Page 88 of Still Me
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I was dimly aware of Treena being woken at five a.m. and some excited thudding, then Dad yelling at Thom that it was still the middle of the ruddy night and if he didn’t go back to bed he would tell Father Ruddy Christmas to come and take all the ruddy presents back again.The next time I woke, Mum was putting a mug of tea on my bedside table and telling me that if I could get dressed we were about to start opening the presents. It was a quarter past eleven.
I picked up the little clock, squinted, and shook it.
“You needed it,” she said, stroked my head, then went off to see to the sprouts.
I descended twenty minutes later in the comedy reindeer jumper with the illuminated nose I had bought in Macy’s because I knew Thom would enjoy it. Everyone else was already down, dressed, and breakfasted. I kissed them all and wished them a happy Christmas, turned my reindeer nose on and off, then distributed my own gifts, all the while trying not to think of the man who should have been the recipient of a cashmere sweater and a really soft checked flannel shirt, which were languishing at the bottom of my case.
I wouldn’t think about him today, I told myself firmly. Time with my family was precious and I wouldn’t ruin it by feeling sad.
My gifts went down a treat, apparently given an extra layer of desirability by having come from New York, even if I was pretty sure you could have got pretty much the same things from Argos. “All the way from New York!” Mum would say in awe, after every item was unwrapped, until Treena rolled her eyes and Thom started mimicking her. Of course, the gift that went down best was the cheapest: a plastic snow globe I had bought at a tourist stall in Times Square. I was pretty sure it would be leaking quietly into Thom’s chest of drawers before the week was out.
In return I received:
Socks from Granddad (99 percent sure these had been chosen and bought by Mum)
Soaps from Dad (ditto)
A small silver frame with a picture of our family already fitted into it (“So you can take us with you wherever you go”—Mum. “Why the heck would she want to do that? She went to ruddy New York to get away from us all”—Dad.)
A device that removed nostril hair, from Treena. (“Don’t look at me like that. You’re getting to that age.”)
A picture of a Christmas tree with a poem underneath it from Thom. On close questioning, it turned out he hadn’t actually madeit himself. “Our teacher says we don’t stick the decorations on the right places so she does them and we just put our names on them.”
I received a gift from Lily, dropped in the previous day before she and Mrs. Traynor went skiing—“She looks well, Lou. Though she runs Mrs. Traynor pretty ragged from what I’ve heard”—a vintage ring, a huge green stone in a silver setting that fitted perfectly on my little finger. I had sent her a pair of silver earrings that looked like cuffs, assured by the fearsomely trendy SoHo shop assistant that they were perfect for a teenage girl. Especially one now apparently prone to piercings in unexpected places.
I thanked everyone and watched Granddad nod off. I smiled and I think I put on a pretty good impression of someone who was enjoying the day. Mum was smarter than that.
“Is everything okay, love? You seem very flat.” She ladled goose fat over the potatoes and stepped back as it sprayed out in an angry mist. “Oh, will you look at those? They’re going to be lovely and crisp.”
“I’m fine.”
“Is it the jet lag still? Ronnie from three doors down said when he went to Florida it took him three weeks to stop walking into walls.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“I can’t believe I have a daughter who gets jet lag. I’m the envy of everyone at the club, you know.”
I looked up. “You’ve been there again?”
After Will had ended his life, my parents had been ostracized at the social club they’d belonged to for years, blamed vicariously for my actions in going along with his plan. It was one of the many things I had felt guilty about.
“Well, that Marjorie has moved to Cirencester. You know she was the worst for the gossip. And then Stuart from the garage told Dad he should come down and have a game of pool sometime. Just casual-like. And it was all fine.” She shrugged. “And, you know, all that business was a couple of years ago now. People have other things to think about.”
People have other things to think about.I don’t know why that innocent statement caught me by the throat, but it did. As I was trying to swallow a sudden wave of grief, Mum shoved the tray of potatoes back into theoven. She shut the door with a satisfied clunk, then turned to me, pulling the oven gloves from her hands.
“I almost forgot—the strangest thing. Your man called this morning to say what were we going to do about your flight Boxing Day and did we mind if he picked you up himself?”
I froze. “What?”
She lifted a lid on a pan, released a burp of steam, and put it down again. “Well, I told him he must have been mistaken and you were here already, so he said he’d pop over later. Honestly, the shifts must be taking it out of him. I heard a thing on the radio where they said working nights can be awful bad for your brain. You might want to tell him.”
“What—when’s he coming?”
Mum glanced at the clock. “Um... I think he said he was finishing midafternoon and he’d head over afterward. All that way on Christmas Day! Here, have you met Treena’s fellow yet? Have you noticed the way she’s dressing these days?” She glanced behind her at the door and her voice was full of wonder. “It’s almost like she’s becoming a normal person.”
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