Page 16 of Sisters Making Mischief
‘No red for me,’ she’d said as the bottles were passed around the table, ‘I’ve just had my teeth whitened, and red wine stains so badly.’
I’d given a merlot-enriched grin at this and passed the Pinot Grigio, which she declared ‘not quite chilled enough’so I’d fetched some ice cubes for her. I was beginning to think I was mad to bother.
Any minute now and I was going to say something.
What I wasn’t sure. Perhaps one of those clever comments that sound reasonable but deliver a punchy message. I wasn’t very good at those; heaven knows I had tried hard enough while Stephen was around and he had made a careless remark that had sent me off in a huff. I generally came up with one days or even weeks after they would have been useful. In fact, during some sleepless nights, I had come up with the perfect response to the time when Stephen had actually told me my bum did look big in some new trousers. And then insisted he was just joking.
I wasn’t staff. It was my Christmas too…
Was that really all I was good for, picking up after people and not protesting that I felt unappreciated? Wanting to feel as though I had a life of my own? That my feelings still mattered? ThatIstill mattered. I couldn’t go on like this. Something was going to have to change.
6
Boxing Day – when as children, Isabel and I had happily eaten re-hashed leftovers and played with our new toys. We’d always secretly agreed that we enjoyed Boxing Day more than Christmas, it seemed more fun somehow, more relaxed. I suppose I had hopes that the same thing would apply that day.
Vanessa appeared after breakfast dressed in a new waxed jacket, newLe Chameauboots, and matching cashmere (ethical) hat, scarf and gloves that perfectly matched her blue eyes. She wanted us to all go out for a‘lovely walk’, so we could get some exercise and‘blow the cobwebs away’. She was met with little enthusiasm, evidently everyone was perfectly happy with their cobwebs and atrophying leg muscles, and anyway, it was still raining. She took a cup of coffee and pouting prettily, went back off upstairs to change.
I produced a buffet lunch complete with bubble and squeak, which I had assumed everyone would enjoy and then watched as Bunny picked out the strands of sprout, Jasmine ate nothing but crisps and the twins sulked because the eyeshadow boxes had been overused and subsequently confiscated.
John was in good form, jolly and talkative, telling me all about his new offices in Manhattan and their new rental apartment that was apparently in an area called Midtown and within easy walking distance of Times Square, Central Park, Broadway, the MoMA, and sundry other delights.
Sara didn’t appear until lunch had started, confident that someone else would be entertaining the twins, and when she did come downstairs complained that she had a headache and that there was no brie left on the cheese plate.
‘There’s a pantomime on at the village hall,’ I said. ‘Cinderella, I’ve reserved us all tickets for tomorrow.’
The girls looked at each other and pulled faces.
‘Is there anyone famous in it?’ Poppy said.
‘Probably not. The vicar is playing the wicked stepmother and the milkman and his brother are playing the ugly sisters. It will be great fun.’
‘I’d rather stay here and read,’ Jasmine said cunningly, knowing as all children do that this was an occupation to which no parent would ever object.
In the end, we didn’t go. I didn’t notice anyone huddled away with a book, and nor did we get any sort of walk, so after four days we were all getting cabin fever and none of the girls were speaking to each other following a major disagreement about some reality star I’d never heard of.
It seemed that the last bright embers of my Christmas expectations were flickering and dying, and I felt powerless to do anything about it. It was such a shame; nothing was going as I had planned.
I began to feel rather angry too. My granddaughters were being rude and ungrateful, Sara and John seemed to have abandoned most of their parental responsibilities in the same way they had stopped clearing up after themselves since the moment they had arrived, and I was being treated like unpaid staff. Considering the trouble, effort and expense I had gone to, it was all so disappointing. I felt like a cross between some aged retainer, shuffling around with a damp cloth and a nanny distracting them all from yet another argument and finding something entertaining for them to do.
By New Year’s Eve, the weather cleared up and John and Vanessa went out for their walk. Sara buttonholed me in the kitchen as I cleared away after another meal and the girls watched television in the sitting room with the door closed. This apparently necessitated bringing all their duvets downstairs to huddle underneath, even though the heating had been on all day since they had arrived and I, for one, was boiling and had even opened a kitchen window.
‘Can I talk to you?’ she said.
‘Of course you can.’
‘Well, will you stop tidying up and wiping the worktops for a moment and sit down? And can you shut that window, it’s freezing.’
‘Right. This sounds serious,’ I said, ‘have you heard from Marty?’
Sara nodded. ‘He messaged me to say he would be back tomorrow.’
‘I’d rather he didn’t come here,’ I said, imagining Marty planting himself in my hallway bringing with him a supercilious sneer and a pungent whiff of his aftershave.
‘God, no. That’s not what I meant,’ Sara said, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘I want to ask if the girls and I can stay on here for a while. They don’t go back to school for another few days; I couldpop into town and buy them a few things to tide them over. I brought a lot of their stuff with me anyway. Have a think.’
I thought back over the last few days of arguing and disappointment and shuddered. Perhaps it would be easier with just them? But what if it wasn’t? What if this awful behaviour just continued?
It was the start of a New Year the following day, a time when a lot of people plan new things. I wanted to achieve something with it, something for me for a change. If nothing else, the last week had showed me that I was turning into a martyr, a domestic drudge who seemed to be putting up with just about anything. Was that really me?
