by Shari Low
‘You can uncork the bottle of red that Derek brought,’ she gestured to the bottle sitting on the quartz worktop next to two that were already open. The wine was a relatively safe delegation. There was no way she was trusting Verity with the sushi. ‘And then you can pour me a Chardonnay. There’s an open bottle in the fridge. Help yourself to whichever you prefer.’
Verity did as she was told, while Marina went back to rolling her rice on the kitchen’s centre island.
‘Darling, where did you put the…?’ Graham paused in the doorway as he spotted the wine bottle in Verity’s hand. ‘Ah, great. Thank you. Verity saves the day.’ He grabbed a couple of glasses and held them up to the light, checking they passed inspection. ‘My parents have just arrived, darling. I said you’ll be in to say hello shortly,’ he told Marina. ‘Mother said not to disturb you while you’re preparing a masterpiece so I’ll just keep them entertained. Not sure how the sushi will go down with mother though. Might want to have some Scotch Broth on standby.’
As he left, it was Verity’s turn for the raised eyebrow of inquisition.
‘Did you choose sushi deliberately because you knew his mother would hate it?’
Marina gasped in outrage. ‘No!’ Then grinned, ‘Okay, maybe. I’ll bet you ten quid she’s bought me another bloody cookbook for my Christmas. It’s like my whole life should be dedicated to her son’s stomach.’ She paused.
‘Anyway, how many times will I have to ask you why you’re pissed off with Zoe before you crack and tell me everything?’
Verity’s lips pursed into a thin line of irritation as she crossed the room and pulled out a bar stool, so that she was sitting in front of where Marina was working. ‘I’m not, it’s just… well, okay, I am.’
‘What did she do? Hang on, don’t tell me… she borrowed something and forgot to give it back again? What was it this time?’ Marina was trying to be interested, she really was. But a lifetime of dealing with her younger sisters and their dramas had given her a healthy resilience to bickering, and pretty strong confidence that everything blows over eventually. Their dad used to say that all the time. ‘It’ll pass,’ he’d shrug, when one of them was raging at another. ‘You’re all sisters and you have to stick together,’ was another of his frequent laments. ‘Accept each other’s faults.’ ‘Love each other no matter what.’ All wise words. Marina wasn’t sure that they managed to keep to them – especially the one about accepting each other’s faults – but they did their best, especially when it really mattered.
After their dad left them, her mum would ignore the conflicts, taking herself off into another room to do yoga or some life-affirming bloody chant, leaving Marina to stop Zoe whacking Verity with the living-room lamp, or to make Verity apologise to Yvie for cutting off her Barbie’s hair with the garden shears. Their teenage experiences had bonded them, but in adulthood they’d all settled into their own personalities and lives. The years had brought times of distance for some, closeness for others, and the odd bout of resentment or disagreement. Now, she could see that Verity was having an inner debate on whether or not to share the details. Of all of them, Verity was the most closed off, the most reluctant to share her problems or dramas. Uptight. Reserved. Measured. Stick up her arse. The description depended on which sister was describing her and whether it was in the heat of an argument.
Not today. Completely uncharacteristically, Verity spilled all the gory details. Marina continued to roll the sushi while she spoke. Priorities.
‘Ned. You know, my colleague at school…’
‘I know Ned.’ Oh yes, she knew. At the last school fundraiser Verity had dragged them all to, Marina had won a dinner with the lovely Ned as a raffle prize. That reminded her – she must get in touch and sort that out. ‘Easy on the eye.’
That caused an irritated pursing of the lips that had to be reversed before Verity could carry on and give a blow-by-blow account of the last day of school before the Christmas break. Marina was standing back, admiring her completed sushi plate by the time Verity got to the bit where she attempted to talk Zoe into getting a taxi home.
‘She point-blank refused. Said I was spoiling her fun. I was spoiling her fun?’ Her face was flushing as her irritation rose. ‘I mean, seriously. What the hell did she think she was doing to mine?’
