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing! You sent me that snotty text and then there was a situation at work, and...’

  ‘Spare me,’ Juliet said drily. ‘We all know how wonderful your job is and how it’s so much more important than anyone else’s. It must be such a hard life sucking up to movie stars all day long. Boo hoo.’

  Gemma glared at her. ‘There’s a lot more to it than that! I don’t just float around batting my eyelashes, you know. I’m one of the most sought-after Second ADs in the business.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry. I forgot to bow down and worship at the Temple of Gemma! I do beg your pardon.’

  A hardness appeared in her sister’s expression that Juliet had never seen before. ‘I think I preferred it when you let it all fester away inside, kept neatly in place with a ten-foot pole stuck up your bum,’ she informed her.

  Juliet stood up and walked over to the window. ‘Well, you’re the one who pulled it out,’ she said in a superior tone. ‘It’s not my fault if you don’t like the stink.’

  * * *

  THERE WAS THAT. GEMMA couldn’t deny that she was the one who’d unleashed this no-holds-barred version of her sister. The phrase be careful what you wish for came to mind, but she’d never been one for listening to advice. Especially her own.

  It had just been a moment of impulsive madness at the end of a really long shoot, when all her mental energy had been used up and the only thing left floating around in her head were those tropical paradise fantasies she’d been indulging in for weeks. And then Juliet’s sniping text had arrived and it had just sent Gemma over the edge.

  ‘Why would you promise something like this and then go back on it?’ Juliet wailed.

  To be honest, the gin had pretty much wiped that conversation from her memory banks. She couldn’t actually recall promising anything. ‘I always say I’ll be around for Christmas,’ she muttered, ‘and I never am.’

  Juliet almost laughed at that. ‘And that’s supposed to make it better?’

  Gemma shook her head. The second the words had left her mouth she’d realised how lame they sounded. But before she’d spoiled everything with the impulsive click on a holiday advert at the top of her web browser she really had been intending to spend Christmas in Tunbridge Wells with Juliet, not that her sister would ever believe that now.

  I’m sorry,’ she said, really meaning it. ‘I promise I’ll come next year, stay a month if I have to.’ Why did she do these things? Sometimes she really needed to think before she reacted, especially when Juliet was involved.

  Juliet folded her arms and looked at her. ‘If you have to...?’

  Okay, that hadn’t come out right. ‘I meant, if you need me.’

  The haughty look on her sister’s face told her she needed Gemma about as much as she needed a hole in the head. The realisation hit Gemma like a bullet to the chest. No wonder she avoided coming here. Juliet wasn’t interested in creating some balance in their relationship, and this... This was just another point-scoring exercise, with Gemma cast as the loser right from the outset.

  Well, this time Gemma had some ammunition of her own to throw. ‘You know why I stay away? You really want to know?’

  ‘Enlighten me, o wise one...’

  That sarcastic, supercilious tone Juliet often used on her, and only her, got right up her nose. ‘Because even if I do the right thing, I do it the wrong way. Even if I try, I haven’t tried hard enough. It’s exhausting being your sister! I can’t be the person you want me to be, because the person you want me to be is you! I’m not you, Juliet. And, guess what, I don’t want to be!’

  Uh-oh. Maybe she’d gone a little too far with that one, because Juliet went very, very pink in the face and she seemed to be struggling to form a coherent sentence. Gemma’s eyes widened as Juliet marched right up to her and poked one beautifully French-polished nail in her chest.

  ‘Well, maybe I wish I could be as selfish as you are! Maybe I wish I could bugger off to the Caribbean and leave Christmas to someone else for once. God knows, I deserve it!’

  As Gemma stared back at Juliet, her brain and mouth empty of words, she realised how much older her sister looked. How much more tired. There were new lines round her eyes and her highlights hadn’t been touched up in months. She hadn’t noticed earlier, because Juliet always looked so polished, and she supposed she always expected her to be that way, but looking at her now was like looking at one of those paintings made of dots—from a distance it all looked so put together and pretty, but close up it was a bit of a mess.

  This wasn’t just some usual Juliet rant about family responsibility. Something was wrong. Something was really wrong. And it looked as if it had been building up for months and no one—not even Juliet—had noticed it.

  Gemma had never really believed in bolts of inspiration from on high, but that’s what happened to her in the following seconds. A blinding moment of clarity.

  ‘Maybe you should,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe I should what?’

  She looked Juliet straight in the eye. ‘Bugger off and leave Christmas to someone else for once.’

  Juliet stared at her. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Gemma said, standing up and meeting her sister at eye level. ‘You always have to do it. Maybe it’s time someone took over.’

  Juliet’s mouth twitched and Gemma couldn’t tell if she was going to laugh or cry. ‘And how—excepting angelic intervention—would that happen?’ she said, with more than a touch of desperation in her tone.

  ‘Take my plane tickets and go to St Lucia for a fortnight.’

  * * *

  JULIET STARED AT HER sister. ‘Have you had an aneurysm or something? I can’t just drop everything, leave my kids behind and flit off to the Caribbean for a fortnight.’

