I’ll be home for Christmas

by Roisin Meaney

  ‘Lemon marmalade in the press beside the cooker,’ Laura said. ‘A woman with a café in the village makes it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Lelia’s Lemon Marmalade was handwritten in blue ink on the label. The kettle began to whistle.

  ‘You want tea?’ Tilly asked, dropping a bag into a cup.

  ‘No thanks – but you might fill that little white pot on the worktop for Gladys. She likes a cup in bed before her breakfast.’

  ‘I can take it up to her.’

  ‘No, you have yours. I’ll do it.’ She settled Poppy into her playpen. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I told you yesterday. Our father remarried ten years ago. I don’t imagine our mother mentioned it.’

  Tilly stared at her. ‘No,’ she said faintly.

  ‘No,’ Laura repeated. ‘Well, you have a stepmother. Her name is Susan. She’s supposed to be coming today.’

  ‘Coming here?’ Another hurdle to cross, someone else to meet. ‘Is our father coming too?’ But of course he wasn’t, or Laura would have said so.

  ‘No, just Susan. And there’s something else you should know.’

  A beat passed. Poppy hiccuped, a comical little high-pitched yip. Upstairs a toilet flushed. In the field someone shouted: Dad!

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ Laura said. ‘Susan. I only found out a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Oh …’

  Their father’s wife was pregnant. Tilly looked into her tea and thought about this. Another baby on the way, a half-brother or -sister for her and Laura. ‘When—’

  ‘Hang on,’ Laura said. ‘I’ll bring this up and then I’ll fill you in.’ She left the room with the tray.

  Tilly listened to the soft thump of her steps on the stairs. A stepmother. A pregnant stepmother. A twist, a development she hadn’t expected. She thought about the implications for her own situation, but it was impossible to gauge how this new information would impact on her.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall and read half past nine, and added on ten hours. Early evening, dinner just over. Jemima being prepared for bed, Robbie watching TV or playing in the backyard with Markus from the next farm, who cycled over every few days.

  She felt a sudden piercing dart of homesickness. If she was there she’d be doing the washing-up right now. She closed her eyes and pictured the kitchen at home, so different from this one. Roughly the same size, but plainer and less cluttered. The unvarnished wood cabinets, the well-worn salmon-coloured linoleum that covered the floor. The table, round, not rectangular, its olive-green oilcloth patterned with cherries. A fan on the ceiling, screens on the windows. Cockroach traps by the fridge and under the sink, a rolled-up towel at the back door to keep out snakes. Ma’s apron slung over a chair.

  She opened her eyes and twisted the top from the marmalade jar. It was pulpy, more like a thick citrus sauce. Poppy gabbled in her playpen. Outside there were more shouts. Tilly added milk to her cup. She fished out the teabag and left it sitting in her spoon.

  Laura returned and took the chair next to Tilly. ‘So,’ she said, ‘our father is an artist, a very famous one – well, on this side of the world anyway. He lives in Dublin – that’s where I grew up – and he’s loaded. His pictures sell for Monopoly money, as in they cost a lot.’

  The sentences came out dispassionately. She might have been describing a little-known acquaintance, or a celebrity she’d never met and had little interest in, rather than the man who’d fathered her. She said his name. It meant nothing to Tilly.

  ‘We’re not close, we never have been. He’s not what you’d call …’ her mouth twisted ‘… child-friendly.’

  It was an odd thing to say about her father, but it tallied with what their mother had told Tilly. He was never cut out for children, wasn’t that how she’d put it?

  ‘Susan is forty,’ Laura said. ‘She’s over twenty years younger than him. She’s lovely.’

  ‘When is she coming?’

  ‘Afternoon, probably. I can’t get in touch without the phone.’

  ‘You have no Internet here?’

  ‘It works off the mobile-phone network on the island: if the phones go down so does the Net. We’re completely cut off.’

  Completely cut off: for some reason, this appealed to Tilly. No contact with the outside world. Whatever catastrophes might be happening elsewhere, Roone would remain in blissful ignorance, at least for a while.

