Five Winters(10)

Finally, I nudged her, deciding to find out what was wrong. “Everything okay?”

Rosie pulled a sorrowful face. “I’ve got something to tell you. Something you won’t like.”

My heart sped up. Was she ill? Had something happened to Mark in Paris? “What?”

She sighed. “I’m really sorry, but I won’t be home for Christmas after all. Giorgio’s invited me to spend Christmas with him in Rome. I booked a last-minute flight. I leave tomorrow.”

My first response was to be pleased for her. “Wow, Rosie, that’s so romantic!” But then I quickly realised exactly what her romantic tryst would mean for me: having to deal with the honeymoon couple on my own. Oh God.

“Weren’t you the one who told me your mum needed ten months’ notice if we weren’t going to be there for Christmas?”

“I know,” she said. “But actually, Mum’s fine with it. Probably because there’s a man involved. She thinks it’s romantic too. Look, I really am sorry, Beth. He asked me, and . . . well, I just folded, I suppose. He said it’s a perfect time to visit all the sights. And there’s this huge Christmas market or something. It sounded fun.”

“I won’t be able to give you your Christmas present,” I wailed, already thinking the Giorgio bear wasn’t as great an idea as I’d thought it might be. After all, who wanted a Giorgio bear when you could have the real Giorgio, complete with romantic Rome?

“Keep it till I get back,” she said. “It’ll make Christmas last longer. And look, if things get too unbearable, you can always accept Jaimie’s invitation to spend Christmas with him, can’t you? I’m sorry, Beth; I really am. Please don’t hate me.”

“How could I hate you, you dolt?” I said, giving her a hug.

It was true: I didn’t hate her for putting romance before me. How could I? But I did feel let down. And suddenly I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas Day at all.





5


Years ago, Sylvia would buy everyone a new pair of festive pyjamas to wear on Christmas Eve as we opened our one permitted present before the big day. Rosie and I would be practically incandescent with excitement, hanging up our Christmas stockings on the special hooks above the fireplace, cutting up carrots for Rudolph, and getting Richard to pour a glass of sherry for Father Christmas—even though we’d stopped believing in him ages ago.

The days of new pyjamas were long gone now. This year, I wasn’t expected until Christmas morning.

Richard and Sylvia lived in Middlesex, in London’s commuter belt. It took about forty-five minutes to drive there from Dalston. I arrived at their road at nine thirty on Christmas morning dressed in a sparkly black dress and full, festive makeup, smiling as I drove past the light displays in front of everyone’s houses. The neighbours competed with each other every year, the displays getting fancier and fancier, but somehow Richard and Sylvia’s house always topped the lot. Richard made sure of it.

I parked my car and walked slowly up the garden path, taking it all in. There were lights glowing in the trees and stars twinkling on the front wall, and that was without Santa in his sleigh on the roof and the Christmas trees, snowmen, and elves on the lawn. If that lot didn’t get me into the Christmas spirit, nothing would. Maybe the day wasn’t going to be as awful as I feared it might be.

Richard let me in. He was wearing a Christmas jumper which sported a picture of two penguins kissing, with the words YULE BE MINE across the middle. I guessed Sylvia had made it for him.

“Happy Christmas, love,” he said, giving me a kiss and a hug.

“Happy Christmas, Richard. Amazing lights, as per usual. And I love the jumper.”

Richard looked down at his canoodling penguins. “It’s class, isn’t it?”

“How’s Sylvia about Rosie not being here?”

“Somewhere between sobbing her heart out over her empty Christmas stocking and planning what to wear for the wedding. How about you?”

Sylvia bustled out of the kitchen to greet me before I could answer.

“Hello, dear. Happy Christmas! Don’t you look lovely!” She hugged me close. “Nice to see there’s someone I can rely on, what with Rosie living the high life in Rome and the happy couple still in bed.”

Reliable, predictable. Yes, that was me. God, I had to stop feeling sorry for myself.

“Come into the kitchen. I was just getting the turkey on. You can make yourself a cup of coffee and tell me all you know about Giorgio.”

Despite my knowledge of Giorgio being minimal in the extreme, I was still in the kitchen helping Sylvia when Mark came down in his dressing gown. His hair was attractively tousled. He looked to be what he no doubt was—a man who’d just made love to his wife of two weeks.

Back when I was a teenager, after my feelings had changed and I suddenly saw Mark as the boy of my dreams rather than my friend’s overly bossy older brother, I used to have to prepare myself to see him if I’d been out somewhere and come back to the house. The family still lived in London then—in a town house with the sitting room in the basement. Sometimes I’d have to visit the loo on the ground floor before I went downstairs to greet everyone, just to have time to collect myself.

I could have done with such a space on that Christmas morning, but I didn’t get it. One moment I was peeling parsnips ready for roasting, with carols playing on the radio and Sylvia listing all the facts she could think of about Rome, and the next, Mark was saying, “Happy Christmas, Beth,” and dropping a kiss on my cheek on his way to kiss his mother.