‘Oh, right, well, I’d better get ready,’ he says, jumping to his feet.
Hmm. That’s usually my job.
‘OK,’ is about all I can say.
I need to call my mum and explain anyway.
‘Great, I’ll just go toss this money to the vultures,’ he jokes. ‘Be right back.’
It’s weird to see Damian so chipper and excited. He’s never either of those things. He’s usually quite dark and moody. It’s good, I guess, I just feel bad. I tell you what, though, there’s no way I can give my notice now, not until after Christmas. At least I can give him a good Christmas before I go, ending our working relationship on a high.
Anyway, I’m not just doing this for him, I’m buying myself some time too. Because I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to break the bad news to him.
18
The only thing weirder than Damian getting himself completely ready for our trip is the fact that he’s coming with me at all, and that I’m talking about him as if he’s a kid who just managed to tie his own shoes for the first time.
Still, I’m not about to knock it. I’ve packed so many bags for that man I was starting to think he didn’t know how.
When Damian said he was going to pick me up from my flat I had a mini panic. Well, Damian lives in the posh bit of London, and my Chalk Farm flat in an old converted house has seen better days. Not old enough to look charming, but run-down enough to look like a poor man’s haunted Disney attraction. The external white walls are covered with some kind of dried-up crawling plant, which almost makes it look like an abandoned building. Inside is super-fancy, it’s just also super-tiny, and it’s so, so expensive for what it is, but when Damian picks me up all he’s going to see is the knackered old outside.
I did offer to meet him at King’s Cross – being no stranger to public transport – but he insisted on picking me up at home so I said I’d meet him at the end of my road.
When Damian did turn up he was being driven – as usual – but this time he was in a massive Range Rover. His driver loaded my bags into an already pretty stacked boot before opening my door for me.
‘Morning,’ Damian said brightly. ‘I brought you a coffee.’
I can smell the Starbucks wafting from the cupholder where the middle seat would usually be.
‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘Erm… are you really taking all that on the train?’
I asked as though they would even let him on a train with that much. He’d need extra tickets just for his luggage.
‘Nah,’ he said casually. ‘I don’t like trains. I figured we’d drive.’
‘Drive?’ I practically squeaked.
‘Yeah, well, Martin is going to drive us,’ he said, as though I hadn’t already figured that out. ‘And then he’s going to go home to his family, with one hell of a Christmas bonus, and he’s going to pick us up when we’re done, whenever that is. It’s way easier than the train.’
‘For everyone but poor Martin,’ I corrected him, well aware he can hear our conversation. ‘And it takes much longer but… OK… sure.’
‘It will be fun,’ Damian insisted. ‘I thought about a helicopter but, after we got back from the wedding, I’m pretty sure I heard you muttering something about “never-a-fucking-gain” as I pulled your fingernails out of my hand.’
He smiles. At least I’m amusing when I’m terrified.
Do you know what? Damian was right: it has been fun. We’ve been on the road for hours now, but it’s been lovely. Sure, it takes more than double the time the train does, but it’s nice to be so relaxed. Just having room to sprawl out, comfortable seats to snooze in – heated seats, no less. We stopped multiple times for bathroom breaks and bites to eat. We listened to music and played games and chatted in a way we don’t often get chance to, just about everyday stuff – like what a kind of unusual year it’s been for both of us, and how it’s simultaneously felt really long and also gone in what feels like a heartbeat.
’We’re nearly there,’ I tell him. ‘Less than fifteen minutes.’
‘Why am I nervous?’ he asks with an awkward laugh. ‘I’ve never met anyone’s parents. Well, I’m sure I’ve met parents before, but not someone’s parents.’
‘Hmm, you’ve never met an employee’s parents before?’ I say sarcastically. ‘How odd this must be for you.’
Damian laughs.
‘You’ve never brought a boss to meet your family before?’ he asks.
‘I’ve never taken anyone to meet them,’ I say. ‘And the problem with that is that I don’t know if they’re weird… I don’t think they’re weird. No weirder than me.’
‘You said they take Christmas pretty seriously,’ Damian says. ‘Dare I ask a little more about that?’
