Page 63 of Christmas Ever After
I know he’s about to protest, so I close the door sharply and lean against it, trying to get my ragged breathing back under control.
The nutcrackers Cleo has unloaded are on the counter, next to the nutcracker prince and ballerina snow globe. There’s no point in even putting them back on the shelves now. They’re all ones Raff made. Snowmen. Nutcrackers with ski boots and snowboards. Even one holding a snow globe. I stop and trail my fingers over it, and then have to turn away and bite the inside of my cheek to stop my eyes filling up again. ‘I should phone my mum. I could do with a sensible kick up the backside when it comes to giving your heart away, and her advice too. Maybe it’s finally time to take up that teaching role the ballet company offered me…’
Mum was always incredibly keen for me to stay involved with dancing in some way. She thought I was throwing my life’s work away when I turned my back on it entirely. It’s something I never thought I’d agree with, and the mere thought fills me with dread, but I don’t know what my other options are.
‘You donotwant to do that!’ Cleo doesn’t even attempt to hide the horror on her face. ‘Franc, of all the things you’ve told me about your ballet career, not one of them has ever been good!’
‘I know, but what good is a year-round Christmas shop without any other Christmas shops nearby? If I was to rent another shop, somewhere else, to sell nutcrackers, I’d be on my own. Visitors come to Christmas Ever After as a whole, no matter the time of year, because it’s an experience. And it’s hard enough to stay afloat here. In the blazing hot summer sun, no one would bother coming into a nutcracker shop by itself. They’d walk right past and I’d be back to square one again of not earning enough to cover the outgoings.’ My voice is shaking as I say it, but it’s a truth that has to be faced. On Christmas Ever After, we all lift each other up, and every shop supports the other shops just by existing, and the thought of starting again, alone, without the little community of Ever After Street is unbearable. ‘It’s time to move on. Away from nutcrackers, Christmas, and any kind of magic.’
‘You never believed in magic anyway.’
My lip wobbles and my voice breaks. ‘I did when I was with him. I believed in everything. Enchanted snow globes. The magic of Christmas. Santa.’
‘You believed in Santa?’ She raises an unconvinced eyebrow.
‘Well, no, but I felt like Icouldbelieve in Santa, and that definitely suggests it’s time for a reality check, because no matter what Raff says, some people will always be too old to believe in magic.’
No matter how old I get, when things are going wrong, I still wish I had a supportive family to turn to. I wish I could go to my mum for a hug instead of a rant about the evils of men, and I wish I could go to my dad for a dose of fatherly advice instead of an invite to his latest wedding and thinly veiled digs about my career choices.
When I get home from work, I give Mum a ring, ready for her to dish out her ‘slow and painful castration to all men’ battle cry. It’s well past time I listened to her manifesto. If you never get involved with anyone, you don’t end up in situations like this.
‘Oh, hello darling, I wasn’t expecting you to call, I’ve just this second come in from a friend’s Christmas macramé class. Hang on while I take my coat off. How are you, Franca? Still making those nutcrackers?’
‘Not at the moment. I’ve got three broken fingers.’
‘Oh no!’ She gasps in surprise and I feel guilty that it’s been over three weeks and I haven’t even told her. Raff’s family and their love for each other has made me realise that I should make more effort with my own family. ‘How did that happen?’
‘There was some mistletoe and this guy, and this other guy came along, and…’ I burst into tears and hear Mum bustling about in the background.
‘I’m just putting the kettle on so we can have a nice chat. Wish we were near enough for me to make you one too!’
I sniffle and go to make my own and then come back to the phone, and it feels strangely nice to be having a cuppa and a chat with my mum, even though there are many miles between us. I spill out the whole sorry story from the council’s contest between me and Raff until yesterday afternoon’s events and everything in between. ‘There’s something else you need to know,’ I add, expecting a mum-shaped explosion when I mention his surname. ‘The man I’ve been seeing… It’s Raphael Dardenne.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Dardenne,’ I say pointedly, and repeat it when it’s met by silence. ‘Come on, Mum.Dardenne.’
