by Matthew Crow
After dinner Mum and Colette sat in the kitchen talking about menfolk while Chris, Olivia, and Grandma passed out on the sofa in front of The Snowman. Amber and I lay on the couch in the conservatory, curled around one another under two blankets while we listened to the crackling sound of the snow melting on the glass. She had turned the TV on but I’d turned it back off. I could feel Christmas passing too fast and wanted to concentrate hard, like I did on the last morsel of pudding dissolving in my mouth. The worst part of Christmas is that it ends. That practically the day after, everyone carries on as if nothing else ever happens. You’re expected to go back to your normal life, eat normal food, not receive presents or celebrate or be jolly and wear stupid clothing, just because the moment’s passed.
Not this year, though. This year I intended to stretch out Christmas forever. With the TV on we could have lost a whole hour to a repeat of a Christmas special without even realizing it.
Amber kept nodding off against my chest and waking herself up. For once I was happy not to speak to her, just lie there and hold her instead.
“I’m going back into hospital after Christmas,” she said, sleepily, without looking up at me.
“Why?” I asked.
Amber didn’t say anything at first. I could feel my heartbeat getting quicker and more intense, like it was trying to thrash its way out of my chest. With Amber I sometimes felt the way I did after I’d missed a day or two of school, and on my return it seemed as though everybody had skipped an entire academic year, knowing the answers to questions I didn’t even understand. Amber was in control in a way I never would be. She took everything in her stride. She always knew what to say to people, always knew exactly how much to care, and how much to show. Compared to her I felt like I’d been given an instruction manual with half the pages missing. To Amber life made sense; everything had context, relevance. To me most things seemed to forecast the impending apocalypse. You’d think her influence would have had a stabilizing effect on my sensibilities. In reality it just meant I had to worry for us both.
“I’m letting you know,” she said eventually, “so you don’t wonder why I’m not about.”
I told her I’d visit her, but Amber said no.
“I need to go in on my own this time, Francis. I need you to understand that.”
Had she not been so drowsy and vulnerable, this news would most certainly have led to our second real argument. I was a man destroyed.
“But I don’t! We’re a team.”
“I know. And we are. But this is something I need you to do for me. I need you not to text me, and I need you not to visit. And I need you to let me be. It doesn’t change anything between us.”
“Well, I’m coming anyway,” I said.
“Then I’ll never forgive you.”
I suddenly felt like I was having a Soap Opera Christmas, where everyone is miserable and everything always explodes and people cry next to broken trees while the radio plays a tinny version of “Stay Another Day.”
“Have I done something wrong?” I asked.
Amber laughed slightly and rubbed my chest.
“No,” she said, “you did everything right. Just . . . do this, for me. Everything’s still the same between us. But I have to do this bit on my own. Okay?”
It certainly was not.
“My dad came back, you know?” I said. Partly because I hadn’t told Amber yet, and we told each other everything. And partly to try to make her feel sorry for me, and let me visit her.
“Hmmm. How awful,” she said, although I could tell she was falling asleep again. “Did he upset you?”
I said no.
“Hmmmm. Is he coming back?”
I said no.
“Hmmmmmm. Do you hate him?”
I said no.
“Hmmmmm,” she said, her head dipping into the crease of my shoulder. “Good,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Life’s too short.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The snow was practically gone by the next morning. It was as though it had arranged a suicide pact with Christmas itself. Patches of street began to poke through the white, like mold on bread. By the first week of the New Year everything looked like it always had, only wetter and sadder, like yesterday’s packed lunch.
Even the tree in the front room started to seem slightly desperate once Mum had relieved it of most of the cards and all of the presents. During my first year in high school I had turned up to our end-of-term disco in a dinner jacket and black tie, so I knew how it felt. It didn’t help that Chris had eaten every last one of the edible decorations and, after coming home on New Year’s Day still steaming drunk, half a plastic one too.
“It’s bad luck after the fifth,” Grandma would warn Mum every time she came around, pointing at the limp tree.
“I’m working on the hunch I’ll come back one day and the lads will have taken it down as a thank-you for Christmas,” Mum told her.
Grandma made her Good Luck with That One face and carried on knitting.
Amber stuck to her word even if I hadn’t stuck to mine. I would text her every day, to no response. Her phone was almost permanently switched off. Even when I tried ringing Colette she was never at the house. I began to carry my cell phone everywhere with me, like it was a new baby that needed constant attention. I’d even wrap it in a sandwich bag and rest it on the toilet when I had a bath, lest it spring to life while I wasn’t looking and Amber would be left thinking I didn’t care.
“Give her time,” Mum would say, before skipping on to a different subject.
“I don’t think the pain of a broken heart is one I will survive,” I said, lying across the upstairs landing so that everybody would notice my plight.
Grandma stepped over me on the way to the bathroom and muttered something about Alka-Seltzer. Mum would give me a sly kick every time she hopped over my soon-to-be corpse and tell me to stop being so melodramatic.
Worse still was that as well as an AWOL lover I was also being faced with the threat of an imminent return to school.
