Page 72 of It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
From there, the route was automatic. Down to West Lane, which I crossed to begin my descent into the lower bowels of Scarnbrook. I mentally clocked my old friends’ houses as I passed by them, fondly remembering those early days at secondary school when a gaggle of us used to arrive en masse each day, having called for each other and swelled our numbers the closer we got to the school gates.
No sooner was I at the flood-prone bottom of the valley, it was time to ascend the other side, up the zig-zag path that emerged at the edge of the 1980s-built housing development where I’d spent my formative years.
All too quickly, I was at the final turn. I made a conscious effort to slow my breathing as I took the last few steps, emerging into our cul-de-sac in Oldville Close.
Unlike the school, it looked exactly the same. The only noticeable difference was the ‘for sale’ sign outside number 23. And the ridiculous number of kerb-side wheelie bins in hues ranging from purple to brown that were outside each property.
My footsteps slowed to a crawl, but I didn’t intend to stop, figuring it’d be odd for a random woman to stand in the street and stare at a stranger’s house. Instead, I intended to walk down the lane next to Elle’s old place, which would quickly bring me out into the equivalent cul-de-sac of the neighbouring road.
But, just as I was about to draw level with my old home, a suited bloke emerged, followed by a couple. I took a swift step backwards and paused behind a tall shrub, so I was out of sight. They were around my age, maybe a bit younger. She was visibly pregnant. The three of them chatted for a while before the couple made their way to their car.
After they drove off, the estate agent took his phone out of his pocket and scrolled for a while before yawning, turning on his heel, and heading back towards the front door.
Before I was even conscious of making the decision to do so, I stepped out from behind the bush and called out to him.
‘Excuse me?’
He turned to me, eyebrows raised.
‘Hi, sorry, are you the agent showing people around this property?’
‘That’s right. Er, are you here for the viewing? I didn’t think I had the next one for another half an hour or so.’
‘Oh, no, I haven’t booked one. It’s just that, well, I used to live here. And I wondered if there’s any chance I could pop in for a quick look around, you know, for old times’ sake?’
He shrugged, his ill-fitting suit jacket shifting awkwardly. ‘Sure, like I said you’ve got about half an hour. I’ll wait out here. Give me a shout if you need me.’
‘Thanks so much.’
I ascended the steep driveway up to the storm porch, crossed the threshold and pressed the door shut behind me. The soft, metallic click of the latch jolted me back in time.
Click:Dad getting home from the office at five thirty on the dot, just in time for tea in the living room withNeighbourson the telly: Crispy Pancakes, fish fingers and chicken and mushroom pies were on rotation back then. When it came to pie night, Dad used to convince us they contained special ‘children’s mushrooms’. I’d felt like Jessica Fletcher when I’d figured out he was having us on.
Click:Josh getting in from football practice, caked in mud, the carpet between the hallway and the bathroom preventatively lined with plastic sheeting so he could access the shower without compromising Mum’s high standards of cleanliness.
Click:Nanny and Grampy arriving on Christmas morning when Josh and I were tiny with a big sack embroidered with the word ‘TOYS’. Nanny always used to wear her best red coat on Christmas Day, which we always used to make fun of her about since it looked very much like her regular red dressing gown.
Click:Livvie coming home from orchestra club on Saturday mornings, her cello case rustling with cost-price confectionery she’d bought to share with us from the tuck shop in the years before her beloved McDonald’s drive-thru had existed.
I dismissed the sudden taste of Hubba Bubba and looked around. The house had been completely redecorated, but the layout was exactly the same.
I removed my shoes and walked into the living room. It now had one of those carpets that showed up all the vacuuming marks. Mum wouldn’t be impressed with that. The shallow bay window housed a white Christmas tree, decorated in nothing but silver ornaments and neon blue lights. I closed my eyes and remembered the trees that had sat in the same spot when the Allisters had called this place home. We used to choose a real tree together every year from the local garden centre, decorating it in every colour, with all manner of garish baubles and scratchy tinsel adorning its branches. So many strings of fairy lights hugged it that it was almost ultraviolet. Mum used to leave the curtains open a few inches so it could be seen from outside, providing our neighbours with the merest of glimpses of our festive joy. One year, the tree had been so tall it’d poked a hole in the ceiling.
I thought of my measly little fibre-optic spruce, switched off back in London, which couldn’t be any further away from the Christmas trees of my childhood. I blinked my eyes open and made my way through the archway in the middle of the room towards the dining table. We’d always called it ‘the dining room’, despite the fact it was essentially a single, long space. I was thrilled to see that the hatch into the kitchen was still intact. The three of us had spent hours throwing increasingly risky items of food through the gap – a game we’d named ‘hatch catch’ – before Mum had banned it after the infamous time we’d done it with a raw egg. The sideboard had never been the same again.
The kitchen itself had been replaced, but weirdly it smelt the same: slightly damp, slightly sweet, slightly catfood-y. Which had always been a bit of a mystery as we’d never had a cat. I tried the back door handle but it was locked. I wandered back through to the dining room and peered out into the rear garden through the newly erected conservatory. Whoever lived here wasn’t particularly green-fingered by the looks of it. The lawn was artificial. I shuddered: another reason not to tell Mum anything about this – that small patch of land had been her pride and joy.
The downstairs done and dusted, it was time to go upstairs. I did so with trepidation. Because there was one room I hadn’t dared to enter since Livvie had been taken from us: the bedroom we’d always shared.
The house was a three-bed semi, which had been perfect for the four of us before Livvie had arrived. A spacious double room for Mum and Dad, a smaller double for Josh and the cosy box room for me. We were all perfectly content with our lot. Then Mum got pregnant. We couldn’t afford an extension, and with all our friends nearby, our parents were reluctant to move, so we all swapped bedrooms to make it work. Josh moved into the box room, Mum and Dad downgraded to the smaller double, and me and Livvie shared the biggest room in the house once she was potty trained. We used to refer to it as ‘the suite’ as we had an armchair in the corner, which was never not covered in Livvie’s clothes, and it randomly had a sink on the wall opposite our single beds.
But, after Livvie had died and I’d returned from Cardiff, I couldn’t bear to step inside. I’d slept at Elle’s up until the funeral, never once venturing into the space I’d shared with my sister. And then the house had been sold and my belongings scooped up into boxes on my behalf.
After brief glances into the other three upstairs rooms – the milky cocoa-coloured bathroom long gone – it was time.
I pushed the door open, the bottom of it brushing the carpet. It sounded like an inhale. The sink was gone, and the two single beds had been replaced by a super king-size – which was ever-so-slightly too large for the proportions of the room.
But it was the view from the window I was most interested in. The view wasn’t spectacular, but it was special. The room looked out onto the rest of the street, but thanks to the elevated position of our house at the very end of the cul-de-sac, the view stretched beyond our road, down into the valley of Scarnbrook, and up the other side. Endless houses, endless lives, until they faded into the green of the countryside on the horizon.
