by Jane Fallon
Christmas for Helen had always been a bit of a trauma. She had always loved the buildup—the shop window displays and the fairy lights and the schmaltzy films on TV—but the actual day itself had always been a letdown, a long, dull, formal lunch with no TV allowed until her mum and dad woke up from their afternoon nap and they had turkey sandwiches in front of the game shows. As she got older, the prospect of the endless, dreary afternoon began to eclipse any enjoyment she'd experienced in the run-up. She began to dread the whole holiday season.
Usually, these days, Helen got through it by going out with Rachel for a raucous Christmas Eve and then sleeping through most of the next day. This year, she couldn't quite face the joy that was Rachel and Neil together, so she lied to Rachel, too, and told her she was going to a club with yet more imaginary friends, and then took to her bed with a bottle of vodka.
To Sophie's dismay, Christmas Eve with the Shallcrosses was following its usual pattern. Amanda and Edwin and their family had arrived along with Matthew's mother, Sheila, and were busy criticizing anything they could find to criticize, from the year of the wine they'd been offered to the make of the glasses in which it was given to them. Louisa and Jason were late, probably arguing. Louisa would be having a glass of vodka and rubbing it in the face of newly teetotal Jason. These days, when she really wanted to get at him, she told him he was no fun now that he didn't drink which, for someone who'd once woken up in a police cell after slapping her in the face during a drunken row, was tough to hear.
"Do you remember when Louisa brought her first boyfriend, that Wilson boy, home to dinner and he brought a bottle of cava?" Sheila was saying now to Amanda, who laughed heartily at Sophie didn't know what.
"Yes, and he said, 'It must be good because it cost six pounds.'" Amanda dabbed at her eyes helplessly.
Sophie made a mental note to hide the six bottles of cava she had bought from Oddbins earlier, to bulk up her supplies, behind the crate of Laurent-Perrier in the kitchen. In all the years she'd been with Matthew, she had never managed to anticipate what the next gem of condescension to come out of his mother's or sisters' mouths would be.
She was under no illusions. She knew that both Amanda and her mother thought that Matthew had sold himself short when he'd married her, because she knew they found her very middle-class to their faux upper. Amanda liked to think she bore a striking similarity to Princess Michael of Kent, the refined woman's pinup—which, in fact, she did—and affected a cut-glass accent to match, which could slice bread. Sheila, who in no small part resembled Lady Thatcher, was the only person Sophie had ever met who actually read Horse & Hound, even though she hated animals of all kinds. They were ridiculous women and Sophie often found herself pitying them despite their, at times, open hostility. Louisa had never been overly fond of Sophie, either, but in her case it was because no woman would ever be good enough for her older brother, no matter what. Sophie often marveled at how someone as charming and laid-back and fun as Matthew could be related to three such disagreeable people.
* * *
By nine o'clock, Louisa and Jason had turned up and everyone was settled in. Sophie was already exhausted, fixing drinks, offering around mince pies and sausage rolls, and washing glasses. Louisa and Jason were making a big show of not speaking to each other and she was doing her best to drive both him and Amanda insane by flirting with Edwin, who was lapping up the attention along with Matthew's twenty-five-year-old malt whiskey. Sheila had already told Sophie that she thought Sophie had put on weight. Suzanne was sulking in her room because she couldn't watch TV. Benji and India were fighting over a Game Boy. The baby was crying, although no one seemed to be doing anything about it. Claudia had managed to spill Coke down Jocasta's Juicy Couture top, after several attempts, so at least she was happy. Matthew felt a sharp pang of longing for the cool, uncluttered quiet of Helen's flat. For a split second, he thought about calling her, but he poured himself another drink and pushed that thought to the back of his mind.
By eleven, Louisa was sitting on the sofa with Edwin, listening intently to his every word and "accidentally" brushing his leg with her hand whenever she thought Jason might be watching. Edwin, half a bottle down, had started to slur in a way that would have been comical, had the whole scene not been so gruesome.
"You're a good girl," he drooled, patting Louisa on the knee as if she were a well-behaved Labrador.
"And you're a naughty boy," she replied nauseatingly, in what she thought was a flirtatious manner, but which actually came out more Barbara Woodhouse than the Joanna Lumley she was attempting. Truthfully, Louisa's leg was getting a bit sore from all the patting. She could feel a patch of her thigh reddening up under her gray wool trousers. Safe in the knowledge that her sister had left the room—and was at this moment in the hall with their mother, trying to explain to Sophie why Filipinas were untrustworthy in the kitchen—she decided to force the issue a little.
"Amanda'll be getting jealous," she purred, placing her hand over his.
"Maybe we should all have an early night," said Matthew, who had no idea how to handle the situation. He stood up. "What do you say, Jason?"
Jason's eyes were glued to his wife and brother-in-law. Matthew sat back down again, unsure what to do next.
