The Christmas Promise

by Sue Moorcroft

  Ava gazed at Wendy with new respect. It was odd to think the slight and self-effacing woman dealt with such painful reality. ‘Good on you. If I get any commissions at the Rotary Ball I’ll donate five per cent to your fund.’ Commissions were more than she dared hope for but if by any miracle she got one she could spare a small portion of her good fortune for a cause for which she presently felt particular sympathy.

  Wendy beamed. ‘I hope that you get lots of commissions, then. The Rotarians can be generous.’

  ‘What’s the event? Do I need to buy raffle tickets or something?’ Ava could just about manage that.

  Wendy’s gaze dropped to the remains of her meal again. ‘Not a raffle. More of a collection on the evening. I’ll sort of rally people.’ She brightened again. ‘If you stay over with us, you can come to our village Christmas Fayre on Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘I’m not sure how that would fit in with my weekend. Or Sam’s.’ Ava could feel alarm writing itself over her features.

  Luckily, Sam came to her rescue. ‘Maybe we could decide that on the night of the ball, Mum? Between then and now Ava may wish to make other plans.’

  ‘OK. But the village is lovely at Christmas, so do come if you can.’ Wendy let the subject drop.

  An hour later, when she declared herself tired and ready to go to bed to read, Ava took it as her cue to gather up her things.

  Sam rose. ‘I’ll drive you home.’

  ‘You don’t need to—’

  ‘Oh let him,’ put in Wendy quickly. ‘Then we’ll all know that you got home safely, won’t we?’

  In view of the earlier discussion, Ava felt she had no choice but to humour Wendy, who perhaps viewed London as a cauldron of sin in which no woman should be alone after dark. ‘I suppose it’ll save me quite a tube journey.’ It was obviously OK for a date to see you home, even if it was clear across London, so it would look odd for her to argue the point.

  Soon she was seated in Sam’s red BMW, which lived in a garage beneath his apartment block.

  ‘Why am I even surprised that you drive a BMW?’ She admired the all-black interior. ‘It’s such a yuppy-mobile.’

  ‘“Yuppy” is an outmoded term.’ He twisted to check over his shoulder as he backed his status symbol out of its parking bay. ‘None of the hipsters are saying it.’

  She laughed. ‘I guess you publicity types are attuned to what the hipsters say.’

  ‘Live and die by it,’ he agreed gravely, exiting the underground car park. ‘If the hipsters are shaving their beards and eating beetroot crisps this Christmas then nothing else will do for me.’

  Ava enjoyed being driven through London at night. The traffic generally flowed better than in the daytime and even a Christmas curmudgeon could appreciate the twinkling lights across every major thoroughfare.

  Sam changed gear at a junction and glanced both ways before swinging out. ‘Thanks for the faux date.’

  ‘It made me feel better about the help you’ve given me.’

  He raised an eyebrow at her before returning his attention to the road, the wash from coloured lights flickering across his skin. ‘Oh-kay. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I don’t seem to have done much.’

  She shrugged. ‘Seeing I got home after Harvey turned scary. Helping with Tod and Izz. Commissioning your mum’s hat, which led to Vanessa buying a fascinator and, tonight, her offering me the speaker’s fee for her Rotary Ball.’

  They moved onto the Mile End Road under an impressive display of illuminated snowflakes. ‘I’m glad it’s made a difference.’

  ‘Anything makes a difference. At the moment I’ll count it a success if I avoid debt or hitting up my parents.’ She smothered a yawn. Faux dates weren’t so bad if you got driven home past all the scurrying pedestrians huddling into their coats. She settled snugly into her seat. If she were ever rich, she was going to employ a chauffeur.

  ‘If I can help—’

  ‘You’re not going to offer to lend me money, are you?’ She closed her eyes and mentally corrected her earlier thought to employing a chauffeur who didn’t speak. ‘You probably weren’t even thinking of it but just to let you know that my pride will only take so much.’

  His laugh was little more than a breath. ‘You’re right, stupid idea, bearing in mind your outrage at the mere suggestion of me standing you scrambled eggs and a mug of coffee when you’re skint and I’m not.’