I can hear her pondering the name. ‘Wasn’t that the name of that silly old snow globe company? The one who matched me and your father?’
‘Yes! The one who upturned our lives! The one I’ve resented for years because of their ridiculous matchmaking myth!’
‘Upturned our lives,’ she repeats, laughing to herself. ‘Oh, you are dramatic sometimes. Your father and I had some wonderful years together, andyoucame out of it. I wouldn’t change that for all the chocolate in the world.’
‘Really?’ Her reaction surprises me. I’ve never heard her say that before. She’s always said my dad was the worst thing that ever happened to her, and I’ve always felt like that unintentionally included me as well, because I am an eternal reminder of that relationship. I thought she’d be a seething ball of animosity towards Claude Dardenne, but she barely even recalls the name, let alone feels any ill will towards him. It makes me think again about how wrong I’ve been to hold such a grudge against Raff. Maybe it’s not him who needs a time machine – maybe it’s me.
Mum makes a noise of confirmation, and I explain further. ‘I work on the same street as where the Dardenne shop is nowadays. Claude Dardenne, the old guy who matched you, opened there decades ago. Now his grandson, Raff, runs it. We have a… Well, wehada complicated relationship. I couldn’t abide him and what his grandfather did to our family with that stupid snow globe.’
‘Oh, Franca, he didn’tdoanything to our family. Your father and I were adults. We were not skilled at managing conflict, and we never improved, despite the vast amount of conflict we had. He was a manchild with a propensity for shouting instead of listening, and I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory with mycommitment to taking the moral high ground when I acted just as immaturely as he did. We should have split up long before we did, and we should have done a better job of keeping our struggles from you. I’m so sorry.’
I’m getting teary again. It’s the first time Mum has talked openly about her relationship with my dad, and the first time she’s ever taken part of the blame, or acknowledged that their constant fighting affected me as well, and a strange sense of relief washes through me. I’ve always wondered if I was to blame. If I had been different, would they have been happier? Was there something I could have done to make things better?
‘We had a wonderful time when we first met; we were young and carefree with no responsibilities, but we weren’t suited to each other long term. We knew that, but then I got pregnant, and we thought we owed it to you to stay together. It took too many years to realise that we wereallbetter off apart, including you, but the only people you can hold responsible for that is me and your dad. Please don’t push people away because of the scarsweleft you with. Heck, even I’ve been open to finding love again lately.’
‘You want to find love again?’ I choke on my own tongue. ‘You? The person who has waged a one-woman war on the opposite sex for decades? You, who thinks “all men are evil and should be castrated and fed their own testicles” in a really disturbing feeding ritual, and that’s a direct quote!’
‘Well, I didn’t like to tell you, but I’ve actually been sort of… seeing someone.’ I can hear her doing her nervous habit of wringing her hands together on the other end of the line. ‘He’s a neighbour. He was divorced a while ago too. We met while taking the bins out, of all things. I ran over his foot with my wheelie bin and broke his toe! At first I was going to tell him that it served him right for having such oversized manly feet, but he really couldn’t walk, the poor chap, and I didn’t feel rightleaving him hopping about like that, so I ran him to A&E and we got chatting as we sat there waiting for hours, and afterwards, I felt terribly guilty and found myself popping round to check on him as often as I could. I eventually had to admit that I quite liked him, and actually, a bit of male company wouldn’t go amiss, and do you know, it’s been a breath of fresh air. I never thought I’d want to open myself up again, not after your father, but sometimes these things find us when we least expect it. He’d been living two doors down for years and we’d never even met.’
I’m beyond surprised. Mum was arguably the most hurt by the divorce of all of us. She shut the world out, tarnished all men with the same brush, and thought everyone deserved the misery they got when a relationship inevitably ended in tears, but if even she can let love in again…
