Page 38 of It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
‘Oh yes, he used to have stories and poems coming out of his ears at one point. Pages and pages just scattered all over his room. I’ve still got it all somewhere…’
‘No!Mum, that stuff is old and kind of… private. Let’s change the subject. Please.’
‘All right, all right, I’ll shut up about it.’ Jo’s eyes twinkled at me conspiratorially, as if she’d known me for thirty-five years, rather than thirty-five yearsago. ‘But I tell you what I do have to hand. Let me see, let me see…’
Jo ran her thumb over a few book spines on the shelf above her burgeoning Pokémon card collection before pulling out the one she had in mind. It was a sun-faded scrapbook bearing a photo of the basic, prefabricated structure that had once served as Scarnbrook Village Playschool on the front. Jo flicked through its well-worn pages for a few seconds.
‘Ah, here we go!’
She handed me the album and there it was – our 1990 class photo. I was sitting at the front, eyes scrunched up in the sunlight, wearing a miniature white tracksuit and sporting the world’s worst haircut. My blunt, uneven fringe would remain my trademark look for at least another few years thanks to Mum’s insistence that she cut mine and Josh’s hair herself to save money. It was only after Livvie was born with a mass of untameable curls that she finally admitted defeat and called upon the services of Snippy Snips on the High Street.
‘Ah, wow. I haven’t seen this picture for, well, decades.’ I was well out of the habit of casually looking at old family photos. With the exception of a few precious images of me and Livvie back at my flat, all my old childhood photo albums were still at a storage unit that Auntie Sandra had hastily rented for us back in the noughties as a stopgap. The gap in question was still well and truly sealed.
I dismissed the thought, and instead scanned the other squinting faces in the photo, trying to place Tom on the back row among all the other taller kids.
‘You’re going to have to help me out here, Tom,’ I said, handing him the scrapbook.
‘I thought this might happen,’ he said, pointing to the smallest child in the class on the front row.
‘That’s you?! Right next to me?’
‘Oi, I was a summer-born baby, okay? And I had a pretty epic growth spurt just before secondary school.’
I peered closely at the tiny child next to mini Mally in the photo. His wavy hair had been slicked into a side parting and it looked like he was on the verge of crying, his thumb jammed firmly into his mouth, as if to stem the wails. With the other hand, he was clutching a bright orange soft toy of some kind to his chest, protectively.
‘You don’t exactly look happy to be there.’
‘Our Thomas was always a sensitive soul, weren’t you, love? Hated being left anywhere, which is partly why I ended up working there, so I could stop his little heart from breaking every day. And thank goodness for Marmalade, eh?’
‘Marmalade?’ I asked, baffled.
‘She means the toy I’m holding in the photo,’ said Tom, pointing at the out-of-focus bundle of orange fluff in the image. ‘Me and Marmalade were best buds back then.’
‘Oh, Thomas!’ Jo’s exclamation made me jump, but evidently she’d just remembered something. ‘Speaking of Marmalade…!’ She pointed at the suitcase on the floor next to Tom and bobbed up and down lightly in her chair.
‘About that, Mum. I’ll pop round later this week and we can finish off the tree then, yeah?’
Jo settled back into her seat, smiled and nodded, but her eyes looked disappointed. And suddenly it dawned on me why.
‘Oh! You were meant to decorate your Christmas tree tonight? Gosh, I’m so sorry, I’ve really messed up your evening, haven’t I?’
‘Not at all, sweetheart. It’s just something silly we usually do the second Sunday of December, isn’t it, Thomas?’
‘It’s not silly, Mum! It’s nice. But, yeah, it can wait for a couple more days this year.’
I glanced down at the suitcase. ‘Wait. Is Marmalade in there?’ I ventured, tilting my head towards the vintage-looking luggage.
‘He is indeed,’ Tom replied. ‘He’s been hibernating since the fifth of January, as he does every year.’
‘Could I at least meet the little fella?’
Tom glanced at his mum, who nodded enthusiastically.
‘Ach, go on then.’ Tom clambered off the sofa and expertly released the two satisfyingly springy silver clasps on the suitcase. He rummaged about for a while before producing a now more-brown-than-orange toy cat, which he cradled delicately in his palms. Chippie looked up from his slumber, and I swear I saw him roll his eyes briefly as he caught sight of the toy cat, as if they were long-term rivals. He turned his head away and went back to sleep.
‘Gentle, now,’ Tom said, grinning widely and passing Marmalade into my own outstretched palms.
I didn’t know it was possible to fall in love with an inanimate object, but there and then I would have done anything for soft, little Marmalade. One of his eyes had been replaced with a mismatched button, which had been inexpertly but lovingly sewn on slightly higher than the remaining original. Marmalade’s neck had been reduced to just a few frayed strands of fabric, and mini clouds of stuffing were poking out from various strained stitches. Despite his many flaws, he was still perfect, and entirely embodied the word ‘cherished’. I set him down on my lap and stroked him, like a real cat. He deserved it.