“Half days at first. Maybe every other day,” Mum said as she ironed my underwear in the kitchen. She’d even ironed my school uniform and hung it on the door of my closet, like a skull’s head on a writer’s desk—a constant reminder of exactly where I was heading.
“But what if Amber gets better?” I said. “Or worse?” Mum didn’t reply. “The school will have to know about the circumstances in case I need to leave halfway through a lesson.”
“What time’s Chris coming?” Mum asked, checking her watch. Mum is not an accomplished listener, like I am. She can be quite emotionally distant. I suspect Dad has something to do with this, as well as the fact that she grew up on a street where lots of people now take drugs and go to the shops in their slippers and dressing gowns. Hers was not a “talking” environment.
The truth was that I knew something bad was happening. Chris was being overly sympathetic: letting me choose what music to listen to or what films to watch, instead of playing couch commando like he usually did. Even Mum kept giving me secret glances, like she had done before—when she knew I wasn’t well and suspected what was coming, but hadn’t yet been given the diagnosis. It was the look she had given me when she’d wanted everything to be different. When she didn’t want to admit what was probably true.
I was getting better but Amber didn’t seem to be. The truth was she was getting worse. The truth was that I think she knew it. Worst of all the truth was that at first, as upsetting as the thought of her being ill was for me, all I could really think about was where this would leave us vis-à-vis being in love.
The superstitions I had affected soon became rituals that I would perform in an attempt at some cosmic cure. Every morning I would open Amber’s Christmas present to me and display the laminated cards on the floor, in chronological order, for the whole day. Then each evening I would
pack them away, still in order, and return them to my bedside table before kissing the windowpane good night.
I would listen only to songs we had listened to together. I would listen to each song until the end. Even if I needed the toilet or to throw up, I would simply gird the threatening orifice until the final bar had faded. And I would leave the room only in the silent moments between songs, lest one start and have to be cut short at its peak.
For a while I almost stopped speaking to Mum. I was scared she might lie to me. Or, worse, that she might tell me the truth and I might not like it. She’d been busy since Christmas anyway, out of the house more, leaving Chris and Grandma to hold the fort while she gallivanted elsewhere in my time of need.
She had arranged for Chris to take me to the January sales in his new car even though it would have been quicker getting the bus.
We spent forty-five minutes looking for a parking spot, then at least half an hour at each shop. Chris nearly got into a fight with two bigger lads over a pair of jeans he’d had his eye on. Nothing I had earmarked was in my size, but I didn’t let that stop me. All that mattered was that it was cheap and I had money. I got a pair of sneakers two sizes too big, jeans that ended an inch above my ankles, and a T-shirt I hated but which came from a shop I liked and was 75 percent off, so it seemed a false economy not to buy it.
“You look like you’re on day release,” Chris said as we made our way back to the car. I could barely hear him. Every ounce of my concentration was going into not tripping over in my stupid clown feet. I had made the unwise decision to have my old clothes bagged and wear my fancy new finds home, so that I could debut my new look to the world at large. The reaction had been mixed at best, but often Tyne and Wear was unable to keep up with my style savvy, so I didn’t let it dishearten me.
Fiona had texted, telling Chris that if he didn’t turn up with food within fifteen minutes she would change the locks, so he dropped me off outside the house.
“You know,” he said, as I was getting out of the car without bending my legs (the jeans were somewhat inhibiting), “if you ever need to talk or anything, Frankie, I’m always here.”
When I got inside the house I could hear music playing from the front room. I shouted for Mum to come and look at my edgy new attire.
“You won’t believe it was all at least half price!” I yelled to no response, clomping through the hall in sneakers that kept trying to fly from my feet.
I heard the music dip to its lowest setting, which meant that Mum was preparing herself for my grand entrance. I walked proudly into the living room, feeling sprightly at having achieved an iconic look on such a measly budget, only to be deflated by a sight so terrifying I could literally feel the color drain from my face.
“Hello there, young man,” said DS Bradshaw from the couch. Only he wasn’t dressed as a policeman today; he was in jeans and a smart/casual shirt that made him look oddly vulnerable. I could probably beat him in a fight if it came to it, I thought.
And it probably would come to a fight.
“Oh, Francis, I didn’t hear you come in,” Mum said, as close to blushing as she ever got. She had on her black dress. Not her going out one. The one she wore for things like parents’ evening when she wanted people to know she’d done all right for herself but didn’t like to brag.
I did not say a word.
“Hope you’ve been keeping your nose clean,” DS Bradshaw said, trying to be jovial as he sipped a bottle of beer. I wondered what the police force would make of the fact that he was drinking alcohol at barely half past three in the afternoon. I would inform them at the first given opportunity, and also of his professional misconduct re Mum.
“Come on, let’s get you sorted out,” she said, hurrying me out of the front room and into the kitchen.
“Mum . . .” I hissed, turning on the radio so that our conversation could not be overheard, “. . . not cool.”
“Oh, grow up, Frankie,” she said, buttering two pieces of bread without any of the care or love she usually demonstrated while performing such tasks. This was obviously the effect another man had on our family unit. It must be stopped. “You overreact to everything. Dennis is just an old friend.”