Marina had sympathy. She really did. Sort of. But did Verity have to choose now to have an emotional crisis when there were guests in the next room and a tray of sushi that wasn’t going to keep all bloody day? Not to mention the five bird spectacle in the Aga, the vegetables and trimmings warming in the other ovens next to the fresh baked bread, and the choice of three desserts (apple crumble, Cointreau cheesecake and home-made trifle) that had to be baked, defrosted and whipped up in perfect synchronicity so that they’d all be ready at the same time. There was a schedule here and it didn’t include time for Verity’s drama, not if today was going to go without a hitch.
Marina pushed her hair back from her face with the back of her wrist, careful not to do anything that would replace her eau de Chanel with an eau de Sashimi.
‘Okay, let me get this straight. You’ve got a thing for Ned…’
Verity squirmed a little at that. ‘Not a thing, as such. But he’s my… friend.’ Being completely emotionally stilted and obsessively private about her feelings, she hadn’t actually confirmed that there was a romantic attraction there, but it was easy to read between the lines. The red flush that was rising up her neck now confirmed Marina’s assumption.
‘Then it’s simple. Tell Zoe that you like Ned and she’ll back off. It sounds like it was just a bit of a drunken night and there was nothing between them anyway.’
Verity needed a bit of convincing. ‘Do you think so?’
Marina really didn’t have time for this.
‘Yes! It’s Zoe, for God’s sake – she can have any guy she wants. There’s no way she’s going to want the one man on earth who has given you your first romantic spark since that bloke from Boyzone.’
Marina was trying to defuse the situation with a bit of teasing, but it fell flat given that it was pretty close to the truth. Verity was a year younger than her and – other than a five year relationship that ended the year after she left uni and a few romances that fizzled out after a month or two – as far as Marina knew, she’d been pretty much single for the best part of a decade. Marina reckoned it was because she had major trust issues and barriers that were almost impossible to penetrate, but then, who wouldn’t in their situation? Hadn’t they learned when they were teenagers that everything can change in a heartbeat, that the people you trust can be the ones who cause the most pain, that you can’t count on anything in life? And those sentiments were never more prevalent for them all than at Christmas.
All four sisters had found a way to rationalise their father’s absence from their life, but Verity had definitely been left with the most ongoing damage. And if she did actually feel that this guy was worth dropping her guard for, then it was a cruel irony that he was currently being nabbed by their own sister.
‘Just tell her how you feel. She’s just broken up with Tom and she’ll still be heartbroken over him. This guy will mean nothing to her.’
‘What guy means nothing to who?’ Zoe and Yvie had slipped in the door without the other two hearing a thing. That’s what happened when you insisted your guests took their shoes off so their heels wouldn’t damage the walnut floors. Thankfully it seemed like they’d only caught the tail end of the conversation.
Marina thought fast and bluffed her way out of it. ‘Oh, eh, just a friend. She hooked up with some guy on Tinder.’
‘Ooooh, get you, all up to date with the dating apps,’ Yvie chuckled. She was changed now, wearing a jumper with a giant, flashing Christmas tree on the front. ‘Hope you’re not tempted to go looking for some extramarital action.’
Marina didn’t dignify that with an answer – which was a mistake, because it left the door to speculation open for Zoe to step right through.
Not for the first time, Marina decided that the crassness of Zoe’s conversation was a stark contrast to the elegance of her style. Today, her sister was stunning in her cream jersey turtle-neck and wide palazzo trousers of exactly the same shade. With her blonde hair left loose and messy, she was a cross between a gorgeous surfer chick and something out of a Dolce and Gabbana advert.
Meanwhile, Verity’s neck flush made it to the roots of her hair and Marina thought how typical this was. She and Verity had always been the more mature and conservative of the sisters, standing on one side of the responsibility net, while Zoe and Yvie were dancing until midnight on the other side, caring not a jot about what anyone thought of them. Well, good for them, but they had to realise that sometimes you had to grow up and do the right thing. Even if it meant losing a bit of fun. Or staying in a situation that had long since stopped bringing you joy. Or happiness. Or excitement.
