Five Winters(11)

“Happy Christmas, love,” Sylvia said, enveloping him in a big hug. “You two will be getting up soon, won’t you? Or it will put out all my timings.”

“Your timings are quite safe, Mum. Just making Grace a cup of coffee, and then we’ll be down. She doesn’t do anything until she’s had a cup of coffee.”

If Rosie had been there, this would have inspired some banter; I knew it would. But Rosie wasn’t here. There was just me, bent over the parsnips with my bruised heart and pretend smile. I could do this. I could.

“Did you have a good honeymoon? When did you get back? I bet it was cold, wasn’t it?”

I could hear my voice going on and on. When I risked a swift glance up at him, Mark was smiling.

“Yes, thank you. Last night. Yes, I suppose so, but we had our love to keep us warm.”

Ha ha. He probably expected me to give him a sisterly shove or something in response to that, but even if I’d wanted to, he was over on the other side of the kitchen making coffee. So I kept my attention on the parsnips.

“Oh, no need to slice them quite so small, Beth love,” Sylvia said, whisking them away. “We don’t want parsnip chips, do we?”

Now I had nothing to do with my hands and nowhere to hide my face. And to cap it all, Richard came into the room and gave my shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

“Are you okay, Beth?” Mark asked, frowning at me, a cup of coffee in either hand.

“Probably thinking about the time your mum and dad took you to Paris, aren’t you, love?” Richard said. “What with Mark and Grace just back from there.”

I hadn’t been, but now I was.

“I didn’t know they’d taken you to Paris,” said Mark. “You must have been very young.”

“I was seven. Mum wanted to see an art exhibition.”

“You arrived on the fourteenth of July, didn’t you?” Richard said. “Bastille Day.”

I nodded. “Yes. Mum and Dad had no idea about it being any kind of special day. Our hotel was right next to the Eiffel Tower. Quite by accident, we saw all the fireworks being set off to music.”

“Cool.” Mark waited for a moment to see if I was going to say anything else, but I didn’t feel like talking about the magic of those fireworks or the fun of watching it all from my dad’s shoulders. How all these years later it was almost as vivid to me as back then.

Mark put the coffee cups down on the table and drew me in for a hug. “Sounds like a very special memory,” he said.

I nodded quickly, blinking away sudden tears. “Yes.”

He kissed the top of my head and let me go. “I’d better take this coffee upstairs if I want to avoid fireworks here, I suppose. See you all soon.”

After Mark had gone, Sylvia frowned at her husband. “What did you want to bring that up for? Beth’s upset now.”

“I’m not, honestly. I’m fine. Now, what else can I help you with?”

When Mark and Grace finally came down, Sylvia was persuaded out of the kitchen so we could all exchange gifts. I’d bought Sylvia a lovely soft scarf in duck-egg blue, and Richard a new pair of gardening gloves he professed to be delighted with. I normally gave Mark something jokey—the previous year I’d bought him some nylon tattoo “sleeves” which made him look as if he’d spent five weeks at a tattoo parlour when he wore them on his arms. Which he did, all over Christmas.

The jokey presents were a part of my disguise. I was afraid my true feelings would show up in the gifts I chose for him if I didn’t keep it light. This year I’d felt stumped. I didn’t know Grace well enough to buy her a joke-themed present. I didn’t even know what her sense of humour was like. Presumably, she had one, because Mark did. In the end I’d bought them Kitchen King and Kitchen Queen aprons, which was hardly inspired. Judging by their polite reactions, I was reasonably sure they agreed with that assessment.

God, I missed Rosie. I didn’t open her gift to me, deciding to keep it until she got back. I missed her even more when she called midmorning and Sylvia put her on speakerphone. She was all ciao this and ciao that, and we could hear Giorgio in the background saying something to make her giggle. Suddenly I felt like the only person on the entire planet who was single at Christmas.

I wasn’t the only one who was upset by Rosie’s call. After Sylvia hung up, her stiff upper lip went all wobbly. “I’m happy for her, of course,” she said. “But she’s thirty-five years old. She ought to be here with us with a pack of bouncy grandchildren.”

Richard and I both remembered our conversation in my flat when he’d come to fit the shelving unit, and we exchanged glances. See? my expression said, and he smiled.

“Do grandchildren come in packs?” Mark asked.

“I’m not sure there is a collective noun for grandchildren,” said Grace.

“There is,” said Richard, who knew most things. “It’s a commotion.”

It ought to be a lack, I thought miserably, brooding over my own childless state. A lack of grandchildren.

“Come on, love,” Richard said to his wife. “Cheer up. It’s Christmas.”

Sylvia nodded and blew her nose. “You’re right. Sorry.” She smiled at Mark and Grace. “I’m counting on you two to provide me with a commotion of grandchildren. All right?”