Page 73 of It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
When Livvie was too small to see over the window sill, she used to insist I lift her up so she could say good night to Scarnbrook before she went to bed. After a couple of years of this we called it ‘the window ritual’.
Every evening, without fail, the ritual was an ingrained part of our bedtime routine. And the Christmas Eve window ritual was our favourite one of the year. I had tummy-warming memories of the wondrous awe on Livvie’s face the year that Dad climbed up onto the roof and sprinkled polystyrene beanbag balls down past our window just as I lifted her up to look. It was the only white Christmas she ever got. Thankfully, Josh wasn’t so militant about single-use plastic back then.
Even on the last night before I left for university, despite the fact that she was a good half a foot taller than me by then, I lifted her feet off the ground and she whispered, ‘Good night, Scarnbrook’ with all the earnestness she’d had ten years previously.
I touched the window gently before noticing the estate agent was on the phone outside, staring up at me while he was talking. It was time to leave. I walked down the staircase slowly, caressing the banister for what I knew would be the final time of my life. At the last step, I gripped the handrail tightly before releasing it – a silent goodbye to the spine of what had once been such a happy home. I put my shoes back on and said a breezy ‘Thanks!’ to the estate agent as I continued my walk, upping my pace and using the heel of my hand to absorb the tears that had leaked from my eyes like Emma Thompson in the best scene ofLove, Actually.
I turned down the lane, emerging onto the neighbouring cul-de-sac, and that’s when I saw it: the spire. And I knew where I had to go next.
Livvie’s simple headstone still looked to be one of the newest in the graveyard. Leaning against it was a huge bunch of white chrysanthemums, slightly past their best, tied together with bright mustard twine. The blowsy flowerheads looked like giant snowballs. I lifted them gently to see if there was a message, but there wasn’t. Even so, it comforted me to know that someone cared enough to leave flowers for her all these years later.
I sat on a bench a few metres away. It was damp, but I figured I was less than an hour off a hot shower by now. I didn’t know what to do. Whenever I saw these graveside scenes in films, the protagonist always seemed to know exactly what to say to their departed loved one, as if they’d penned a perfect speech in advance and delivered it with gusto while the sun shone and the birds sang.
This definitely wasn’t like the movies. I had no desire to say anything. The right words didn’t exist. But I kind of felt like being here was enough, for now. I looked at the soggy flowers and closed my eyes, remembering long, hot days on Grampy’s allotment plot during the school holidays, hands sticky with melted Mr Freeze pops. The three of us playing hide and seek among the corridors of hollyhocks and dahlias, while Grampy dug and smiled, sweaty and content, sipping a beef Oxo cube dissolved in hot water from his trusty flask. It was the only form of liquid he ever drank. Mum had been there sometimes on the days she wasn’t working on reception at the local GP surgery, busying about deadheading the sweet peas to encourage further flourishes, placing the colourful harvests in a basket to fill our home with the scent of summer throughout the school holidays.
But it was the chrysanthemums that Grampy had loved growing the most. Every year, he and his allotment buddies grew the brash blooms competitively against each other with spirited banter, entering them into the local horticultural show each autumn. He nurtured those chrysanthemums as if they were his offspring, enveloping each enormous flower head in a paper bag until it was ready to be exhibited. That contest had been my grampy’s favourite thing to do ever since my nan had died from a sudden stroke before Livvie was even born.
But the day before Livvie’s funeral, Grampy and his friends had chopped down every single chrysanthemum that was left on every allotment plot to ensure Scarnbrook’s streets were lined with endless colour as the cortege passed by. Those chrysanthemums were the last things he ever grew. After those stems had been severed, he’d never stepped foot in the allotment again. The now tarmacked-over plot had gone to seed, much like our family. Each of us had been scattered by random winds to new places, living as best as we could, but no longer nurtured – and definitely not thriving.
I wiped my eyes as I thought of my lovely grampy, who’d spent his final years in a retirement village not far from my parents’ cottage courtesy of Auntie Sandra, and took a quick photo of the grave for posterity. I stood and, very briefly, squeezed the headstone, still glistening from this morning’s rain. As I did so, the clouds parted, the sun peeking out momentarily for the first time all week. I squinted, the rays gently warming my cheek, and a simple sentence popped into my head. I didn’t speak it aloud but it was definitely there.
Hey, Livvie. I came home.
Chapter 20
?A Christmas wish
The rental felt like the opposite of home when I arrived back there,my bum damp from the graveside bench and my face now, apparently,permanently damp from two decades’ worth of released emotions. As Iclimbed the stairs for a shower, I thought about the DVD, still dormantin the player, that had broken the seal.