“An old sex friend,” I said, and Mum gave a threatening raise of her eyebrows. “Anyway it’s not Dennis. It’s DS BRADSHAW . . . the man who incarcerated me for drugs and almost ruined my life!”
“For God’s sake,” she said, slapping a wet sliver of ham onto my sandwich and practically slamming it down on the plate, “it’s just a drink with a friend, which is something I’m pretty short on these days.”
“You’ve got the girls.”
“That’s different.”
“And what about Dad?”
“He made his bed, Francis. I should be able to do whatever the hell I like in mine.”
More than losing my virginity, more than cancer, more even than the time I saw a lady fall over in the street and didn’t laugh, this was the exact moment I felt the last shred of my childhood disintegrate. With that comment from my mother I became a man, and the cruelty of the adult world hit me full force.
I looked down at the guilt sandwich Mum had made me and suddenly felt very old.
“I thought you said you were just friends? And you and Dad aren’t even properly divorced. It’s bigamy. You could go to jail, and so could he. . . .”
“I don’t know where you get this stuff from, Francis. . . .”
“. . . plus I know what they do to coppers when they get sent down. I saw it on Bad Girls.”
“Oh, God, where are we now in the world?” Mum asked, pouring me a glass of water and handing me my tablets. “Like it or lump it, Frankie, it is what it is. Now, you can either shut up, buck up, and get on with it. Or you can sit and sulk. We can talk about it later. Or we can act like it never happened. But either way, for me, for everything I’ve ever done for you, just give it a rest and let us finish our drink, eh?”
I shrugged. Meaning I had not yet made up my mind about Mum’s illicit affair. She gave my head a paltry stroke and made her way back into the front room. I was left alone to my loveless ham sandwich, which caught on the back of my throat like a lie.
Chris arrived within fifteen minutes of me texting him for emergency backup. I snuck him in through the kitchen door so that Mum wouldn’t hear him come in.
“This is priceless,” he whispered as he made his way into the front room.
I sat and listened from the kitchen, waiting for the inevitable fireworks. I heard him say hi, in an overly enthusiastic way, and Mum groan.
“Did he put you up to this?” she said in her fed-up tone of voice.
It went quiet for a while. For nearly ten minutes I sat and tried in vain to listen to the conversation. Chris would no doubt be berating them both for being so inconsiderate in the face of my heartache. He was probably insisting that DS Bradshaw vacate the premises immediately, and brandishing a poker or similar blunt instrument.
Eventually the voices grew louder. Then out of nowhere came laughter.
I moved closer to the kitchen door, but still couldn’t hear properly. So I made my way across the hallway, crawling on my hands and knees so that my footsteps would not give my presence away.
I crouched on all fours outside the front-room door. Chris was telling a story. Mum was laughing. DS Bradshaw was silent. I had my ear pressed against the lowest panel when the door flew open and I found myself eyeing Mum’s knees.
“What the hell are you doing there, Francis?” she asked.
“Looking for a contact lens.”
“You don’t wear contacts. Get up.”
“Not one of mine,” I said as Mum hauled me to my feet. “Amber’s.”
“She doesn’t wear contacts either.”
“Not since she lost it,” I said, without even having to pause for thought. I am quite adept at thinki
ng on my feet.
“Dennis was just leaving,” Mum said as DS Bradshaw put on his coat. I shrugged and went to sit down next to Chris, who shook his head.
“Nice to meet you, Christopher,” the visitor said, shaking his hand. Chris even stood up to do it. He was obviously more fearful of authority than I was. I refused to let myself be intimidated by The Man.
“And, Frankie, glad to see you on the mend. You keep yourself out of bother, for your mam’s sake,” he said.
Mum saw him to the front door and stood there for upwards of three minutes. There was whispering and laughter—no doubt about me—and all the while an icy blast blew through the front passage and into the living room, threatening us all with pneumonia or worse.
“What is your problem?” Chris asked me. “She’s happy, can’t you see that?”
“He’s probably trying to trick her. He can’t be trusted,” I said, confident in my diagnosis of the situation.
“Just lay off.”
Chris didn’t side with Mum. He never sided with Mum. The car had obviously been her attempt to bribe him over to her side from mine. I hated that car.
“We’ll see.”
“Be cool, Francis. This is a big deal for her.”
“Fine,” I said, as Mum came back into the front room. “But I’m not happy.”
“Not a word,” she said, clearing away.
“I like him,” Chris said as Mum picked up the bowl of chips and the two empty beer bottles that Dennis had been drinking from. While she was tidying she had a stupid sort of smile on her face. The type you get at school when someone hands you a note but you can’t laugh out loud.
“Well, thank you,” she said, tipping the rest of the wine into a small glass.
“He’s all right,” I said, eventually. “I suppose.”
Mum put all the things onto a tray and hoisted it off the coffee table.
“You’ll always be my guy, Francis. Just you remember that,” she said, kissing me on the head before making her way to the kitchen.
