by Tracy Bloom
When Ben had texted to say that Millie wanted to do FaceTime, she had jumped at the chance, despite the fact that it would be in the middle of Cooper’s barbecue. She could hardly say it was inconvenient – she hadn’t seen either of them since the horrible scene at the Christmas party. Ben had texted in the early hours of the morning to say he was staying at Braindead’s and wouldn’t be back until after she had left for the airport. She’d already said her goodbyes to Millie and didn’t want to upset her again by turning up at her mother-in-law’s for one last hug. She longed to see their faces, however as she looked at them staring back at her now, she knew she should have somehow found a way of doing it in a less glamorous situation.
‘Have you been in the pool?’ asked Millie.
‘No, darling. We’re here to have some food.’
‘Aren’t you allowed in the pool?’
‘I’m sure if I asked I would be, but it’s not really what I’ve come for. I’ve come to meet some people and have a meal. I’ll be going back to the hotel soon.’
‘We had spaghetti hoops for tea last night,’ said Millie.
‘Brilliant,’ said Katy, smiling at Ben. He looked stony-faced. She pulled the screen towards her so that she blocked out the stunning view behind her and hopefully the sight of the other guests.’
‘Do they have spaghetti hoops in Australia?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Does Santa go to Australia?’
‘Yes, he actually comes here first because it’s one of the first countries to wake up on Christmas morning.’
‘But it looks hot there. Won’t he be too hot in his red suit?’
‘Perhaps he has a warm-weather outfit for here?’
‘Does he wear shorts? Have you seen pictures of him wearing shorts?’
‘No, Millie. I actually saw a model Santa in a shop window, and he was wearing his full red suit.’
‘Really? Poor Santa, he’ll be so hot.’
‘I know. But I’m sure he’ll be OK.’
‘Do kids in Australia leave ice lollies instead of mince pies so he can cool down?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ask someone.’
‘I will tomorrow.’
‘Ask that man behind you.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, ask him. Has he got kids? Are there kids there?’
‘No, I don’t think he has kids,’ she said, glancing at Ben.
‘Ask him anyway.’
Katy turned and cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me, sorry to interrupt but my daughter would like to know what children in Australia leave for Father Christmas when he comes to bring them presents.’
Cooper walked towards Katy and to her horror bent forward to address Millie directly.
‘Hi, it’s Millie, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ muttered Millie, looking in amazement at the stranger bearing down on her.
‘I’m so sorry to have dragged your mum away, but she’ll be back soon, I promise, and to answer your question, I used to leave Santa Claus a cold beer when I was your age. Merry Christmas to you both.’ He stood back up and walked away, and Katy was left with the sight of Ben and Millie looking slightly awestruck. Millie in a good way, but she wasn’t quite so sure about Ben. He abruptly got up and disappeared from the screen.
‘Beer?’ questioned Millie. ‘Can I leave Santa a cold beer this year?’
‘If you want to,’ replied Katy, hoping that Ben would reappear soon. ‘I guess it would save us buying sherry that we never drink,’ she said distractedly.
‘You don’t drink it – Santa does.’
‘You’re right. Of course he does.’
Millie looked up, away from the screen.
‘Daddy says I need to go to school now,’ she said after a moment.
‘OK, darling. Can’t wait to see you. Can I speak to Daddy just before you go?’
‘Daddy!’ shouted Millie. ‘Mummy wants to talk to you.’ Millie disappeared and all Katy could see was an empty cereal bowl and the backside of Millie’s teddy. She waited patiently, but it was a couple of minutes before Ben appeared.
‘We need to go,’ he said, pushing the bowl and teddy to one side. ‘Last rehearsal today.’
‘I know. I, er, just wanted to wish you good luck. Shall I call you before I get on the plane?’
He shrugged. ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘You are coming home then?’
‘Of course I am. What’s that supposed to mean?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
‘We’ll talk later then, shall we?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ he replied. She could see his finger already reaching forward to cut her off. ‘Bye,’ he said before the screen went blank and Ben and Millie both disappeared into their day on the other side of the world.