  Opening her eyes, she turned to search his profile. ‘Try and understand. I find it more comfortable if I share bills rather than accepting largesse, however kindly meant, because I have a compulsion to reciprocate and then the spend isn’t under my control.’

  After a moment, he shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll concede the point, if buying you breakfast was interpreted as beckoning you into debt.’

  The traffic got going and he gave it his attention. When they finally turned into School Road, Sam had to drive past 146B before he found a parking space. He removed the key from the ignition. ‘I’ll walk you to your door.’

  Ava gathered her bags. ‘No need.’

  He glanced around. It was quite dark here in a residential street where street lamps and festive lights were fairly small scale. Instead of arguing, he posed a question. ‘Is it OK to talk about the situation regarding your ex?’

  With Harvey put in her mind Ava found herself glancing around, too. Then she realised what he’d done. ‘That was a bit mean,’ she protested, unable now to take her eyes off the shadows.

  He sat back. ‘You’re right. I’ve no business making you frightened of coming home to your own street. It’s just …’ His face was more than half in shadow. He fell silent for several seconds. Then sighed. ‘I’m going to tell you something so you can see where I’m coming from and why I am as I am. I don’t usually tell people this.’

  He paused. His voice was husky when he spoke again. ‘I’m a product of rape.’

  Chapter Eleven

  No blame or shame

  Ava had no idea what to say.

  ‘Not a random violent attack,’ he carried on. His voice was even, but strained. ‘It was what would now be called date rape. Mum was young and naïve and went to a party. Alcohol was the least of the evils circulating. Some bloke chatted her up, gave her a drink, probably with something in it, and as the party began to wind down she found herself alone in a room with him. She can remember feeling giddy and him laughing a lot. He refused to take “no” for an answer and I was conceived.’

  Ava had to make herself breathe as shock shimmered through her. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘What’s wrong with some people?’

  His laugh was bitter. ‘Lots.’

  ‘Your poor mum. Poor you.’

  He shook his head. ‘Apart from not having a father – I don’t count the shit who forced my mother – I’ve had it easy. Mum and Aunt Van have given me everything and we’ve been a family unit, if an unusual one. My grandparents weren’t happy when Mum, who has a lot of backbone under her gentle exterior, wouldn’t have an abortion, so she left. Aunt Van went with, pursuing her career and supporting Mum and me along with herself.’

  ‘Did you never meet … Don’t you know who he was?’ she ventured.

  A single shake of his head. ‘It was one of those party things. Nobody seemed to know who he was. I suppose he gatecrashed. But knowing where I came from has made me aware of the damage the less moral of my sex can cause. I hate drugs. I’m moderate so far as alcohol’s concerned. Patrick sometimes calls me his “straight-edged friend” but I’m no paragon. I’m just mindful of what I owe my existence to and wish I’d come into the world via love or affection.

  ‘But you can understand Mum being involved in No Blame or Shame. Occasionally she even turns scary and crusades.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘On No Blame or Shame’s website you’ll see common reasons for not reporting attacks or abuse or harassment and Mum ticks every box. Her parents wouldn’t be sympathetic to her going to a party full of people she didn’t know and getting drunk, so she didn’t tell t
hem what had happened until she realised she was pregnant. Then, of course, they thought she was making up a story to excuse what they termed “misbehaviour”. They blamed her and they made her ashamed. Society’s more enlightened now but the principle of blame and shame causing damage holds good.’

  Ava groped for his hand in the darkness of the rapidly cooling interior of the car. ‘Your mother and Vanessa obviously adore you.’

  ‘I know, and I don’t want you to think that I drag some enormous burden around with me. I don’t feel guilty. I don’t blame my mother. I’m a pretty balanced person. It’s just that my family history gives me a slightly different view of certain situations to most people.’ His smile was bleak. ‘One reason I’m telling you is to flag up that whatever the scenario is between you and your ex, there are people you can talk to, people who can help with support and information. People who understand.’

  Support. Understanding. The exact things she craved. She opened her mouth, words rising up to breach the dam on her desperate anxieties about Harvey.

