Every Day in December

by Kitty Wilson

  I want to wrap him up, make my arms a secure web in which to keep him safe, free from further hurt, tell him it will all be okay. But how can it be? Jessica isn’t coming back.

  ‘I shall never have the words to thank you for bringing me to this,’ I say as people slowly begin to file out and I gently squeeze his arm, hoping the words I don’t say are conveyed.

  ‘It was a pleasure. Was it as good as you hoped when we walked in?’ he asks with no mention of his own response to the play, the tears pushed back behind his eyes with iron Walters self-control.

  ‘Oh my goodness, yes. It was amazing. I really will remember tonight for ever. For ever.’ And I will. He has taught me so much. He has taught me how a man treats a woman he respects. He and his mum have taught me that I am good enough. They showed me what I had suspected was the case all along, that normal parents – good parents – put their children’s needs before their own, that they use their strengths to build their children up, not allow their weaknesses to dictate the constant tearing down of their kids. That maybe, just maybe, it isn’t me that is the only failure in my life, maybe my parents have let me down a little, our failure to have a healthy relationship may not all be on me.

  Just because nothing I do is good enough for them doesn’t mean I’m not good enough for me. That lesson had come roaring in full force when I had finally snapped at Dad on Christmas Day and leapt to my mother’s defence but also to my own. I had, quite literally, saved my dad’s life and still he struggles to see any merit in the person I am, so sod him.

  I have always seen myself as Perdita, and that is the only flaw of this play, this winter’s tale – her ready forgiveness of a father who was willing to leave her to die on a mountainside. Maybe I’m not Perdita, maybe I shouldn’t be aiming to be quite so forgiving and meek. Maybe I am kick-ass as well. In all my years I have never seen anyone stand up to my dad. And I had done so, in the lion’s den with all the other lions there, ready and happy to rip my throat out.

  I am Paulina!

  We head out of the theatre into the bright winter sun and I notice Rory is not fully present, the conclusion of the play presumably hanging over him. I try to change the mood; it’s obviously best not to mention the play anymore. The Winter’s Tale may be beautiful but the fact that Rory will never have his loss made whole is breaking my heart a little, so God knows what it is doing to him.

  ‘Shall we go see if you can work out any more of the clues?’ I ask brightly, aware that my silly little present is no remedy for the deep grief this man must feel, flashes of which I have seen in him on this visit, my mind flicking back to the sight of him in the hospital that day all those years ago. Details of which he told me the night he made me Christmas dinner and opened up about his grief.

  ‘Yes, let’s. Now I know it’s not twenty-four pizzas but my interest is piqued.’

  We buy coffees and sit on a bench just outside the theatre with his gigantic box.

  ‘So the next clue…’ He opens the envelope but his heart isn’t in it. The distance that dawned when the curtain fell is still there. A chasm I don’t think I can bridge.

  ‘Yes,’ I say forcing jollity. Such a generous gesture on his part has led to the opening up of a wound far from healed. I could kick myself. Why had I ever mentioned the damn play to him in the first place? ‘This is your final clue. Are you ready?’

  Even if he is, I’m not sure I am. What seemed like a sweet idea last week now pales into insignificance compared to his gift but there is no turning back, I will sit through the unwrapping and the drive home and then go to bed and try and recall the magic of today, how spoilt and how lucky I am, rather than dwell on the hurt it may have caused the man sitting next to me shaking his Christmas gift box.

  Rory stops shaking and opens the last envelope. ‘I was scared, I was petrified but now I know what fun it is to be alive…’ He reads the last clue and looks at me, eyebrow cocked. Jesus! What had I been thinking when I wrote these clues? I remember cackling as I wrote this one out, the memory of his face on the day that had prompted this present making me laugh time and time again.

  But not now. Now it feels stupid, self-absorbed. I’d been so pleased with myself when I had written and wrapped this and now I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole. Seriously … what fun it is to be alive? After he had opened up to me about his grief and the worries about his mum? Straight after this play has bought Jessica to the forefront of his mind?

  ‘I have no idea what this means. Give me another clue. I can’t work it out at all. This is the final clue?’

  ‘Yep, the final one.’

  ‘And this clue means something I have done that I was scared of and now am not.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, determined to pull myself together and make the best of this. Rory has done a wonderful thing for me today, I am not going to make it any worse by getting inside my head. ‘Not that you, great and brave he-man that you are, are a scaredy-cat, not that at all…’ I quickly make strongman arms to show I’m teasing. I try to pull it back. ‘You’re definitely all man.’

  Jesus Christ. Gaffer tape my mouth shut now!

  ‘Look, this present seems silly now but at the time of getting it I wanted something you could take with you back to Oz – if you want to, obviously, you can bin it if you don’t, I won’t mind – and hopefully think of me whenever snow falls and you want some fun.’ I mean I would mind, obviously, I would. This present means heaps to me but that doesn’t mean it will to Rory and he may not want to use up precious baggage allowance.

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that when snow falls I’ll always think of you and … oh, I think I may have it. No, surely not. Hang on.’ His fingers tear at the tape this time, his decorum lost and, if nothing else, that is gratifying. I offer up a little prayer that he won’t be disappointed.