"OK, kids, I think that's bedtime," Matthew tried again. The younger children had already been sent upstairs, but Claudia, who had persuaded Suzanne out of her room with promises of adults misbehaving, was trying to decide how best to use the new word she'd just learned—it sounded like "runt"—and was hoping that Jason might use it again so that she could make sure she'd gotten the pronunciation and context right. Neither of them moved.
Checking that she still had Jason's full focus, Louisa leaned in and stage-whispered loudly in Edwin's ear, "I know you've always fancied me."
Jason, having manfully resisted this far, poured himself a large glass of Merlot.
Finally, Matthew had had enough. He took the phone and shut himself in his and Sophie's French Renaissance bedroom and dialed Helen's number. He heard three rings and then the answerphone clicked in—Helen's voice sounding chirpy and youthful and inviting. He hung up without leaving a message, then a stabbing pain hit him—where was she? Despite the fact that Matthew had a wife that he still, occasionally, had sex with, he went into paroxysms of jealousy if another man went within a few feet of Helen. Now, he started to imagine her in a variety of excruciating scenarios with good-looking younger men, sharing a cozy drink in a pub, a drunken kiss in the street, a bed. Who knows what she was—at this very moment—doing to get back at him? In fact, she was sleeping in a drink-induced near-coma, her mouth open, with just a hint of dribble coming out, and very unattractive noises rattling around her nasal passages, but in Matthew's mind she'd already met, seduced, and all but married someone new.
He tried her mobile. Turned off. Matthew sat on the bed, staring at the duvet. Fuck. He was still sitting like this when Sophie came in, spoiling for a fight. This'd be a similar fight to the one Matthew and Sophie had had last Christmas and the Christmas before. It went along these lines:
"Your fucking family are out of control."
"I didn't invite them."
"Oh, and I did? They invited themselves and what, you expect me to say no, then never hear the last of it all year?"
"No! I'd rather you told them we'd love them all to stay and have them ruin our Christmas. Again."
Somehow, Matthew always managed to gain the high ground in this argument, despite the fact that it was his family behaving badly.
Matthew and Sophie got into bed, turned their backs on each other, and tried to sleep. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. Happy Christmas.
On Christmas Day, Helen killed time by making a list of everything she hated about Matthew:
His lack of commitment
His spinelessness
The way he actually said the word atchoo whenever he sneezed
His nose hair
The crinkly skin on his stomach
>
The ring tone on his mobile
The teddy bear he'd bought her for her birthday once
His taste in music
His taste in films
His taste, full stop
His assistant, Jenny
His ears (there was nothing really wrong with his ears but she was on a roll)
His Prada shoes that she was convinced his wife had bought for him (right)
His TAG watch that she was convinced his wife had bought for him (wrong)
His wife
When she'd finished, it was a quite impressive two pages long. She called her parents to say Happy Christmas and then lay down on the sofa to watch TV and waited for her hangover to shift.
The sound of Alka-Seltzer fizzing in water had punctuated the morning at Matthew and Sophie's house, too. The kids had opened their presents and, now that that was over, the adults were free to drop the pretense of happy families. Sophie and Matthew had prepared lunch in strained silence. Bill and Alice were trying unsuccessfully to jolly up the atmosphere by repeating their favorite "when Sophie was little" stories. Edwin was avoiding eye contact with Louisa, who in turn could not look at Amanda.
Halfway through the trendily retro first course of prawn cocktail, Matthew excused himself from the table, went out into the back garden, and phoned Helen's mobile, believing she was at her parents' because she'd never let on about her sad little Christmas meals for one.
Recognizing the number, Helen answered with practiced nonchalance.
"I just called to say Happy Christmas."
"Mmm-hmm."
"And I'm sorry I've been such an arse. I know it's hard for you and I really…well, I really just wanted to say sorry."
"OK." (She was loving herself for pulling off such a virtuoso performance.)
"Am I forgiven, Helly?"
"Sure." (Matthew was sweating now; this wasn't the gushing make-up he'd been picturing.)
"Are you OK?"
"Yup."
"Having a good time?"
"Fantastic."
Silence. Then…
"Where were you last night?"
She'd won.
"Actually, Matthew, I've got to go. Mum needs some help. Bye."
She put the phone down as Matthew was still trying to get the words "I love you" out.
Ordinarily, Helen would have been beside herself not only that she had handled the call so well, but that he had called her in the first place, but today she felt strangely unbothered. She rummaged around and found her list and added "The way he calls me Helly."
* * *
Matthew replaced the receiver, heart beating fast. Something was going on. Usually, at Christmas, she leaped at his phone calls, answering after only one ring, as if she had been waiting all day to hear from him. He was always the one to break off because his children were calling him or there was a meal on the table or they were all being summoned to play charades. She would get tearful and clingy and ask when he would be able to call again. Today, she couldn't get off the phone quickly enough. For the first time in his life, he felt like he wasn't the one in control.
* * *
By ten in the evening, everyone at Bartholomew Road had sloped off to bed, after a strained evening politely working their way through several board games. Matthew and Sophie were left alone to have the fight Matthew had been looking for all day, ever since his conversation with Helen had somehow made him feel irrationally angry with Sophie for…well, he wasn't quite sure for what.