  But Sam hadn’t finished. ‘And so you understand what makes me do things like check you got home from Blaggard’s OK. It’s not in me to turn my back if I feel a woman’s in a bad situation, like my mother was.’

  A horrible thought brought Ava up short and she closed her mouth again without speaking. She wasn’t a young girl who’d been pushed further than she wanted to go at a party, or one of those poor women who was attacked as they walked innocently home. Ava had given Harvey a private strip show and giggled as he’d taken photos, giggled harder as those photos became ever more explicit and action-packed.

  No blame or shame? She could be blamed. She was certainly ashamed, and guiltily aware that Sam probably assumed Harvey was the bad guy.

  Slowly, she disengaged her hand from his. ‘You’re a good man.’ She pretended to yawn. ‘Time I went in. I’ve a hat to begin tomorrow.’

  Sam climbed out of the car and walked her to the door of the little yellow house. Ava didn’t protest that it wasn’t necessary.

  Maybe it was necessary to Sam.

  A psychiatrist would probably say that he was indulging an impossible desire to have been there to protect his mother. He’d certainly overdeveloped his sense of responsibility, but it didn’t hurt Ava to let him satisfy his urge to protect. In fact her heart was touched.

  Sam hunched into his jacket as she paused on the doorstep to search for her keys. ‘To change the subject to less weighty matters, have you realised that you’ve actually accepted a date with me to the Rotary Ball?’ The teasing note she was used to was back in his voice.

  Ava followed his lead. ‘A faux date,’ she corrected.

  He laughed, dropping a kiss on her cheek. ‘Faux or not, you’re going to have to save all the slow dances for me or face the combined wrath of Mum and Aunt Van.’ He winked and turned back up the street towards his car. ‘Don’t feel pressured to stay over for the Middledip Christmas Fayre, by the way, but you might want to consider having your overnight things with you just in case you’d rather stay at Mum’s. It’ll be about two-and-a-half hours each way.’

  ‘That far? I hadn’t realised …’ But Sam was already pulling up his collar and jogging away so Ava called goodnight and let herself into the house. She refused to feel slighted that he hadn’t hung around to see if she’d invite him in for coffee. Faux dates didn’t do that. Faux dates went to bed alone.

  If she was developing feelings for him, she didn’t want them.

  She’d remain a faux date even though Sam’s vulnerability had made her ache with the knowledge that he was, as she’d told him, a good man. He also had a smile to melt her bones and buns that looked good in everything.

  It was no longer a case of needing all her energy for her career. Now she knew just how dear it was to Sam to be the man in a white hat … she felt kind of grubby and grey.

  Chapter Twelve

  The beautiful business of hat making

  Thursday 13 December

  On Thursday Ava worked on Wendy’s hat. She painted stiffener carefully onto the felt cone under the open skylight to allow the nail-varnishy smell to escape, admiring the glowing jade colour in the bright December sunlight, making sure the stiffener sank right into the material.

  A small cloche could be made on a single hat block so, after selecting the right size and covering the wooden block with cling film to protect it from the steam, she turned the cone in the steam spouting from the steamer to release the stiffener. The steamer’s familiar gurgling sounded friendly and comforting. Then she pulled the cone taut over the block, stretching the fabric and beginning the familiar pull-pin, pull-pin technique that would ensure evenness, carefully placing her pins as if around the face of a clock – twelve then six; nine then three – rotating the block until the brim was secured by a constant run of closely placed pins. She paused often to return the hat to the steam, humming to herself as she worked.

  Taking the hat from the block to dry before repeating the blocking process to make the hat tighter and stronger was essential, but would take about twenty-four hours. She didn’t have a drying cupboard but the heating was on and, once she was happy she’d progressed as far as she could for now, she powered up her laptop and located the No Blame or Shame website. She began to read, her mind filled with Wendy and what had made her want to help women having a hard time.

  You might think that there’s no one you can trust.

  But there is …

  No Blame or Shame.