Chapter Thirty
‘Be quiet!’ shouted Ben. His heart was racing. He had never been more terrified in his life. Why had he done this? Twenty-seven children surrounded him in various states of costume and it had turned them mental. Turned him mental as it happened. Now they were all standing backstage (aka the quiet reading room), and he was having the most monumental attack of stage fright. He peeped through the curtains for the fifth time and looked at all the expectant faces starting to file in. Glowing, cheerful mums and smiling dads shaking hands with each other, pumped and primed to watch their little treasures perform the rite of passage that is the Nativity play.
He was going to screw it up; he knew it. In fact, he probably already had. He’d been too cavalier from the very beginning. Deciding on a whim to reject the customs of the Nativity play for a wholly more contemporary take on the matter. An interpretation, shall we say, not shackled by the constraints of tradition. An interpretation focused on truly getting to the nub of the story in a fresh and surprising way. An interpretation developed in collaboration with the performers. When he’d asked them all who they wanted to be most of them had requested to be Mary and Joseph. Why not, he had thought. Who was he to make someone play a donkey or a sheep? Let them all have the main parts. Didn’t that teach them that in the eyes of God we are all equal and should be treated accordingly?
Right at that moment, however, he was feeling less Kenneth Branagh and more like a blundering idiot who was going to be the biggest disappointment the school had seen in many years.
‘It keeps falling off,’ Millie said, arriving at his elbow and pulling at his arm.
He bent down to pin her tea towel in place. Oh God, he thought. Poor Millie was going to get it in the neck as well. Millie with the loser dad who couldn’t even put on a decent Nativity. He wanted to crawl under a stone and die.
He took his phone out of his pocket to put it on silent.
I’ll be there. Katy Xxx
That was the last message he’d received from Katy. He was half-angry, half-terrified. Angry that she wasn’t there already, terrified that she wasn’t there to tell him it was all going to be OK. He’d been on the brink of calling her to see where she was, but every time his finger hovered over the call button he pulled it away. Calling her felt needy – she should be the one to call him, not the other way round.
He peeked his nose through the curtain again just as Alison and Matthew took seats in the front row. He watched as a couple, rather begrudgingly, gave up their seats to the heavily pregnant lady and her husband. That’s all I need, he thought. Alison was going to have an absolute field day with his version of the Nativity. Nothing short of a classic religious fairy tale would satisfy her, and this was way short of a classic religious fairy tale.
Alison looked up just as Ben was staring at her. She raised her eyebrows. She expected him to fail, he knew it.
He turned and faced his army.
‘Right!’ he whispered loudly. ‘Let’s all sit down and channel our inner Nativity.’
‘What’s that mean, Master Elf?’ Someone asked.
‘It just means that we’re going to sit here quietly for a few seconds and pray for a good pe
rformance. Now put your hands together, children.’
Katy was having a shocker. A humdinger. An outrageous disaster. Her flight home was delayed. Obviously. It had to happen, didn’t it? How could she have been so stupid to think it wouldn’t?
She’d sat in Singapore Airport waiting for her connecting flight, staring so hard at the announcement board she feared her eyes might laser beam right through it. What started as a thirty-minute delay ended in a ninety-minute delay, just at the point when she was about to throttle the poor woman on the Singapore Airlines desk.
‘I have my husband’s Nativity to get to!’ she had shrieked when the woman refused to tell her when the plane might be taking off.
‘Your husband’s?’ the woman had asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Katy on the verge of tears. ‘If I’m not there, well, it’s entirely possible it will end in divorce.’
‘What part is he playing?’
‘Master Elf,’ she replied. ‘Now tell me when this flight will be taking off.’
When she finally got on to the plane, she hadn’t slept a wink of the fourteen-hour flight, so craving the knowledge that she would get home in time that she daren’t shut her eyes for one minute.