‘Christmas in the Kirke household is like a military operation,’ I tell him. ‘We have our traditions, our weird quirks, and then there’s all the neighbourhood stuff…’
‘Neighbourhood stuff?’ Damian interrupts.
‘Well, to be honest, it’s the whole town,’ I say. ‘Everyone takes Christmas very seriously. We even have our own Winter Wonderland – although it’s nothing like Hyde Park’s, it’s much smaller, and much more… local.’
‘Local,’ Damian echoes. ‘What do you mean lo—?’
‘Erm,’ we hear Martin say from the front of the car. That’s never a good noise to hear from a driver, is it?
‘What’s wrong?’ Damian asks.
‘The satnav, I think,’ Martin says. ‘It’s telling me to drive out into the sea…’
‘Oh, gosh, are we so close already?’ I say, looking out of the window. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think. I guess because I was supposed to be arriving much earlier. The causeway is closed.’
‘The what?’ Damian says. ‘The causeway?’
‘Yeah, sorry, I didn’t think to mention it,’ I say as I mess with my phone. ‘I grew up on a tidal island.’
‘A tidal island?’ Damian says.
‘Is there an echo in this car?’ I joke. ‘You know, a tidal island. As the tide comes and goes it cuts us off from the rest of the town.’
‘I have never heard of that,’ Damian says firmly. ‘Is that real?’
‘They’re definitely real,’ Martin says with a laugh. ‘I just didn't realise we were going to one. I just keyed the postcode in earlier but I can see it now – we’re at Hope Island.’
‘We don’t have to wait long. It says here it should be open in the next thirty minutes,’ I tell them. ‘We just need to hang tight until then.’
‘I reckon the Range Rover could get through that water, you know,’ Martin reasons. ‘Shall we chance it?’
‘Oh, God, please don’t,’ I insist. ‘Seriously, it is such a big deal here.’
‘How deep can it be?’ Damian asks.
‘You’d be surprised,’ I tell him. ‘At high tide the water can be six-feet deep. The road is a mile long, which doesn’t seem far, but people get stuck in the middle all the time – maybe every couple of months.’
‘What happens when someone gets stuck?’ Damian asks curiously.
‘The coast guard has to rescue them,’ I tell him. ‘It only takes a couple of feet for cars to float.’
‘You know so much about this,’ Damian points out, almost amused.
‘Seriously, they taught us all about it at school, so we always took it seriously, mostly because the school is on the mainland side, so many of us would have to cross it multiple times a day,’ I tell him. ‘They even taught us this cringey rhyme to remember the key facts.’
‘Obviously we need to hear it,’ Damian insists.
‘Oh, God, no,’ I say quickly. ‘Small-town school is so weird. The headteacher, Mrs Snowball, used to come up with these awful, embarrassing rhymes for everything.’
‘Your headteacher was called Mrs Snowball?’ Damian says in disbelief.
I nod. I could tell so many stories about Mrs Snowball – she isn’t as wholesome as she sounds. I remember, back when I was at school, she seemed
like a giant. Her short, sharp, dark bob put me in mind of Cate Blanchett’s Irina Spalko character from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but with big Miss Trunchbull from Matilda energy. She was so sickly sweet but so blatantly evil. I was so pleased to see the back of her when I left primary school, but even more delighted as a teenager when a photo of her as a student did the rounds. She was protesting something – and getting arrested – and most notably she didn’t have a bra on. You can’t put a price on discovering that kind of dirt on the teachers who terrorised you.
‘Come on, we’ve got half an hour to kill – tell us the causeway rhyme,’ Damian begs. ‘Martin wants to hear it, don’t you, Martin?’
‘I kind of do,’ he admits sheepishly.
‘Ergh, OK, let’s see, how did it go?’ I babble. I’m only pretending I don’t remember it as a stalling technique because I absolutely don’t want to do this. I do remember it though – I remember it perfectly. It’s weird, isn’t it, how we can be so forgetful in so many ways about such important things, but we can recall every dumb song they taught us at school? I’ll tell them; they might get a kick out of it.