  But then she remembered Ma, waiting in Australia for the next text from Bali. The last one sent on Christmas Eve, two days ago, from Breda and Paddy’s house. Nothing to be done, the situation out of Tilly’s hands. She hoped they weren’t worrying though.

  ‘I was married before,’ Laura said then. ‘The boys aren’t Gavin’s. I married him two years ago, after Evie and Marian were born.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘My first husband died, a week before the boys came along.’ A frown on her face that wasn’t really a frown. Looking at the table, not at Tilly. Frowning at the butter dish. ‘He killed himself. He suffered from depression.’

  Tilly was horrified. She wanted to reach out to Laura, but she was too shy. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. It was horribly inadequate. ‘I can’t imagine what you went through.’

  ‘It was hell,’ Laura said calmly, raising her eyes to meet Tilly’s again. ‘Susan was marvellous. I don’t think I’d have survived without her. And then six years later I met Gavin, and here we are.’

  Her smile too bright. Tilly searched for words. ‘Thank you,’ she said finally, ‘for telling me.’ So much sadness. She’d been so young when she’d endured that heartbreak.

  ‘So,’ Laura said, getting to her feet, ‘you’re all caught up. Now have your breakfast before it gets cold.’

  They heard footsteps on the stairs just then. ‘That’ll be Gladys,’ Laura said, bringing the kettle to the sink.

  The door opened. It wasn’t Gladys.

  ‘Hi there,’ Larry said. Navy trousers, grey sweater, very white trainers. ‘Guess this is where I get breakfast.’

  ‘Have a seat,’ Laura told him. ‘Hope you slept well.’ Back to normal, no sign that she had just shared her tragic history with Tilly.

  ‘Yeah, not bad, thanks.’ He took the chair across the table from Tilly. ‘How are you today?’ he asked.

  Tilly smiled, remembering his own sad story of the night before. He needed smiles. ‘Fine, I’m fine.’

  ‘Get that snowfall – came outta nowhere.’

  ‘I know – isn’t it lovely?’ Laura replied, her head in the fridge again. ‘You’re certainly getting a mix of weather here. I have eggs, sausages, bacon and black pudding for your breakfast. That sound OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And there’s cereal on the table. Help yourself.’

  He made no move towards the boxes. ‘You got juice?’

  ‘I have orange.’

  ‘Sure, that’s good.’ She filled a glass for him and he nodded his thanks.

  ‘How d’you like your eggs?’

  Tilly finished her toast, only half listening, still thinking about Laura’s first marriage, and the awful way it had ended. A week before the boys had been born – how did anyone survive that?

  Their mother had made no mention of it in Brisbane – but then, she hadn’t exactly been a fount of information on any front. Tilly wondered if she knew that their father had remarried. And what about Susan, arriving on the island in a few hours? How would she react when she heard about Tilly, the stepdaughter she never knew she had? Hopefully she’d be as nice as Laura said.

  She brought her cup and empty plate to the sink. ‘Leave those, go for your walk,’ Laura told her. ‘Don’t be too long. I want to bring you next door to meet Nell and James.’

  Nell and James, presumably Colette’s son and his wife. She was going to be introduced: Laura wanted her to meet the neighbours. Optimism surged through her. It was going to be alright, it was going to work out.

  She smiled at Larry again, but he was looking
through the window at the snow and didn’t notice. She ran lightly upstairs and put on another sweater and her jacket, slipping her phone into her pocket for photos. She wrapped Colette’s scarf around her throat; wouldn’t have it for much longer. Stupid not to have packed a scarf – not that any of her flimsy things would have been a match for this cold, but they’d have been better than nothing.

  She let herself out the front door, not wanting to go through the kitchen again, and pulled it closed behind her. She stood on the step watching her fogged breath drift upwards, feeling her spirits lift again.

  She regarded the short path to the gate, covered now in white. Was it only yesterday she’d wheeled her suitcase up that path, butterflies going crazy inside her? She looked beyond it to the field across the road. From here the sea wasn’t visible but it was there, just a short distance away. She could smell it – the air was full of it.