Realising that thought was way too close to home, Marina shook it off. There was no point going down that path, not today.
Instead she went for a complete change of subject. And if it delivered a reality check to her sister, well, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
‘I’m sorry about you and Tom. I thought you two were in it for the long run.’
Zoe reacted with a sad shrug.
No jokes about Tinder and wild shagging now, Marina thought.
‘Och, me too. I was completely blind-sided by it, but what can you do? I’m not going to sit around moping. Not at Christmas. Definitely not today,’ she finished, and they all understood why. No. Definitely not today.
‘Are you going to try to talk him around and make it work?’
Zoe shook her head. ‘Nope. It’s a long story. It turns out, the teenage love of his life – her name’s Chrissie and I met her yesterday…’
‘You met her?’ Verity said, shocked.
‘Yeah. They came round to the flat. Look, Tom and I were mates long before we got together, we worked together for years and we will have to work together for a long time to come. We both want it to be cool, so he brought her round to explain everything. I’m disgusted to say she’s actually lovely,’ she said this with a rueful grin, ‘and she has been pining for him too. They lost touch when he moved to Australia with his family when he was eighteen and… I feel I should have a drum roll for this bit.’
Yvie obliged, putting her glass of wine down and then slapping out the sound of a beating drum on the quartz worktop.
‘Now that they’ve found each other again, he’s discovered that she had a baby boy eight months after he left.’
Even Marina felt her chin drop. ‘He has a son he didn’t even know about? Oh, my word, that’s astonishing. How does he feel about that?’
‘He’s delighted. Gutted that he’s missed Ben’s childhood, but he and Chrissie are focusing on what comes next and they both seem so happy.’
‘And what about you?’
Zoe shrugged again. ‘I have to accept that there’s no way he’s coming back now. So I pick myself up, move on and see what happens.’
On the other side of the island, Marina spotted Verity’s shoulders tense and knew she had to elicit some kind of response that would assure her that Zoe wasn’t actually swooping in to claim Verity’s secret crush. Dear God, this was like navigating the pogo stick mystery of 1996. And she was still convinced of Zoe’s guilt in that matter.
‘Well, just take your time and give yourself some breathing space. The worst thing you could do is rush into something else.’ There. Subtle. To the point. Sound advice. Situation defused.
Although, apparently no one passed that conclusion on to Zoe.
‘Nope, I’m going along a different route,’ she said, completely oblivious to Marina’s flash of horror, Yvie’s anxious glance at Verity, and the fact that Verity’s face was now bordering on tomato. ‘You know what they say about the best way to get over someone…’
Marina tried to head it off. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, all that “get under someone else” stuff is nonsense.’
‘Well, I’m giving it a go.’
Bollocks. Trust Zoe to make it worse by being typically ballsy and completely open.
Then, to make it worse, she added an incredulous, ‘Verity, I can’t believe you never snapped Ned Merton up for yourself. He’s fricking gorgeous.’
See! This was what happened when a sister didn’t share her feelings. Zoe had absolutely no idea that Verity had any interest in Ned whatsoever. It wasn’t too late to tell her.
Marina threw a knowing stare at Verity, who immediately grasped the subliminal signal but gave a subtle but ferocious shake of the head. The message was clear. Do. Not. Say. Anything.
Well, bugger that. There was no point having unspoken tension between them, not when she’d gone to all this trouble to make today absolutely perfect. As usual, she was going to have to be the one who stepped in, cleared it all up, Zoe would ditch Ned, Verity could pursue him and all would be fine.
‘The thing is, Zoe…’ Marina began.
It all happened in a flash. Verity’s eyes widened with fury, then her hand moved, it bumped her wine glass, the goblet fell, the red liquid splashed out and disaster struck. One plate of ornately formed sushi drenched in Merlot.
