Daisy Darker(38)

Lily ripped off the paper and beamed when she found a tiara inside. It was covered in fake jewels.

‘Because I’m a princess!’ she said.

‘Yes, you are,’ said Nana, walking into the lounge wearing a pink and purple apron, and speaking in an ironic tone I was too young to appreciate at the time. She gave Lily a withering look before putting a tray of warm mince pies on the table. Nana – always preferring to do things her own way – made savoury mince pies at Christmas. They contained minced beef, onions, and a secret splash of Tabasco, and were served with tiny jugs of gravy.

Lily pouted. ‘Why can’t we have normal mince pies?’

‘Because normal is boring,’ Nana replied. Then she hugged her son, my father, and sat down next to Nancy. I think she always wished that our parents would get back together just as much as we did, forever orchestrating family reunions that she hoped might actually reunite us.

The camera turns to Rose, and zooms in on her face. She was holding a box wrapped in tissue paper that was turquoise – her favourite colour. Unlike Lily, she opened her gift slowly, without tearing the paper at all, while we waited to see what was inside.

‘Wow! Thank you, Dad,’ she said, holding up a telescope.

‘You’re very welcome, and just in case the stars don’t always shine for you . . .’

Rose opened a second gift, and I remember what it was before seeing it on the TV screen: a box of glow-in-the-dark stars.

‘Thank you!’ she said again, giving him a huge hug. It made me realize that Lily never thanked him once.

‘I want stars!’ Lily whined, folding her arms.

Dad ignored her. ‘And this gift is for Daisy, my little pipsqueak,’ he said, passing me a box.

Inside, there were five new books. They were all beautiful hardbacks, and I couldn’t wait to start reading them. ‘It’s always important to have adventures, even if only in your imagination. Sometimes those are the best adventures of all,’ he said, sounding more like Nana than himself. Then he gave me a second gift, and I didn’t understand what it was when I first saw it.

‘It’s a View-Master,’ explained my father, leaving me none the wiser as I stared at what looked like a red plastic pair of binoculars. ‘I know it must make you sad, that your sisters get to go away to school, and I get to travel with my orchestra, and you have to stay behind . . . but now you can look inside this and pretend to be anywhere.’

Dad put a strange-looking reel inside the contraption, then held it up to my face. I remember being scared at first, but then I saw a picture of a forest, so real I thought I might be able to touch it. He showed me how to click the side of the gadget. The reel moved, and I saw a picture of a waterfall. It was like magic. I laughed, and my dad grinned, but his smile faded a little when he noticed the pink scar down the middle of my chest. I watched his reaction as he remembered that I was broken, and felt guilty that it made him so sad.

‘I’ve missed you all so much,’ he said. His words were like a hug, and I wanted to believe them. The camera catches him looking at my mother, and her looking away. I was too young to understand any of what was going on between them back then. When you hold on too tight to something, it can start to hurt.

‘Conor, I was hoping you would be here,’ Dad said, holding out a small gift. ‘Let me take the camcorder while you open it. I hope you like it.’ The camera turns to reveal a ridiculously happy-looking Conor, as though he had never been given a Christmas present before, and it made me wonder if maybe he hadn’t. Nana said there were people who didn’t believe in Christmas, or celebrate it, and just the idea of that made me feel sad.

‘Different people believe in different things,’ she said, when I didn’t understand.

‘What do you believe in?’ I asked.

Nana smiled. ‘I believe in kindness and hard work.’

‘What about God?’

She smiled again. ‘I believe that God believes in hard work too.’

‘What should I believe in?’ I asked.

‘You should only believe in what you want to believe, and you should always believe in yourself.’ It was a good piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten.

Conor carefully unwrapped a yo-yo unlike any I’d seen before.

‘I found this in Shanghai when I was performing there,’ Dad said, and my mother rolled her eyes. ‘I’m told they’re the best yo-yos in the world, but you’re the expert!’

‘It’s perfect. Amazing. Thank you,’ said Conor, with actual tears in his eyes, as though our father had given him a yo-yo made of gold.

‘And . . . I’m told you’ve been writing for the school newspaper. I thought this might come in handy if you don’t have a photographer,’ Dad said, giving him another, slightly bigger parcel.

It was a Polaroid camera, and Conor’s face lit up like the Christmas tree he was sitting next to. I remember him taking pictures of us all for his Darker family tree that afternoon. He took more of Rose than of anyone else. Nana used those pictures to paint our faces on the wall at Seaglass a few weeks later, so that who we were that day was captured in time forever.

Dad’s gift for Nana was a cuckoo clock from Germany. It’s one of the most eccentric clocks in the hall. Every hour, on the hour, a little wooden man and a little wooden woman come out of two tiny doors, and meet in the middle before she chops off his head with an axe. They do this all day, every day. My father’s gift for his ex-wife was less disturbing. He gave my mother a small red velvet box, and Nancy smiled her real smile when she opened it. We all admired the beautiful silver heart-shaped locket. There was room for two tiny pictures, and when my mother smiled at my sisters, I was sure it was their faces she wanted to keep inside.