  ‘Oh wow. Oh wow. You didn’t. But this is your special thing. Yours and Marsha’s.’ He unwraps the final box to see an old tin tray nestled in a bed of tissue paper.

  ‘It was, and now it’s yours too. Look.’

  He picks the tin tray up and turns it over, a little gasp coming from him as he spots his name. Like mine, it is scratched in with my old school compass, the letters spiky and childlike, but done with love.

  ‘You’ve put my name on it.’

  ‘Yep, that’s yours now you are a permanent member of the hill-sledging tray club and this is an open invite anytime you see snow to race down the nearest and hilliest hill at super speed, a little bit scared and remembering us.’

  ‘A permanent member.’ He is still turning the tray over in his hands, running a finger alongside the bevelled edge and looking as if he has won the lottery. It’s my turn to well up. This beautiful man likes my gift.

  Carefully he places it back in the box, grabs my hands and squeezes them and then lifts one of his hands to my face, to cup it, stroke along my cheek line. He is going to kiss me. I can feel it. I’ve read everything wrong. Rory Walters is so taken with the gift he wants to kiss me. I can see it in his eyes, feel it in the pace of his breathing. He’s going to lean in any minute and all my worries about him being upset or my gift not being meaningful to him vanish. Rory Walters is going to kiss me! My heart is pitter-pattering in my chest as he looks into my eyes and I try not to close them in anticipation.

  ‘Belle, this gift, this gift … it means the world.’ And he slowly starts to lean in and I start to think of the life we could have together – I know, skipping ahead a bit – and I can’t believe today is panning out like this after all. Best Christmas ever. I close my eyes and tip my head and feel him coming closer and closer and then his lips graze my cheek.

  ‘Thanks, Belle. You really are the best mate any man could ask for.’

  Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak

  Whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.

  * * *

  December Twenty-seventh.

  Rory.

  I’m sat at on the grass of The Downs, the
rolling greens that span Clifton, staring at the flat Jessica and I lived in. I am aware I may look a little deranged but right at this moment, I don’t care. It’s cold and damp and that suits my mood entirely. I have come here to wallow, to wallow and ask advice, permission maybe, I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything right now other than my desire to reconnect with Jessica. Not in a woo-woo seance kind of way but my thoughts are so muddled, especially after that play yesterday, and I think she can help. All the problems surrounding her death, the issues I anticipated would be raised by this visit, had more or less become non-things, but new ones have taken their place.

  I had braced myself for the fact that being home, or near to Bristol, for a month would trigger all sorts of hideous anxiety, flashbacks. It’s as if I had expected people to approach me on the street and shout abuse in my face for letting Jessica down.

  Obviously, that hasn’t happened.

  Instead I have started to consider my return here permanently. Being around Mum, and the fear that sat in me about her mortality, has made me realise I want to spend more time with her. Far more time with her. Be in her life more. Make the most of all we have. We have been lucky this time, I hope. We’ll know better after the mastectomy. Cancer has a way of rearing its head again. This next operation makes that less likely but if that happens I don’t want to be on the other side of the world. I’m not sure I want to be the other side of the world at all. Somehow confessing all this and talking about my mum to Belle the other night cemented it in my mind. It was as if once I had said the actual words out loud, my brain then knew what path I had to take. For the first time since Jessica’s death, nearly five years ago to the day, I can see myself living a life here. I had needed to get away, create a new life for myself, but now, now I think I’m ready to come home.

  And on this visit, instead of memories upsetting me on every street corner, I’ve found that the majority of my memories of Montpelier – now hilariously swish compared to when I was growing up there, when it was definitely more working girls and gunshots than specialist coffee houses and Italian delis – are from childhood, not uni or Jessica. If I venture into Clifton or even across to the Cotham side of Stokes Croft, that is where I am reminded of her.

  Which is why I have come here, to the place where we’d lived, where we’d shared our lives, our aspirations, were honest about our insecurities and would curl up together at the end of the night, legs entwined as we slept, my arm slung over her torso as I curled around her.

  I have come here because I want to ask her forgiveness. I feel no less for her now than I did when she was alive – she will be a part of my heart until the day it stops beating – but I’m beginning to realise I had made life-changing decisions soon after her death which helped me through the subsequent years but had hurt those that loved me. Decisions I am ready to revisit, to change.

  And the old guilt has a brand-new layer added. Not only do I feel as if I have short-changed her because this trip hasn’t been the hell pit of internal torture I expected, but also because this trip has been filled with Belle Wilde.

  Nothing could have prepared me for this development, for Belle becoming my friend and for me developing feelings for her. Somehow our lives have woven together over these last few weeks. The woman I assumed she was is so different from the woman I now know her to be. She’s good all the way through and her ability to find joy in the little things when the bigness of life is steamrolling over her is admirable. She has taught me that there is always joy to be found if you look for it.

  A robin bobs over towards me, interrupting my thoughts as it stops, cocks its head and looks directly at me. I look at the robin, marvelling at its resilience, its feet seemingly comfortable on the frost-patina’d ground. Joy in the little things. I nod my head at it.