  Gemma stared right back at her. ‘Yes, you can.’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’ And then she shook it some more. ‘That’s the kind of thing you do, Gemma. It’s not me. I can’t. And what would I do about Christmas? I’ve already invited everyone! I can’t cancel on them less than a fortnight before the big day. Who’ll cook the dinner and everything?’

  ‘I will,’ Gemma said, looking deadly serious. ‘We’ll swap. You can have my Christmas and I’ll do yours.’

  That’s when Juliet began to laugh. And not just tittering giggles; she threw her head back and bellowed her amusement out until her lungs were sore and her eyes were streaming. The kids, who’d very sensibly been hiding out in the living room since the two sisters’ return, came running to see what all the hilarity was about. When Juliet opened her eyes, she found them all standing in th
e kitchen staring at her. Violet, in particular, looked a little worried. She was clutching on to Polly, who wasn’t fazed at all, just curious. The boys were young enough to join in and laugh along with her, without really knowing what the joke was about.

  She took a steadying breath and smiled at them.

  ‘What’s up, Mum?’ Vi said, her expression watchful.

  Juliet sighed. ‘Nothing. Auntie Gemma just said something really, really funny, that’s all.’

  ‘It wasn’t a joke,’ Gemma mumbled.

  A little hiccup of laughter escaped from Juliet’s lips. ‘I know.’

  Gemma put her hands on her hips. ‘I could cook Christmas dinner!’

  The expression on her face reminded Juliet of when Gemma had been around two and Juliet seven, and Gemma had refused to wear nappies any more because her big sister didn’t. As always, she’d got her way, and, as always, everyone else had been clearing up the messes for weeks afterwards.

  ‘It requires not only cooking skills, but organisation and strategic planning,’ Juliet warned. ‘You can’t just get up in the morning and wing it, you know.’

  Her sister glowered at her. ‘You have no idea what I do all day when I’m at work, do you? Logistics is my thing. It’s what I do best.’

  Juliet did her hardest not to start laughing again. And failed.

  The younger kids wandered off now the fun was over and it looked like another spat was brewing. Only Violet stayed to hear the whole thing out. ‘Why are you talking about Auntie Gemma cooking Christmas dinner?’ she asked. ‘You’re not going away, are you?’

  That sobered Juliet up pretty quick. ‘No, darling. I’m not.’ She’d thought Vi had been the least upset of all her children when she’d had to break the news they weren’t going to be seeing their father over the Christmas holidays, but maybe she’d allowed herself to be fooled by a bit of teenage bravado. She walked over and hugged her eldest, and Violet even let her. ‘Gemma just made a joke about me going on her beach holiday and her staying here to look after you all. It wasn’t anything serious.’

  Gemma huffed out a breath. ‘I said it wasn’t a joke! I was trying to be nice.’

  ‘You are nice, Auntie Gemma,’ Vi said, peeling one arm away from her mother and inviting her aunt to hug her from the other side. Gemma rolled her eyes, but she didn’t turn her niece down. So Juliet and Gemma stayed like that for a few moments, joined by a fifteen-year-old and almost touching, but as soon as Violet released them, she and Juliet retreated to opposite corners of the kitchen, eyeing each other like boxers in a ring.

  Juliet kept staring at Gemma, but used a soothing voice on her daughter. ‘Can you go and check what the boys are up to, Vi? It’s gone awfully quiet, and that usually means trouble.’

  Violet looked nervously between her aunt and her mother, then left to check on her brothers.

  Gemma lifted her chin. ‘I meant what I said. The offer still stands.’

  Juliet shook her head. It felt heavy on her shoulders. ‘I know you did,’ she said wearily, ‘and that’s the saddest thing of all. Because if you really knew me, if you really understood one tiny thing about me, you’d know that I’d never abandon my kids at Christmas.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JULIET WOKE UP WITH her face stuck to something smooth and flat. And moist. She poked a finger at the edge of her mouth and discovered she’d been drooling. She blinked a couple of times and tried to make sense of her surroundings. The hard thing beneath her cheek was the kitchen table. The overhead light was on and its harsh glare made her want to close her eyes again, but she pushed her body up with her hands so she was sitting up straight and looked around. A heap of satiny fabric and tinsel lay strewn on the table in front of her.

  Oh, yes. Polly’s angel costume.

  The last thing she remembered was rubbing her eyes and telling herself just another ten minutes and then she’d crawl upstairs to bed, set the alarm for five thirty and then get up and finish it off in the morning.

  She twisted her head to look at the clock on the wall. Ten past two. She moved her jaw, loosening it a little. She was exhausted, but that was hardly surprising. She’d always been pleased all of her children had wanted music lessons, but now she was starting to wonder if it had been such a good idea. Not only was there the inevitable ferrying of her brood to and from those lessons, but Christmas brought a flurry of rehearsals, dress rehearsals and finally the ear-splitting performances themselves.