She gave him the opener he'd been waiting for.
"What happened to you at lunch?"
And somehow—Sophie didn't have the faintest idea why—this led them into the biggest shouting match they'd had in years. Sophie struggled to keep track of the accusations Matthew was throwing at her, which seemed to encompass everything from her not appreciating how much stress he was under at work through their social life having diminished to near nonexistence, to the fact that her mother had asked him how he could stand getting home from work so late so often. ("She was having a go," he ranted. "Trying to say I don't pull my weight or I don't spend enough time with the kids or something." "No she wasn't," Sophie almost shouted back. "She was trying to make conversation. She's just not very good at it, sorry.") Somewhere in there he threw in their dwindling sex life, the pressure on him to succeed, and, bizarrely, her taste in work clothes. ("Frumpy," he'd shouted. "What the fuck's it got to do with you what I wear to work," she'd screamed back. "You hardly look like you've stepped off the cover of GQ.")
Sophie had only ever seen him like this once before and that was when she'd first told him she was pregnant with Suzanne, just under thirteen years ago. He'd spluttered and raged about never wanting to go through fatherhood again. He'd been there, done it, fucked it up. He'd told her he didn't want to feel tied down by children and obligations and nappies and parents' evenings. The highlight of the whole episode was when he added that he didn't want to have to go through another pregnancy watching the woman he loved expand like a hot-air balloon. He loved her body, he said, as if that was going to endear him to her; he didn't want to watch it disintegrate.
A few weeks later, completely out of nowhere, he'd suddenly started to throw himself into the pregnancy—a bit too much, to be honest—wanting to discuss what was going on inside of her with anyone who'd listen. He'd helped her plan the birth ("No, Matthew, I don't want to lie naked in a paddling pool with you and the midwife in there in your swimming costumes, I want to go into a hospital and be given lots of drugs") and he'd held her hand throughout the event itself, and breathed with her, and timed her contractions, and generally gotten in the way. Two years later, when she'd told him she was expecting again, he'd whooped and hollered and picked her up and swung her around the kitchen.
This time, though, there were no cups of tea and tearful regrets in the morning, just a silence which remained intact despite Sophie's best efforts to puncture it, and the odd, unsettling, guilty looks he kept throwing her way when he thought she wasn't looking.
* * *
Helen passed the next few days ignoring her phone (missed calls from Matthew, eight; messages left, three) and making more lists. "Reasons to leave Matthew" stretched to three and a half pages. "Reasons to stay with Matthew" was pitifully short, containing as it did just three entries:
1. He says he loves me.
2. He can be funny.
3. Who else am I going to go out with?
After she'd written number three she'd burst into tears, because it was truly one of the most pathetic things she had ever seen.
* * *
On the second night, she went to bed early and woke up listening to her mousy upstairs neighbors having very noisy sex again. The woman (Helen didn't even know her name, this being London) was putting on a particularly spectacular performance. Not many words today, it was all oohs and aahs, like an appreciative audience at a pantomime. "He's behind you!" Helen wanted to shout. She lay there for a while, trying to decide whether she thought it was genuine or not, and came down on the side of not. It was too depressing to think otherwise.
On the third night, Helen stayed in, had a large glass of wine, and thought about her situation. It was the longest time she had gone without speaking to Matthew for the whole of their relationship, and with distance, the entire thing was starting to look like a bit of a farce. Years of his rigid schedule, her fitting in with him, him canceling, her acquiescing, him panicking, her backing off.
As she poured glass two, she was wondering what the point of the last four and a bit years had been. Four years ago she was thirty-five—young, she now realized—she could have met someone, married them, and had two children by now if she hadn't taken herself out of the running. (Not that she wanted children, although they somehow always crept into her perfect life fantasy with Matthew, more as a means of ensuring his full attention and devotion than anything else. In that fantasy, there was definitely a full-time nanny—old and haggard and nonthreatening, of course—on ha
nd at all times, so she never had to look after them.) As it was, all she had to show for it were some gray hairs she had to keep covering up by having her roots done every six weeks, and some lines around her eyes and mouth. Oh, and the loss of her career, her independence, and her self-esteem. Well, fuck it, she thought, topping up her glass again. Fuck it, fuck him, fuck everything.
The doorbell rang.
Helen caught sight of herself in the hall mirror as she went to answer it. No makeup, unwashed hair, pajamas on. She opened the door and there on her doorstep was Matthew. It took her a minute to notice the two large suitcases at his feet, because she was distracted by his eyes, which were red and puffy as if he'd been crying.
"Hello," she said.
He held his arms out wide.
"I've done it. I've left Sophie. I've told her everything and I've brought all my stuff. Well, not all my stuff, but all the essentials. There's some more in the car, but I'll have to go back and get the rest once she's calmed down a bit. Sorry, I'm rambling. What I'm trying to say is, I'm moving in with you."
