Page 8 of Sisters Making Mischief
She nodded. ‘Absolutely. The company have fixed us up with an apartment to start with, and suggested schools for the girls. And when we are settled, we can look around for a house, it’s going to be so broadening for them, to see more of the world, other cultures, and customs.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said faintly.
‘It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it, Mum?’ John said. ‘Perhaps you can come out and visit us?’
‘I knew it! I said you’d have something to brag about,’ Sara said furiously, slamming her napkin down on the table. ‘Big promotion, big new life, big everything! Just when my life is falling to pieces!’
‘That’s a bit unfair,’ I said. ‘Congratulations, John. I’m sure we are all delighted for you.’
Was I happy? I suppose I was pleased for them, for him. He had done so well, but America. It was so far away.
Sara took her glass, downed the Baileys in one and reached for the bottle.
‘You could come and visit us too,’ Vanessa said.
‘Oh yes, I can just see me springing for airfares when the girls and I will be living in some squalid flat somewhere while Marty moves his bit of stuff into my house.’
I think Sara had been knocking back the Pinot Grigio during the meal with more enthusiasm than any of us realised.
‘I’m sure you’re wrong. Perhaps Marty will be the one to move out,’ I said, ‘and you and the girls can stay where you are. After all he is the one who has caused all this.’
Sara scowled, looking exactly as she had when she was thirteen and been refused permission to go out with her friends on a school night.
‘You don’t think I’m going to staythere,knowing what those two have been up to? In my bed!’
I glanced across at John and we exchanged a look.
‘You need to take it one step at a time. Go and see a solicitor after Christmas, find out the best plan of action,’ he said, ‘I’m sure?—’
‘Oh, what would you know about it? With your perfect life, your perfect wife,’ Sara spat back.
‘No need to be like that,’ he replied evenly.
‘Well, you tell me then John, the golden boy who couldn’t tie his shoelaces until he was eleven, how should I be?’
The door to the dining room burst open and Mia came in her expression thunderous.
‘Mum,tell her.Bunny is being mean. She says my hair looks stupid and she says Poppy won’t ever get a boyfriend. And Poppy said Bunny was a silly cow, and then Jasmine started crying and she threw a cushion at Poppy and broke a vase, and there’s water all over the sofa. And Jasmine said it was my fault.’
We all got up and went to sort the chaos out. Sara doing her best but crying, Vanessa brisk and efficient, John trying to find out the true version of events and me going to get a cloth and the dustpan and brush.
3
I suppose I had imagined Christmas Eve night passing in a sort of golden, Walton-family haze with my four granddaughters bonding, talking, and giggling together in their attic bedroom before falling asleep without any sort of shouting or parental threats about Santa not coming. The rest of us would be sitting in the magical, twinkly light from the Christmas tree and the battery-operated candles, remembering Christmases past, our hopes for the year to come.
We would perhaps raise a glass to the old year and get a bit sentimental, and Sara and John would tell me how marvellously I was getting on with my life. This would then expand into what a great mother I had been, how I was the girls’ favourite grandparent, how happy they were to be back in my house. What a lovely day we were all looking forward to in the morning.
And then maybe there would be some fun dealing with the Christmas stockings. John would take the obligatory bite out of the gluten free mince pie and washed, organic carrot left in the fireplace for Santa by the youngest grandchild, Bunny, with a slight rolling of her eyes, making me think she was only doing it for my benefit, and he would knock back the whisky in thespecial Father Christmas tumbler I’d bought from Woolworths so many years ago when my own children were small.
I’d draw the curtains against the dark night, where ideally it would be snowing, and put on a CD of Christmas music. We’d have a few drinks and delve deeper into the tub of Celebrations, complaining about the coconut ones, and the fire would be friendly and warm, and we would all agree how lucky we were.
Well, it wasn’t like that at all.
My granddaughters went off to bed with their electronic devices and there was a fair bit of leaping up and threatening by Sara and John before the girls settled down for the night, presumably with visions of Fortnite and Taylor Swift dancing in their heads.
Sara had deliberately planted herself martyr-like in what was always regarded as the least comfortable armchair. Vanessa dressed in cream, cashmere loungewear sat at one end of the sofa with her bare feet tucked up underneath her. I sat at the other while John leaned back in what had been Stephen’s chair, listening out for sounds of screaming and shouting from his daughters upstairs.
We made desultory, whispering conversation about Marty whenever Sara was out of the room. In the New Year John promised to ring his friend Barry who was a divorce lawyer, and I scurried back and forth to the kitchen bringing out snacks and fresh bottles of wine and then at about midnight shoving the turkey into a low oven for its starring role the following day.