Had Becky known the footage of Livvie was on it? I very much doubted it. Was I glad that I’d seen it? Probably, yes. But it’d been so unexpected that it’d knocked the wind out of me.
Thank God Tom had arrived when he had. If he hadn’t, I’d probably still be watching the concert on a loop right now, my heart even more disintegrated than it already was.
Tom Brinton. Well, what a revelation he’d been. I’d always sensed at school that he had a kind heart, despite his cheeky exterior, but his steadfast sensitivity over the last few days had well and truly won me over. And here I was, just a few hours away from spending an entire evening alone with him.
It felt crass to admit this to myself what with all the pain that was still swirling around inside of me, but I felt kind of… excited at the simple prospect of being in his company. But then I realised that it wasn’t excitement I was feeling at all. It was something both much simpler and more substantial than that. It was the feeling of belonging.
So why did I also feel a niggle of doubt? Sure, I felt a bit nervous about tonight given that I was guaranteed to end up doing or saying something to embarrass myself, but this particular feeling of fear ran way deeper than the usual tummy-dwelling butterflies.
I concluded it was partly because Tom – the entire day so far – had begun to unfurl me somehow. I knew it was an important process that was probably long-overdue, but I’d come quite accustomed to folding myself smaller. Because the smaller I was, the less surface area there was to harm.
But, as I rinsed out my shampoo, I found myself admitting that the niggle was also partly down to that game of ‘snog, marry, avoid’ on the DVD. It was curious that Tom had put me in the ‘marry’ column all those years ago. Yet it was also clear that everyone in that room at the time had known that the pairing of Tom and me was so unlikely that it’d warranted its own teasing nickname: ‘Tomelia’. And, by the sounds of it, his mates had been using it to poke fun at him ever since. In all likelihood, all the game meant was that, out of the three names presented to him, Tom had been prepared to tolerate me for the longest.
I stepped out of the shower and began rubbing myself dry, trying to get my head around why this annoyed me so much. It didn’t take long for me to reach the blindingly obvious conclusion: because my ultimate wish wouldn’t be for him to tolerate me forever. It would be for him to want me forever.
I took a final look at myself in the bathroom cabinet’s mirror – the only mirror in the house – in the minutes before the taxi was due to arrive. My hair had turned out pretty nicely, its natural wave working in my favour for once, and a generous upside-down spray of Silvikrin (Maximum Hold) finishing it off nicely. My make-up looked decent enough – tinted moisturiser and cream blush as per, but this time I’d upgraded my look with a thin line of jet-black eyeliner with the tiniest flicks at each end, mascaraanda berry-red lip. I bared my teeth and scrubbed a dot of lipstick off a canine. There. Not bad, I suppose.
I took a few steps back onto the landing and smoothed down the skirt of my cold-shoulder midi-dress as I turned and twisted my neck to catch microscopic glimpses of myself from various angles. The dress was an old favourite – a dark emerald-green colour with a sweetheart neckline and skater-style skirt that skimmed and hugged in all the right places. Best of all, it had properly deep pockets, which made it perfect for work events when, more often than not, I had no idea what to do with my hands.
Elle called it my ‘Mary Berry dress’ as she’d seen her wear something similar onTheGreat British Bake OffChristmas special one time. But, unlike me, Elle never struggled to find clothes that looked good on her. She was one of those people who could throw on an oversized sweater and look effortlessly cool and stylish. Whereas, in the very same top, I’d end up looking like Miss Trunchbull teaching PE.
Like Dame Mary, my go-to dress was classy, reliable and timeless. I knew I looked all right in it. Best of all, its heavy fabric meant that it never needed ironing and still looked freshly pressed, despite being screwed up into a ball at the bottom of my suitcase all week. Hopefully, with my thick black tights and simple ankle boots, it struck the right balance between ‘potential festive date’ and ‘just threw this outfit together, NBD’.
The car was right on time – a disconcertingly silent Prius, no less – the driver sporting a Santa hat and in chatty spirits as we began the twenty-five-minute journey into town.
Ten minutes into the drive, I spotted the old chocolate factory where my nan used to work in the on-site discount shop. Posh flats now, of course. A snort of hilarity erupted from my throat as an old memory catapulted itself to the front of my mind. The noise caught the driver’s attention and he glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘You all right, love?’
‘Yeah… I’m… good.’ I was full-on cackling now. ‘Sorry, I just remembered something really funny about the chocolate factory.’