  And then there was the baking, the standing behind trestle tables and handing out glasses of wine poured from boxes that she always seemed to get roped into. She was on the PTA of both her children’s schools, and they didn’t even bother asking if she was going to organise the refreshments each year any more. They just assumed she’d take charge, pull together a rota of willing—and not-so-willing—helpers, wave a magic wand and, hey presto, wine and mince pies, orange squash and Santa-shaped cookies would appear from nowhere.

  She linked her hands, straightened her arms above her head and stretched to loosen out the kinks in her spine, before yawning wide and long, and then she stared at the mass of half-finished angel costume on the table in front of her.

  She just needed to finish tacking the tinsel round the hem, then make a halo out of a mangled coat hanger and more sparkly stuff and it’d be done. Of course, it should have been finished weeks ago, all ready to go, and it would have been—if she’d known about it. But at teatime, while stuffing her face with pasta and home-made tomato sauce, Polly had enquired loudly where her angel costume was.

  ‘What angel costume?’ Juliet had replied, her heart racing and an icy sensation washing over her.

  ‘The one for the carol concert,’ Polly had said and turned her attention to twirling tagliatelle round her fork. ‘Miss Barker gave us all a slip to take home with what we had to wear.’

  Juliet stopped washing up and raced to where Polly had thrown her book bag in the hall when she’d come in from school. A quick search revealed two reading books, a host of drawings, an empty crisp packet and a pair of dirty socks. No slip. ‘There’s nothing there, Polls!’ she yelled and marched back into the kitchen, bag in hand as proof.

  Polly had shrugged and slurped the last tail of pasta up into her mouth with a smack. ‘Oh,’ she said, totally unfazed. ‘It must still be in the drawer under my desk. Sorry. But I need to be an angel when I sing my solo at the concert tomorrow.’

  Juliet had closed her eyes and counted to ten. And then twenty. When, oh when, would these schools learn that giving kids slips of paper to hand to their parents was a disaster waiting to happen? She really wanted to yell at someone, but she clenched her teeth and swallowed the feeling.

  ‘Never mind,’ she’d said, not as calmly as she’d have liked. ‘It’s fine. I’m sure we can do something with a pillowcase and a bit of tinsel.’

  That was when her daughter’s ever-cool demeanour cracked. She stared back at Juliet in horror. ‘A pillowcase?’

  Juliet nodded. ‘That’s all I can do at the last minute. The shops are shut and Violet has the dress rehearsal for her dance thing tonight.’

  Polly’s eyes filled and her bottom lip wobbled while the edges of her mouth pulled down and out. She’d always made a strange rectangular shape like that when she cried, ever since she was a baby. Greg had always joked it made her look like a pillar box, but Juliet wasn’t finding it very funny as fat tears rolled down Polly’s cheeks and plopped onto her plate.

  ‘B-but Tegan has a Disney dress and Arabella’s grandma made her one from scratch, with real feathers on the wings and everything!’

  Juliet crouched down by Polly’s chair and put her arm round her, ignoring the twins as they loudly and enthusiastically mimicked their sister’s wailing. ‘I’ll make it look really good, I promise. We’ll use the fancy pillowcases from the guest bedroom, the ones with frills o
n them.’

  Polly crossed her arms and shook her head. ‘No. It won’t do! That’s not what I wanted. I need it to be perfect!’

  That’s when Juliet had lost her only barely reined-in temper. Result? One tense-shouldered mother hunched over a sewing machine, and one tearful child who’d needed a few extra cuddles at bedtime. In the end she’d remembered the bridesmaid’s dress that Violet had worn for Greg’s sister’s wedding. Puff sleeves, a sash and full skirt in off-white silk. A few additions here and there and it would be wonderful.

  She leaned back in her chair and pressed her hand over her mouth as she let out yet another gigantic yawn, then she pushed the chair away and sloped out of the kitchen and up the stairs to bed.

  The alarm went off far too early the following morning, but Juliet didn’t have the time, or the energy, to argue with it. After dropping the kids off at their respective schools, she headed out of town to one of the nearby retail parks. Both boys wanted this year’s must-have toy—an action figure that did all sort of things Juliet couldn’t even remember, and didn’t really want to—but the Internet company she’d ordered them from had emailed her to say they only had one left in stock.

  None of the other big websites could promise to deliver it before Christmas, if they even had it in stock at all, and the companies that did ‘click and collect’ were all showing it was sold out on their websites. How could she give one boy their dream present and not the other? But she knew that many of those big retailers didn’t allow you to reserve on the website if there were only a couple left in store. Her only hope was to try any place that might stock it and hope they still had one left on the shelf that wasn’t showing up for reservation on the website.

  She was there early enough to find a parking space and jump out, check Toy World, discover they didn’t have any but the branch in Maidstone might have, and jump back in her car within fifteen minutes. By the time she got to Maidstone, however, it was a different story. When she’d scoured the shelves, trying to see if one was stuck at the back or hidden behind something else in the wrong spot, and had come up empty, she queued up at customer services. Of course, the store only had one member of staff on duty, an unusually spotty and slow-witted junior who needed to ask his supervisor to do everything for him. Probably even wipe his nose.