Also, the minute she shut her eyes, she knew all she would picture was the blue of the ocean and the feel of the warmth of the sun on her skin, and it made her want to cry. The trip couldn’t have gone much better, and Cooper couldn’t have played it more cleverly. He’d put zero pressure on her, leaving his beautiful country and vibrant yet laid-back colleagues to do the work for him. The minute the HR director told her that it was normal to finish work by five thirty, no questions asked, in order to enjoy the great outdoors… well, that in itself was enough to make her want to flee the workaholic shores of the British Isles immediately.
She had, of course, ended up flying to the winery in the helicopter. She couldn’t resist. It was heaven sitting on the side of a mountain with an array of glasses in front of her as she pretended to know what she was talking about. Pure heaven. Well, it would have been, if Ben and Millie had been there. Sure, she had enjoyed Cooper’s company. He was pleasant, even quite fun, and obviously he was a joy to look at, but he wasn’t Ben. She’d spent most of the night wanting to call Ben and reassure him that Cooper wasn’t him, feeling certain that Ben would be comparing himself unfavourably, especially having seen him up close. But that would have been an admission of guilt, wouldn’t it? That she had fancied him even though nothing more had ever crossed her mind. Hard not to, but marriage was about so much more than a great suntan and a killer smile.
She’d braced herself for the hard sell that night from Cooper. But he was the perfect host. Never mentioning the career opportunity, leaving her wondering if he’d changed his mind and whether she should check the job was still on offer.
He’d picked her up the next morning to deliver her to the airport, and still it hung in the air. She was terrified, as she didn’t have an answer. Terrified what would come out of her mouth if put on the spot by him, but as it turned out, he didn’t do anything of the sort. Handing her carry-on case to her as she was about to go through security, he merely said, ‘I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself and seen enough to convince you that you and your family would be very welcome here in Sydney. Call me after Christmas when you have had time to think about it.’
Then he’d turned and left.
She could have burst into tears there and then. A masterstroke. No begging, just an open welcome.
The trip had done nothing to give her any clarity. It had merely achieved exactly what Cooper had intended – given her a taste for a lifestyle that on face value appeared irresistible. How could she say no to glorious weather, beaches by the bucketload, a more laid-back pace of life and a dream job to boot? Everything about it screamed an easy yes, and yet it felt impossible. Eventually, in total desperation on the plane, she got out her laptop and set up a spreadsheet. She had to do something to fight this impasse in her head and spreadsheets normally helped solve all her problems in her work life.
She started to type in the list of pros for Australia, of which there were many. Not so when it came to cons, but as she typed she realised that the reasons weren’t equal. Some held greater weight than others. You couldn’t say that ‘eating outside all the time’ had an equal value to ‘leaving Daniel’… or maybe you could, she pondered momentarily. And how much value do you put on having another child? You couldn’t, she realised. It was impossible. She slammed down the lid of the laptop. She was back to square one, alone and totally confused.
She could see the rain slamming against the tarmac as she touched down in Manchester and switched on her phone.
Gabriel is coming for Christmas! Thank you for texting him, but I would have thought you could have phoned! Where will he sleep? He could have the spare room and you could sleep in the lounge. See you tomorrow! Mum x
The last thing she cared about now was the Christmas sleeping arrangements. She had less than an hour and a half to get to the school. She couldn’t afford to hang around for her luggage – she’d have to work out a way of coming back to collect it at a later date. As soon as the seatbelt sign clicked off, she was up and out of her seat, her heart already hammering in her chest. There was no time to think about moving to Australia now, she had a Nativity to get to.
‘Good morning, everyone,’ said Ben. He’d changed into a full-blown elf costume complete with hat, a bright green and red suit and winkle-picker-shaped overshoes with tinkling bells. He could sense the dads sniggering already. He peered over their heads to see if he could catch a glimpse of Katy.
Still no sign.
‘When I asked your children what parts they wanted to play in the Nativity, almost all of them said Mary or Joseph. One of them wanted to be Spider-Man and two others requested peeping penguins. I wondered how we could put a penguin in Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth. And where would Spider-Man show up? I needn’t have worried.’ He paused. Everyone looked worried.
