Page 42 of The Christmas Invitation
The next was heavier. ‘This one’s full of thehugeplastic baubles,’ said Teddy, electing to drag rather than carry it. ‘The plastic ones come in three different sizes and they’re very bright and shiny. You need a lot of them for a tree the size of the one in the hall.’
The next box was cardboard, with a lid – large, rectangular and light.
‘This is the big Father Christmas, who stands near the tree in the hall,’ Teddy said.
‘I thought Father Christmas lived in Lapland, not in a box in your attic!’ I teased.
‘He’s not the real one,’ Teddy explained seriously. ‘He’s got a pottery face and long red robes, but his body is just a big cone underneath, that’s why he’s so light.’
‘Porcelain face,’ corrected Lex’s voice from above. ‘I think that’s everything.’
‘No, the Angel Gabriel’s missing,’ said Teddy.
I heard Lex’s feet on the boards above and dust spiralled down through the cracks, making me sneeze.
‘You’re allergic to attics, not Christmas trees!’ said Teddy, and giggled.
‘I think it’s a dust allergy – your aunt Clara was quite right.’
‘She always is,’ said Lex, coming down the ladder with a box under one arm and making it look easy.
‘One angel,’ he said to Teddy, presenting it.
It took a few trips to ferry all the boxes down to the hall, where they were stacked up out of the way, except for the canvas bag, from which came the fake tree of obvious antiquity, though still a pleasing deep green colour. It had to be constructed from fat, fuzzy wire branches that slotted into a metal trunk. When put together and placed in the square bay window in the drawing room, it reminded me of a monkey puzzle tree. The bay was large, despite the padded seats up either side, so there was still room to move around the tree and to draw the old velvet curtains.
I did manage to escape after that, but only to my room to change and get ready for dinner. There was no time to think, which was probably just as well.
At dinner, I found myself at the opposite end of the table to Lex, which made the situation less awkward for me. Theconversation was wide-ranging and interesting, too, so that I found myself sometimes forgetting he was there at all.
Den joined us for the dessert and then coffee in the drawing room, before he went off to his flat again to watch the telly.
‘And probably to eat gross things like pork scratchings and salami,’ said Clara.
‘Well, he’s at perfect liberty to eat and drink anything he likes in his own flat,’ said Henry.
‘He does,’ said Tottie, handing me a mead chaser to go with the coffee, a strange combination of tastes. Not unpleasant, just weird.
Lex was sitting on one end of a sofa, stroking Lass’s tummy, while she closed her eyes and sighed with ecstasy. His unguarded face looked tired, the shadows dark under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for a couple of nights … maybe since I’d arrived on the scene. Only a few days had passed since then, but I felt as if I’d been here for months.
All the excitement had made Teddy tired. Eventually he just kept keeling over sideways with his eyes closed, so he was sent to bed.
He insisted that Uncle Lex do the honours of bath and bedtime reading, and after they’d gone upstairs the rest of us embarked on a game of Scrabble. Tottie and Henry were good, but Clara was the clear winner: never play word games with an epigrapher, because there’s no way they’re ever going to lose.
I didn’t notice when Lex returned; he was just there when we’d finished the game, reading quietly by the fire.
And by then my eyes were closing just like Teddy’s had and I said my goodnights and left them all to it.
But despite feeling so suddenly weary, once I was in bed, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing images of a young Lex lying next to me, smiling drowsily down into my eyes … but unless Ihad False Memory Syndrome about what happened next, Al and Lex were both living in an alternative reality, inhabited by a totally different version of me.
I slid off eventually into an uneasy sleep, but my nightmare was not of that time, but a few years later. I relived the moment when Rollo’s horrified face had turned to me after I’d told him I was pregnant … and then the car was veering off the road, a horrendous tortured screaming of metal added to my own, followed by a sudden eclipse into darkness.
I woke up just as I had in hospital afterwards, my face wet with tears and an aching emptiness where the baby had been.
After that, I didn’t sleep at all.
From the look of Lex at breakfast, I don’t think he’d slept any better than I had. He sat silently over his toast and coffee, though Teddy talked enough for all of us, mostly about decorating the trees later on.
Afterwards, Clara decreed that since she was behind with her memoirs, she would have a session on those, while the rest of us went out for a nice bracing walk, before an afternoon spent tree decorating.