‘So it went something like… Six foot at the highest part of the tide. Five is the minutes it takes for the drive. Four-by-fours still find it hard. Three thousand pounds it costs the coastguard. Two times a day is when we see the tide. One life would be wasted if you surely died.’
‘Shit, that’s dark,’ Damian says through his laughter. ‘And awful – does it really cost the coast guard three thousand pounds?’
‘Two thousand pounds for a sea rescue, four thousand pounds for an air rescue… I suppose that’s what the rhyme was getting at with three thousand pounds,’ I reason.
‘Well, yeah, let’s just wait it out, then,’ Damian says, still laughing. ‘God, that’s made my day. I can’t believe it. I’m spending Christmas in The Wicker Man.’
‘You asked to spend Christmas in The Wicker Man,’ I remind him.
‘Yes, I did,’ he says. ‘And I can’t wait.’
19
As we turn onto the street where my parents live it is just starting to get dark out. This means that everyone’s Christmas lights should be switching on right… about… now. Wow, I didn’t think that would work. As predictable as ever, the entire street’s joint Christmas-lights effort has come to life, like clockwork, and right as we are driving along it – what a fantastic way to see it for the first time.
‘Is this for us?’ Damian asks with a laugh, his faced pressed up against the glass, with all the excitement of a child at… well… Christmas.
‘I’m worried you didn’t quite believe me when I said that my family takes Christmas very seriously,’ I say. ‘Every year everyone on this street works together – and yet still low-key competes with each other – to have these epic Christmas-light displays in their garden. It’s all for a good cause though. Tourists and locals all come to see the displays. There’s even a secure collection box at the end of the road, so that people can donate money – last year they were raising funds for a local hospice.’
‘I can’t believe this is someone’s real life,’ Damian says.
‘You literally left your multimillion-pound bachelor pad to chill out at a five-star sea resort with a serial killer and a bunch of models. You definitely have the least believable life.’
‘Maybe,’ he says with a laugh. ‘But this is pretty cool too.’
‘That’s my parents’ house over there,’ I tell Martin.
‘The one with the Santa Claus statue outside?’ Damian asks.
‘Erm, not exactly,’ I say, feeling just a little awkward. Maybe my family is weird. ‘That’s not a Santa Claus statue, that’s my dad.’
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ my dad bellows so loudly you can hear him from inside the car. He’s ringing a big golden bell – one that is older than I am but still packs a really loud chime. My dad would always dress up as Santa Claus when my sister and I were kids. As we got older, even long after we stopped believing in Santa Claus, he would still dress up in his trusty old red suit and welcome us home as Old St Nick. I don’t think he was showing any signs of growing tired of it but now that Selena has Ben, well, he’ll definitely keep doing it until he’s old enough to stop believing. Not that I mind. It’s quite the welcome home.
‘You know that Christmas song that’s about stepping into Christmas?’ Damian says.
‘Erm… “Step into Christmas” by Elton John? That one?’ I reply.
‘That’s the one,’ he says, either not detecting or completely ignoring my sarcasm. ‘I feel like I just did that.’
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ my dad says as Martin helps us up the driveway with our bags – most of them are Damian’s and God knows what he’s got in them. ‘Did you boys and girls get caught by a closed causeway?’
‘We did indeed,’ I say as I reach forward to kiss him on his cheek. His plastic beard makes my face itch.
‘So, two extra for Christmas, is it?’ my dad asks, finally breaking character.
‘Oh, no, I’m not staying,’ Martin insists quickly. Yes, because that would be weird.
‘Dad, this is Damian. Damian, this is my dad, Eric,’ I introduce them.
The two of them shake hands in that manly way men do.
‘Great to meet you, lad,’ my dad says. I swear he always sounds more northern when he’s talking to other men.
‘You too,’ Damian replies. ‘That’s a great suit you’ve got there. You’ve even got the fake belly.’
My dad’s face falls.
‘That’s… that’s not a fake,’ my dad says sadly.
‘Oh, shit,’ Damian blurts. ‘Shit, sorry, I…’
‘I’m just joking,’ my dad says, putting him out of his misery. ‘Of course, it’s fake. Although, I suppose it is my belly – I did pay for it.’