‘Your amazingly creative, funny – no, scratch that – hilarious, bright, unfiltered children worked out their own Nativity, complete with thirteen Marys, ten Josephs, one Spider-Man, two peeping penguins and Freddie, who just wanted to be Freddie. They’ve worked really hard. I hope you enjoy it.’
Katy was close to tears in the back of the cab. She didn’t give a damn about the fare racking its way up through the £100 then the £200 mark. If the driver had said, ‘Give me a thousand pounds and I’ll get you there on time,’ she would have gladly handed it over. They were crawling through the dregs of rush hour as she tried very hard not to look at her watch. Why on earth did they have Nativities in the morning when the world and his wife were trying to get somewhere? It was just cruel.
They drove past shop after shop with cheerful messages and seasonal greetings, but nothing could distract her from the sick feeling in her stomach that she was going to miss her family’s finest moment yet. She didn’t dare think of the consequences if she did: flying to Australia while leaving their whole future in the balance was one thing, but missing the Nativity? That was a whole different level.
They were getting closer now. If she got out of the car and ran there was a chance she wouldn’t miss the beginning. Cars were lined up in front of her as far as the eye could see, and there was some movement but precious little. Should she sit here and pray for a break in traffic or jump out and leg it? She looked at her watch – only five minutes to go.
‘Stop the car!’ she shouted.
‘I’m already stopped,’ the driver said over his shoulder. ‘We’re in a traffic jam.’
‘Right, yes. Well, I’m getting out. Here you go.’ She pushed a wodge of notes that she’d hastily got out of the cash machine at the airport through the squat little hole in front of her.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Right, you want a receipt?’
‘Keep the change,’ she shouted over her shoulder, making a dive for the door. It opened and she was out, running as fast a
s she could up the sodden streets of Leeds.
‘We’re having a baby!’ cried a mob of children running on to the small makeshift stage along one side of the preschool room.
‘We’re having a baby!’ they shouted again.
‘And it’s going to be the best baby ever,’ said a Mary.
‘The best there has ever been,’ said a Joseph.
‘Because he will be the son of God,’ shouted Spider-Man from behind his mask.
‘Everyone line up and sing a song,’ said another Joseph.
The thirteen Marys sat on the floor while the ten Josephs stood in a line behind them and they sang their hearts out to ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling’ by Justin Timberlake. Freddie break-danced in front of them.
It had been a dramatic start to this year’s Nativity play. Half the parents were sitting with their mouths open while the other half wiggled in their seats in time to the music and started to clap. I might have won some of them over, thought Ben, observing from the side of the stage. Maybe. But clearly not Alison yet. She was staring, stony-faced, as Freddie performed the terrible dance routine that he claimed to have been practising every night.
Katy could see the school looming up ahead. Her hair was plastered to the side of her face and the rain had already soaked through her hoody and jeans so she felt like she was carrying an extra five pounds just in water. She didn’t care though – the finish line was in sight, she could see the gate. She was going to make it! She hurled herself at it then came to an abrupt halt: it didn’t move. She grasped it with both hands, rattling it like a caged animal, but still it wouldn’t open. She spotted the secured padlock on the other side: she was locked out of the Nativity. So near and yet so far. What on earth would she do now?
Three Marys and one Joseph sat behind the manger. The Marys were passing a baby doll between them in turns as though Jesus were Pass the Parcel and at some point the music would stop and whoever was holding the doll would be declared the real mother. In the meantime the two peeping penguins had declared that Jesus was born and would be accepting visitors and presents. Master Elf had announced the commencement of ‘The Reindeer Games’ and that gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh were hidden in the room, and that the first ones to find them would be the first ones allowed to visit the baby Jesus. Chaos ensued as twenty-three children charged around the room searching out gifts to lay before the parcel-passing tableau on stage. Ben scanned the audience’s reaction to the mayhem. To his amazement, parents shouted encouragement to their offspring, eager for their children to win the game by finding the treasure and be first up on stage with the newborn.