  On the message board women talked matter-of-factly about situations that should never be considered matter of fact; women who’d done nothing to deserve the things that had happened to them. Many, like Ava, had trusted somebody that they knew. Or thought they knew. In many cases there was a troublesome ex who exerted pressure to make the woman return to him. He thinks he’s got a grievance and it’s eating at him, one posted. He can’t leave me alone, he wants me to give him the opportunity to dump me in revenge. He thinks it will somehow reverse the rejection he suffered. Ava sighed as she closed the window. Not one thread she read mentioned willingly posing for explicit pictures.

  Friday 14 December

  Ava had just blocked Wendy’s hat for the second time and left it once again to dry when she received a text from her mother. Are you available to Skype?

  Returning, Yes, give me a minute, Ava powered up her laptop and clicked on the Skype icon. In a minute she was clicking on Katherine Blissham calling and her mother’s face appeared on the screen.

  Katherine looked relaxed and happy, fair hair in a bouncy short cut. ‘Hello, darling! Tell me all your news.’

  Ava gazed disbelievingly at the swags of frosty-looking boughs decorated with stars and bells that were visible over her mother’s shoulder. ‘You’ve got Christmas decorations!’

  Katherine laughed, shrugging. ‘It’s the book café. Joyeux Noël and all that – the customers expect it. It’s Christmas that I wanted to talk to you about, actually. Are you sure that you don’t want to come out here?’

  Ava twisted her hair around her finger. ‘I’ve got plans with Izz. You never “do” Christmas!’

  Another shrug. Perhaps Katherine had caught shrugs from the French. ‘I suppose we’ve a bit more time for it this year, and you have to have Christmas events in the shop to get the punters in. I’m finding it quite fun, actually.’

  ‘Even Dad’s doing Christmas?’ Ava heard the outrage in her voice but she could scarcely credit that Graeme Blissham, late of the Metropolitan Police Service, purveyor of the mantra ‘If you saw what I saw on the roads and in the cells every Christmas, you’d wonder why we bother’, had shifted his stance, however commercial the reason.

  ‘He’s even dressing up as Papa Noël for evening opening. Are you sure you can’t come over? Izz could come, too.’

  Ava quashed the desire to bellow, ‘Papa Noël, for goodness’ sake?’ and remained mindful of her maxed credit cards and barely there bank account. ‘Maybe next year.’ But,
seriously? Papa Noël? The same man who wasn’t home for Christmas Day for seven years running. Papa Noël?

  Katherine tilted her head. ‘That’s a pity. Shall I send you some money for your present or would you like something lovely and French?’

  Ava was tempted by ‘lovely and French’ but, welcome though the recent injections of cash into her account had been, they’d been almost immediately swallowed up by bills. ‘Money, please.’ Don’t ask me what I’m going to spend it on. You may not want to hear that it’s going to help me pay my rent and I definitely don’t want to have to tell you.

  They chatted for a little longer, then Katherine’s phone began to ring. Ava shut Skype down with a sigh. She went onto Cadhoc and paid for her parents to each receive un chèque-cadeau on Christmas Day, reflecting bitterly that this was exactly what her father what have previously called a ‘pointless Christmas ritual’ – them sending her money and her sending them gift certificates.

  Their gifts, and those for Izz and Tod, she resolved, were going to form her total Christmas expenditure. She’d send all her cards as e-cards and tell friends, aunts, uncles and cousins that she wasn’t doing presents. It would be no hardship to miss out on scratchy scarf and glove sets, and she could live without replenishing her perfume supply. These minor losses would be amply balanced out by having fewer reasons to dip into the meagre contents of her purse.

  For the first time, though, she felt a stirring of doubt about her Christmas Day plans. With Tod having Louise to consider this year, it would just be Ava and Izz to open the fizz, stuff themselves stupid on turkey then sprawl in front of the TV eating chocolates. Izz had said nothing to suggest that she was unhappy with this programme but if they’d known Christmas in France might be something special maybe they could have booked tickets sufficiently far in advance that Ava’s Christmas gift from her parents would have covered hers? She allowed her mind to fill with visions of happy pre-Christmas chaos at Le Café Littéraire Anglais, English delicacies mingling with French tidbits; friends and customers buying gifts and pausing for a restorative English tea while schoolchildren sang carols in nearby La Place de la Liberté.