Page 37 of Out of Control

“Nothing. Just something I’m struggling with at the moment.”

They parted on the pavement outside One More Bean. Again, Rob hugged her closely. Fiona shrugged it off as ‘for old time’s sake’ and then decided belt and braces would be safer. “Just friends? Yes?”

He grinned and high-fived her. “Absolutely.”

Before her determination could dissipate, she drove to her mother’s flat.

“Fiona! What a lovely surprise. I’ve made scones. I’m not going to offer you one because I know you’ll say no, but you will take a couple home for Adele and Joe, won’t you? Tea?”

“That would be lovely, Mum. Thanks.” Even though she’d just drunk coffee, Fiona knew this conversation would go better if they both had a cup of tea in front of them.

When her mother had stopped messing about with the milk jug and teapot, Fiona jumped straight in before courage deserted her. “I need to talk to you about my miscarriage.”

“Oh!”

“I always blamed Rob and the arrival of the bailiffs for what happened. But that isn’t the medical truth. The nurses told me it was probably just one of those things that would have happened with or without that event. And then they quoted statistics at me.” The words tumbled out of her without pause.

“I see.”

“I blamed Rob because I wanted him to suffer as much as me. And over time I almost started to believe my own lie.”

“Come and sit here.” Dorothea patted the empty seat next to her on the sofa.

Fiona moved over and her mother enveloped her in an embrace that smelled of baking, lemon soap, forgiveness and safety. “Thank you for telling me. But why now?”

Fiona explained about meeting Rob and his plans for them both to warn about the evils of gambling.

“That sounds good. Good for both of you.”

“One more thing.” This felt even harder to say. “Thank you. Thank you for looking after us when it all happened. I know I was surly, unwelcoming and downright rude, but you took no notice and stopped Rob and I sinking into a quagmire. Thank you.”

Dorothea embraced her again. “I’m your mother. I don’t need thanks.”

Fiona’s arms went tightly around her mum. When they pulled away, they were both crying and the old lady fetched a box of tissues.

Fiona went home with an old ice cream tub full of scones and the feeling that a massive barrier had come down. Going forward, mother and daughter would be closer and more honest with one another. And when Fiona thought about Rob, she felt energised. Having a project to get her teeth into was good. And it was helping her turn a life corner.

Chapter 29

There were only six days until Christmas. The festive season had always been Dorothea’s favourite time of year. She had festooned the family home with holly, tinsel and at least two decorated trees, one indoors and one outside. What the Ormeroyd family lacked in size, it made up for in Dorothea’s exuberance. Fiona and her parents always had a paper-chain-making evening the week before Christmas. It was these memories that were causing Fiona to blink hard as she wrote her final Christmas cards — a job that should have been accomplished at least a fortnight earlier.

On paper-chain day, Dorothea would retrieve the piles of used wrapping paper she’d neatly folded away from the previous year and the three of them would carefully cut the creased sheets into strips and then glue the ends of the strips together, interlocking each strip with another link in the chain. One year, she and her father had made a chain long enough to reach twice around the edge of the sitting room ceiling. As a child, Fiona had delighted in the magic and colour of it all, mixing up the different papers to produce the gaudiest, but to her the most beautiful chain of all. As a teenager, she’d tried and failed to look down her nose at the family tradition. But the designs of her chains became more sophisticated; she’d stick to hues of the same colour for each chain and had the motto that ‘less is more’, cutting tiny strips to create mini chains to hang around the pictures and to crown her mother’s pot plants. In her father’s eyes, whatever Fiona produced was wonderful but her mother was more critical, especially during Fiona’s ‘minimalist’ phase when she tried to insist that all the chains should be made from old brown or white envelopes and the wrapping paper be reused for its original function.

The Ormeroyds had few extended family members but, once decorated, Dorothea filled the house with neighbours, friends and any waif or stray she heard about. There were always at least two pre-Christmas parties, another the day after Boxing Day — “It’s a dead sort of day and people need it filled,” her mother always used to say — and another on New Year’s Eve. When Fiona and Rob married and moved into their own house, Fiona continued the traditions, becoming popular among her neighbours for her generosity, and among her uni friends for a New Year’s Eve fixture for which they journeyed from all parts of the country, full of hope for what the next twelve months might bring.

The bailiffs, the divorce and the loss of Amber swept away Fiona’s open-hearted spirit, like a volcanic eruption razes a town from the map. The house was gone, their savings were gone, her husband was lost and the most precious thing in the world had died. Every time December came around, the bleakest memories boiled up from their simmering point and burned Fiona again and again. She put a hand up to her face, as though she expected the skin to feel tender and blistered. For the last thirty years Christmas had merely been a series of lists, cards, presents to buy, a couple of Secret Santas at work, ensuring a pleasant day for both her parents, and then, for the last two years, just for her festive-loving Mum — duties to be fulfilled in order to conform to society’s expectations, even though neither she nor most of her acquaintances set foot near religion during the whole of the holiday season.

“We need a tree.” Adele stood in the doorway of the lounge with her hands in the small of her back and her bump straining against the confines of the maternity jeans. She looked matronly rather than like a girl at the start of her twenties. “At home the tree was always up by now.”

“I’ve got a small artificial one with inbuilt lights in the loft.” Joe had bought it the previous year, at the start of their relationship. He’d been horrified when she’d said there was no point bothering with decorations for only one person.

“No! It has to be real. Without the tree smell, it’s not Christmas! And the presents need to go under the tree.”

The prospect of full-on Christmas decor made Fiona want to curl up and cover her head with her hands. The day the bailiffs came, the house had been ready, with a real tree sheltering a pile of presents — expensive gifts (she’d even indulged in one for Amber — a CD of whale music that her daughter could enjoyin uteroas Fiona practised relaxation in the months leading up to the birth) purchased on their joint credit card. She later learned they couldn’t afford to pay the bill.

“All Mum’s Christmas stuff is in our loft above the Airbnb people. Can we buy new, Fiona?” Fiona’s face must have shown her lack of enthusiasm because Adele started to plead. “Please? This room looks more like a morgue than a home.”

“Meeko’s grotto is still there, and the balloons.” She pointed at the ceiling where the pink blobs still tickled the white paint. “We can put the presents in a sack in the grotto.”

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