  She walked to the gate. The snow felt crunchy, like walking on gravel. She looked back at the footprints she’d made. She reversed into them, stopping at the front door again. She turned and made her way past the bay window, which was still curtained. Already her toes and fingertips tingled with the cold, but she didn’t care. She looked back again at the footprints she was leaving behind.

  She rounded the bend and saw the children, scattered about in the centre of the field. She laughed and broke into a run, the ground bumpy under its snowy covering. She felt about six years old again, chasing after Lien in the school playground. She waved at Gavin, coming back across the field, and he lifted his arm in return.

  She reached the first little girl and stopped, panting. She could feel the blood zinging around inside her. The child was adding a small handful of snow to the column that was now about eighteen inches high. Like her sister, she wore a red padded jacket. Her hands were encased in bright green mittens. Curls poked from beneath her blue woolly hat to frame her face, which was rosy with cold.

  ‘Hello,’ Tilly said. ‘Are you making a snowman?’

  She nodded, patting the snow into place, and Tilly was reminded of one of them reaching over to pat her hair at the dinner table last evening. So sweet.

  ‘It’s lovely.’ Tilly pulled her phone from her pocket and took a snap. ‘Are you Marian or Evie?’

  ‘Mawian.’

  ‘Here—’ Tilly fished a tissue from her pocket and wiped her runny nose, the little girl submitting without comment.

  Nearby Evie, in a yellow hat and orange mittens, was kicking up little bursts of snow with her boots, evidently having decided her work was done. Tilly took more snaps, then turned to the boys, who were moulding snow into a rough basketball-sized sphere a short distance away.

  ‘That’s the head?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah. Can you put it on top?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Auntie Tilly, playing in the snow with her nieces and nephews. She crouched and lifted it, and placed it carefully on top of the column. She stood back, wiping her wet hands on her jeans.

  The five of them regarded it silently. It was short and squat, about the same height as the girls. The head was out of proportion and slightly lopsided, but Tilly didn’t dare touch it again.

  ‘We need a carrot,’ one of the boys said.

  ‘Yeah, an’ a hat.’

  Off they sped towards the house, leaving Tilly with the other two. ‘What’s the snowman’s name?’ she asked.

  A few seconds passed. Then: ‘Daddy,’ Evie said decisively.

  ‘Daddy,’ Marian echoed, hopping about and giggling delightedly. ‘Daddy!’

  Tilly laughed along, filled with a pure happiness she didn’t think she’d ever experienced before. She wanted to grab them, she wanted to throw her arms around them and squeeze, but she thought she’d better not: an excess of affection from their brand-new aunt might alarm them.

  She scanned the field and saw the trees – apple, she thought – to the side of the house, and the large crater in the ground, the mess of bricks and branches. A fallen tree – and something else, some structure it had damaged when it fell.

  The boys came running back with a red baseball cap, a small tomato and a fistful of raisins. ‘Mum had no carrots,’ they said, pushing the tomato into the centre of the head, causing a sizeable wedge of snow to fall off and land with a splat on the ground. Tilly attempted to patch it back together while they poked in raisins for eyes and mouth, and perched the cap on top.

  They stood back again. It was a snow clown, with an uneven mouth, crooked eyes and a nose that threatened to tumble to the ground at any second. As snowmen went, it was a disaster.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Tilly said, careful to keep her face straight.

  ‘Daddy!’ Evie cried again, causing Marian to erupt into renewed giggles.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ she cried, skipping in joyous little circles – and here he came, his barrow full of bricks, stopping as he approached to examine their creation.

  ‘That’s a great snowman,’ he said. ‘But why is his nose a tomato?’

  ‘Mum had no carrot.’

  ‘Hang on.’

  He strode up to an area near the hen run, the little girls trotting and skipping after him. He crouched and fumbled about in the snow, and then yanked something out with a shout of triumph. Back he came, brandishing it high, the girls running along beside him.

  When they drew near enough Tilly saw that it was a small carrot, about five inches long. He removed the tomato and stuck the carrot in its place, packing the snow firmly around it. ‘Now,’ he said, stepping back, wiping his hands on his jacket, ‘that’s a snowman.’