‘Nooooooo!’ Marina howled, furiously, adding an unspoken, ‘Fuck!’ Audible profanity was too uncouth, but ‘fuck!’ again. That was it! She was done intervening between these two. She now had much bigger issues to solve than their pathetic romantic dramas.
Fighting to regain her calm, as Yvie and Zoe frantically mopped up the mess with kitchen roll, Marina went into disaster-limitation mode. The story of her life.
‘Yvie, can you grab a couple of cans of Scotch Broth out the cupboard?’
This was going to be a perfect fucking Christmas if it killed her.
6
The Girls – Christmas Day 1998
‘Dad, do we have to listen to that crappy Boyzone stuff all day? I swear I’m going to put her CD player in the bin,’ Marina warned.
Will Danton responded in the same way he always did when Marina was revving up to have a rant – he put his arms around his thirteen year old daughter and kissed her on the cheek.
‘You won’t do that because you’re lovely and a lot sweeter than you pretend to be,’ he teased her, the grey hair of his fringe flopping into his eyes. He always claimed that he was so grey in his early thirties because he had four daughters, but he said it with a cheeky wink that told them he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Right now, though, Marina was resisting his charm. ‘I’m not. I’m going to poison her food. Then she’ll be too sick to care.’
Sitting at the kitchen table, her brand new CD player – her very best pressie of the day – only inches away from her, Verity glanced up from her book, eyes narrowed. ‘Try it. I dare you, cow face.’
‘Hey, that’s enough,’ their dad intervened. ‘We don’t fight on Christmas Day. Save it until tomorrow and then you can fight all you like,’ he added, laughing as he let Marina go and headed back into the lounge.
Verity went back to her book and Marina carried on peeling the potatoes for the Christmas dinner, just as Zoe appeared carrying a huge plastic bag.
‘Right, that’s the living room cleared up,’ she announced, opening the back door and dumping the black plastic bag full of discarded wrapping paper she was carrying into the bin. They’d had such a brilliant morning opening presents, singing along to Christmas songs and, miracles, praise be, not one argument or bicker between them, but of course that was too good to last. Boyzone would
, no doubt, be the start of a slippery slope into full scale huffs and strops.
‘What else needs doing?’ Zoe was asking now.
Marina eyed her suspiciously. ‘Why are you being so helpful today?’
‘Because it’s Christmas Day!’ She could see that Zoe was trying to bluff it out.
It didn’t work. Marina stopped peeling again and was now holding the peeler at a threatening angle. ‘And…?’
Zoe caved. ‘And Dad promised me a pound if I did all the clearing up for twenty-four hours.’
Before they could get into an argument about Zoe’s profiteering, Dad reappeared with a huge pile of board games, nine year old Yvie trailing behind him clutching a selection box and a Terry’s chocolate orange.
‘Right, Verity, get that stuff off the table. It’s Monopoly time.’
Marina was the first to object. ‘But, Dad, I’ve got the dinner to make and I can’t do it with everyone in here.’
She knew she had a point. The kitchen diner in their seventies terrace house on an estate on the edge of Glasgow was tight enough, before five people, two board games, copious snacks and dinner preparations were added.
‘Yeah, well, it can wait. Come on, let’s go. Winner gets to choose what movies we watch tonight.’
That was all he needed to say. The minute he added some competition to proceedings, Marina, Verity and Zoe were in. Yvie just went along with it because she’d do anything that sounded like fun. Boyzone were switched off, which was some consolation for Marina, and the CD player shoved under the table to make room for the board.
They were almost set up when their mum came into the kitchen shaking her freshly painted nails.
‘Do you want to play, Mum?’ Zoe asked. ‘There’s loads of room and we’ll let you be the car,’ she said, holding up the tiny pewter vehicle that had been her mum’s choice the last time they played.
Their mum wrinkled her nose. ‘No, you’re fine, darling. I’ve just painted my nails.’
