Page 55 of The Night Before Christmas
‘Can I see it?’ said Bertie conspiratorially, as Cherie bustled out of the room to put the kettle on.
‘I don’t have it with me, I’m afraid.’It would be a bit weird if I did.
‘Oh. Oh well, that’s okay. Anyway, your father was so furious he walked out the very next day. Dreadful, really, to leave you children like that.’
‘It really was.’ She paused. ‘At least it makes a little more sense now,’ she said, conscious she sounded a little pointed.
Bertie looked tired. ‘I was young and very, very stupid. I’m so sorry, Felicity.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, not sure if it was okay or not. It was a relief, in some ways, to find out there was a reason. It had been her mother who was cheating. Of course, it was. It made so much more sense. Their father had walked out on them becauseshewas cheating.
Bertie was staring at the photo again. He seemed sweetly unashamed of his love for this lady, despite his wife being present.
As Felicity looked at him, something dawned. She realised she knew him. Had seen him before.
‘You came to our house for dinner!’ she said, suddenly.
Bertie looked up at her in surprise.
‘I did. Fancy you remembering that. You were so tiny. I came for dinner not long after the garden party. I brought my girlfriend at the time, actually. I don’t even remember her name,isn’t that dreadful? I thought that would serve as a good cover because, really, I just wanted to see your mother again.’
‘I remember, you brought her flowers and she looked so happy. We got to stay up late that night. We got the leftovers, always our favourite.’
‘Your mother was a terrible cook,’ said Bertie, fondly. ‘But the caterers were bloody fantastic.’
Felicity laughed. She couldn’t remember the food from the caterers. All she remembered was helping her mother make the hors d’oeuvres. Early 90s style, of course. Prawns on Primula on Ritz crackers and mushroom vol au vents. Classic.
‘And my dad?’ she said, cautiously. ‘Do you think he caught on at that point?’
Bertie looked thoughtful. ‘I don’t know. I could never work your father out. He looked like a movie star, such a handsome man, but he always seemed cross. Like maybe your mother didn’t love him like he wanted her to. He seemed so…’
‘Unpredictable,’ said Felicity, feeling treasonous.
‘That’s it,’ said Bertie quickly. ‘You could never tell what he might do.’
‘Yes,’ said Felicity.You have no idea.
‘He came to see me after that Christmas.’
Felicity went cold. ‘What did he do?’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing exactly. He came to see me, to look me in the eye, I think. He was so furious. He threatened to “make the lights go out”, if I recall. I stood up to him. I was braver in those days. Later on, it turned out, he was cheating on your mother too. We only found that out when he moved in with his bit of stuff and her children.’
So, her father was still a bastard, just as she had always suspected. But he hadn’t been a completely mad bastard. At least he’d had his reasons. Even if walking out on Boxing Day was stillan unbelievably horrific thing to do, he actually had his reasons for doing it, and – weirdly – that meant a whole lot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
That night,Felicity ordered the second biggest dinner she had ever eaten. She was ravenous. Stale Battenburg at the Bissons’ was the only thing she’d consumed since Saturday morning’s breakfast, and she felt as though she’d lived an entire lifetime since then.
She sat in the opulent dining room in her hotel and tucked into a massive veggie burger with a mound of chips, followed by two helpings of decadent chocolate mousse just like she remembered from that wonderful holiday. She declined the gin tonight, though. It wasn’t called Mother’s Ruin for nothing.
As she ate, she hid her tear-ravaged face behind her trusty copy ofUlyssesand pretended to read while she thought about everything she had learned, trying to avoid conversation with her fellow guests. And the hot barman, for that matter, although she had definitely felt his eyes on her as she walked past him earlier. She wondered idly if he’d still look at her that way if he could see what she’d just put away. And then she decided she didn’t care. She was officially ‘Felicity Two-Puddings’ now but, today of all days, she deserved it.
What an afternoon.
Felicity had ended up curled in a ball on Bertie and Cherie’s comfortable old floral sofa, sobbing her heart out, with Cherie patting her arm at intervals and the stinky old dog (‘Moses, thirteen years old, likes ice cream and orange Fanta’) nuzzling her hand. It had felt good in a strange way. The questions she’d had for so long, the gap, the reason for her father’s bizarre behaviour, all were becoming clearer.
She couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit vindicated. If her mother… if Jocelynhadbeen cheating on her father just as Bertie said, then he at least had a reason for doing what he did, rather than being a completely unfeeling monster which, Felicity thought with a twinge of guilt, is kind of how she had him pegged. Even better, it meant she wouldn’t necessarily have inherited the unfeeling monster genes after all. It wasn’t necessarily in her genes or her make up or her nature or any of that nonsense. It felt something like freedom.