You can practically see the relief surging through Damian’s veins.
‘Oh, my God, you had me there,’ Damian says as he exhales. ‘I thought I’d offended you and sworn at you within thirty seconds of meeting you.’
My dad laughs to himself as he grabs a few bags and heads for the front door.
‘Don’t worry about the swearing,’ he reassures him. ‘We’re always shit-ing and fuck-ing in this house.’
‘He doesn’t mean that as bad as it sounds,’ I whisper to Damian. ‘I hope…’
‘OK, boss, I’ll be off,’ Martin says with a big smile. You can tell he’s amused by all of this.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Damian says, suddenly sounding a little uneasy. ‘I’ll be in touch after Christmas.’
‘It’s not too late to turn back,’ I tell him. ‘You could get in Martin’s car and go home…’
‘Nope, I’m here now. No turning back,’ he says before taking a deep breath.
Honestly, I think he was less nervous about meeting the murderer.
20
‘You actually got here just in time for dinner,’ my dad says as he helps us up the stairs. ‘Mum is just putting the finishing touches on it – Selena is probably putting out the fire.’
Damian knows that this one is a joke and laughs accordingly.
‘I figure I’ll show you to your rooms – just in case Sadie has forgotten where her room is. Then we can go get you introduced to everyone. See if you still want to stay.’
‘Sounds great,’ Damian says.
‘Right, Damian, you’re in our Selena’s old room. Grandma is in the spare room and I didn’t think you’d want to bunk up with her,’ my dad continues – he never stops. When his mum died he cracked a joke during her eulogy. She would have loved it though.
‘Oh, boy,’ is about all Damian can say as he steps into Selena’s old room. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the words ‘oh, boy’ come out of his mouth but if Selena’s room is how I remember it… yep.
‘Sorry about all the eyes on you,’ my dad says. ‘She went through a bit of a phase.’
In the years before Selena moved out, probably when she was about sixt
een to eighteen, she was absolutely obsessed with the boyband Blue. I was never a Blue fan; I always thought I was way cooler than that (I wasn’t, I was going through a Marilyn Manson phase at the same time, but I had the good sense to take my posters down at some point), but honestly Selena was absolutely obsessed. She thought she was going to marry Lee Ryan – in fact, I bet deep down she probably still does.
Every inch of Selena’s bedroom wall is covered with posters of Blue, so many, in fact, that I don’t even remember what kind of wallpaper she had. As if that isn’t creepy enough, she actually has a large poster of Lee Ryan on the ceiling above her bed.
‘Dad, I really don’t think Selena would mind if you took these down,’ I say. ‘She’s married with a kid – I really don’t think she’s coming back.’
‘Ah, but if I take them down that wouldn’t be anywhere near as embarrassing for her, would it?’ He chuckles. ‘I don’t want her forgetting, no matter how old she gets, or how well she’s doing, that she glued a poster from Top of the Pops magazine to a dodo.’
Damian looks horrified until I turn him towards Selena’s desk chair. Sitting on it is a stuffed dodo with a poster of Lee Ryan’s face stuck on it. Still pretty bad, but it could be much worse.
‘Are you going to be OK sleeping in here?’ I ask.
‘Ah, he’ll be fine,’ my dad insists. ‘He’s made his bed. Now he has to sleep with Blue in it.’
It’s probably pretty weird that my dad is still fully dressed as Santa Claus. Damian has been chatting away with him and still has no idea what he looks like.
‘Are you going to ditch the outfit for dinner?’ I ask him.
‘And eat in the nip?’ he shrieks. ‘Yeah, will do. I’ll just go get the rest of Damian’s bags.’
‘Oh, they’re gifts for you guys,’ Damian says. ‘I didn’t want to turn up empty-handed, so I picked up a couple of Harrods hampers. There’s bound to be something everyone likes in them.’
‘Oh, that’s very good of you,’ my dad says. ‘We’ll get stuck into them after dinner. For now, you two offload your junk, I’ll get my kit off, and then we’ll go eat dinner. How’s about it?’
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