  ‘You grow carrots?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘I do, and lots of other vegetables – that’s my job here. I sell veg and eggs around the island. I do the houses and the cafés.’

  He and Laura had the same accent. ‘Are you from Dublin too?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s where I met Laura – although we’d both just been on holidays here, we’d narrowly missed meeting up. I’ll tell you the story sometime, when this lot give us a chance.’

  The boys had begun to wrestle; the girls were each leaning into their father, arms about his thighs, observing Tilly.

  ‘What happened there?’ she asked, pointing to the orchard, and he told her about the storm damage, and the miraculous escape of the animals. ‘I’m transferring the bricks,’ he said, indicating the pile he’d already formed at the opposite side of the field. ‘We’ll get a new shed built there, out of harm’s way.’

  ‘Daddy,’ one of the girls said, pulling at his trouser leg. ‘Daddy,’ she repeated, pointing at the snowman. Her sister tittered, looking up at Gavin to see his reaction.

  He looked shocked. ‘What? You mean that’s me?’

  They nodded, giggling. He growled and reached down and scooped both of them into his arms. He lunged at them, making munching sounds while they screamed in mock terror and tried to bat him away. ‘Nom, nom, nom,’ he said, as they ducked their heads, laughing. Lucky girls, whose father clearly adored them.

  Tilly took more snaps. She was warming to him, to them all. After only one day, after less than a day, she was becoming connected.

  I want to stay here, she thought. I want to live here.

  She’d barely arrived. She’d seen virtually nothing of the place. She knew nobody on Roone outside this family, apart from Colette, who was only visiting – and yet she was convinced she could happily spend the rest of her life here, on this island.

  What was it about the place that made it somehow feel like home? Impossible as it was, it felt known, it felt familiar to her. Maybe she’d lived here in a previous existence. Maybe she’d been born on Roone a few hundred years ago.

  Time to get to know it a bit.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she told Gavin, who was still trying to eat his shrieking daughters, and he lifted his head just long enough to tell her that it was impossible to get lost. ‘The coast road winds in a circle all around the island,’ he said, ‘and everything else links up with it.
Village that way,’ he said, nodding left, ‘but you won’t get anything open today.’

  ‘I want to go to the sea,’ Tilly said, and he directed her to the beach that Laura had spoken of. She walked from the field and onto the road. She saw tyre tracks in the snow, but there wasn’t a sign of a vehicle now.

  She looked towards the house next door, where Colette was staying and where Laura would be taking her later. There was someone in the front garden: she could see a form inside the waist-high stone wall. She could hear the clank of metal on stone.

  She drew nearer. He – it was a he – wore a dark green woolly hat and a brown padded jacket. He was shovelling snow from the path. He looked up at the sound of her footsteps. Their eyes met for an instant.

  Her heart stopped. It literally stopped dead.

  She felt something, some sensation, sweeping through her, from her head to her fingertips to her toes. Lighting her up as it went, making everything in her jump to attention. Cranking her heart up again, making it thump a million beats to the second.

  He was her age, or thereabouts. He was tall, like her. His face was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  He nodded hello before dipping his head again and resuming his shovelling. Tilly walked on, her legs suddenly unsteady. She was shaking, every part of her was literally shaking with … what?

  With love.

  She had just fallen in love.

  She’d fallen in love at first sight with a boy – a man – who was shovelling snow.

  Stop. Stop that. There was no such thing as love at first sight. It didn’t exist, except in books or films. You couldn’t fall in love with someone you didn’t know. It simply couldn’t happen.

  She walked on, head in a whirl. She didn’t dare look back in case he wasn’t watching her. She could hear the repeated scrape of his shovel on the ground.

  She had to look back.

  She couldn’t look back.

  She looked back.

  He dipped his head: he had been watching. Her heart sang. She walked on, taking big gulps of the frosty air, trying to calm her racing pulse.

  Assuming he wasn’t just working there, he lived next door to Laura and Gavin. He lived in the house where Colette’s son lived. He lived, she realised with an actual gasp of shock, in the house Laura was bringing her to later. She would meet him – she would be introduced to him. This is my sister, Laura would say, and he would say – what?