  I’m meant to be sitting here trying to say sorry to Jessica and my mind keeps falling back to Belle.

  I look around The Downs, the huge green expanse of space that surrounds the house in which we used to live, and I let out a little laugh.

  We lived in Clifton because this was where Jessica thought we should live. And I understood her thinking, it was certainly the most affluent part of the city and where we had been based when we were students. But still, despite both of us bringing in good money, the rent for this house in front of me used to make me wince.

  I understood her need for the symbols that shouted to everyone else how well we had done for ourselves. Such a contrast with Belle, born to money and completely unbothered as she dots around in a car that has moss on it.

  Jessica worked in the BBC and I had started my business whilst still in uni. The rapid and massive expansion of Facebook had made me see there was a potential for reputations to be made or broken through social media. In school, I helped friends set up a positive online presence, and curate the way they presented themselves years before it became a mainstream awareness. This was back when people were sharing everything willy-nilly, without thinking through the consequences. When companies were only just beginning to check out profiles and make hiring decisions based upon them. Jessica had been proud and supportive of me as I set up the business, she really had. She hadn’t minded me working all hours then; it was only later she had begun to complain. The same time as other parts of her behaviour had changed to the point of awakening a jealousy within me that I had never thought myself capable of. A jealousy I was reminded of yesterday in the theatre.

  The robin is still here and is looking at me quizzically. It doesn’t seem to want to fly off. I’m not going to shush it away but I am a little unnerved as it fixes that unblinking black eye upon me.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ I say out loud. ‘I’m here to commemorate Jessica, not raise the doubts I had about her. That’s unfair. She can hardly answer back.’ I know this is why I eulogise the relationship, why I never say anything about the way things were beginning to fray at the edges at the very end. The robin looks a bit more satisfied when my phone buzzes.

  I pull it out of my coat to see a video call from Jamal, the Belle fox from Christmas Eve falling out of my pocket as I fumble for the phone. Do I really want to be interrupted by Jamal right now? I had meant to see him and so far hadn’t got around to it.

  I hear Jessica’s voice in my head saying, Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can get done today. The robin nods. Bloody hell.

  ‘Hey,’ I say as I answer the call.

  ‘Hey, how you doing? Sorry I didn’t get to see you over Christmas, it’s been mad busy. But I’ve got plans to make that right, I’m back again for New Year’s Eve, will you be about? Hang on. Where you at?’ Jamal’s face looms large on the screen. ‘Isn’t that where your old house used to be?’

  ‘Yup,’ I say.

  ‘Long way from the badlands, what you doing there?’

  ‘Trying to talk to Jess.’

  ‘Fam!’

  ‘Honestly, I know that I’ve deliberately put distance between us and right now, I’m back and I want to say sorry to her. Here seems like a good place.’

  ‘Okay, okay, and how’s that going?’

  ‘Honestly, not quite as I’d imagined.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  Because I keep thinking of Belle and remembering the good bits with Jessica, and how I couldn’t believe how lucky I was she picked me and how anything to do with Belle feels like a betrayal. Made worse by the fact that they knew each other, and it’s fair to say Jess was not a fan, that she dismissed Belle as an overindulgent hedonist.

  I want to try and explain all this to Jamal but don’t know how to say it, or even if I should. My eyes alight on the fox, which bizarrely the robin has hopped over to, as if it thinks they can be friends.

  ‘Don’t know, mate,’ I say instead.

  Jamal gives me a look but stays silent. Belle would have just said it.

  I take a deep breath and tell Jamal the truth of where my head is at. We’ve been friends since Pokémon came into being.

  ‘Woah, look, I never
got to know Jessica very well but you loved her, no one could ever doubt that. You wouldn’t have loved her so much without good reason. But if you want to be true to her, you need to remember her as she was, the truth of the relationship the two of you had, otherwise you’ll be putting her on a pedestal that no human can live up to and then how are you supposed to move on from that? Remember her as she was, flaws and all. You’ll be doing her a disservice if you remember her any other way. And if you want to talk to Jessica just talk to her, man, it doesn’t matter where you are. If you’re uncomfortable talking out loud in public, put your headphones in and pretend you’re on the phone, tell her all the things you want to say.’

  ‘That’s pretty good advice.’

  ‘There’s a power to words. Thinking through things is great obviously but sometimes the act of saying things out loud, somehow that makes it more real in our minds. Try it. And as to Belle, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about her.’

  ‘Yup. I was a bit surprised when you didn’t get behind her project.’

  ‘I like the project, I really like the project but, you know, you didn’t tell me she was Nick Wilde’s daughter. That threw me. She don’t need my money.’ Jamal’s brow furrowed and he shook his head to reinforce his point. ‘I’m not giving her 75k.’

  ‘I can see what you’re saying, but just between you and me her father is an arse-ache, and he is never going to give her a penny – they don’t help her out with anything – and what’s more, she wants to do it on her own.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me that… I’m not surprised you’re keen, she’s got some spirit.’

  ‘Woah, I’m not. We’re no—’

  ‘But you like her.’