The Rabbit Girls(99)

She recalls one year when her father returned late at the end of term.

‘I’m so sorry, did you do it all without me?’ he called from the doorway.

‘Almost,’ Miriam said. He arrived and kissed them both; Mum decorating the top of the tree and Miriam playing with the ribbon on a small gift she had wrapped for Axel. Her father pulled off his tie and dropped his briefcase on the table.

‘Is he here?’

‘Not yet.’ Mum’s voice was full of excitement.

‘What is he like?’

‘Gorgeous,’ Miriam proclaimed in a fit of giggles. ‘You’ll love him, Mum.’ The bubbles of excitement rose within her until she couldn’t stop smiling.

‘What’s left for me to do?’ her father asked.

‘The star, as always,’ Mum replied.

The tree was beautiful, silver and gold. The carols on the radio were quiet. Miriam passed her father the star and he placed it at the top of the tree.

‘Countdown then,’ he said, and Miriam went to the light switch and turned off the main light so they were plunged into darkness.

‘Three . . . two . . . one,’ they said together as Mum flicked the tree lights and they brightened the room.

The star at the top dazzled glitter. Miriam watched as her father pulled on the strings of her mother’s apron and took it off over her head. He placed it over the back of the chair and took her small hand in his. She stepped into his arms on tiptoe and he danced her around the room.

‘Mind the decorations,’ she said, smiling into his eyes.

Miriam watched as they did a few circuits around the room, so graceful, her mother’s skirt billowing around her so that she looked like a fairy ready to sit atop a tree herself. Her cheeks flushed and her hair messily out of place. She hoped one day soon that she would feel how Mum felt, but in Axel’s arms.

‘Merry Christmas, Emilie,’ her father said, and kissed her fully on the mouth. Miriam watched Mum flush in his gaze.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she said, and stopped to straighten her hair, her father pulling her close.

‘Merry Christmas, everyone,’ Dad said, kissing Miriam on the cheek, and her heart was full of cheer, elevated because Christmas was near.

The applause from the crowd is slow to start but becomes loud and flamboyant with whistles and cheers, bringing Miriam back to the present.

The orchestra starts up and bodies move slightly as the next song gets underway. She looks and sees a small boy taking a sip of water. He is surrounded by adults, but it is his voice that had carried them away.

Miriam places her hand over Eva’s arm as the crowds drift away.

‘Are you okay?’ Eva asks.

‘I have been more than blessed. But right now, I don’t know if Dad knew and he deserves to know what happened. Even if it is the end. I promised him.’ She walks on a few paces, leaving Eva behind, then returns.

Mum’s voice jumps in her head. ‘People deserve a peaceful, unburdened passing,’ she had said. Miriam takes a breath that shimmers in the cold air. She can do this for Dad.

At the entrance to the hospice, Miriam stops and looks up. The moon is still in the sky, surrounded by what look like bright stars. And it looks, at first, as if the stars are falling, but it is snow. It has started to snow.

Miriam holds her hand out and catches the flakes in the palm of her hand. She looks up and admires the beauty of something so erasable.

‘Their ashes rise black, but they always fall white,’ Miriam says. ‘Dad used to say that when snow fell, the ashes of those we lost fell with each flake, to nurture the ground and land on those they loved. Snowflake kisses, a snowflake touch. When I was little I never really understood, I just giggled as the snowflake kisses turned into Mum and Dad kisses. No matter what, they loved me.’

‘I am sure they did. I’ll wait for you, if you need me?’ Eva asks, but Miriam is watching the snowflakes melt in her hand. She can hear her father’s voice, his gloved hand wrapped around hers, his smoky breath mingled with fresh white snow.

‘If every flake dissolves, some part of that person moves into you. Giving you a gift, something they had,’ Dad had said.

Miriam thinks of the rabbit girls and Hani, Frieda and her mother and all the others lost and forgotten. As the snow gets thicker she wonders if, maybe, the lost have quite a lot of gifts to deliver.

Miriam feels Eva gently open the door and catch her arm. Inside, Eva waits by the Christmas tree as Sue walks down the corridor.

Sue holds both of Miriam’s hands in her own and greets her, ‘Your father is very alert today,’ she says. ‘But his chest has got worse again. I think’ – Sue directs Miriam into her father’s room – ‘I think it’s time,’ she says with gravity.

The room smells faintly of cloves, of Christmas gone. Sue walks in, leans over the bed and takes her father’s hand.

‘Herr Winter, Henryk. Miriam is here to see you,’ she says. And nods for her to move closer.

Sue straightens. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Christmas biscuits to eat,’ she says, stroking Miriam’s arm as she passes.

Miriam knows she should start talking. She knows she should explain what the letters said. She knows she should tell her father that Frieda is dead. She knows she should ask if he knew, that maybe, just maybe, she is his and Frieda’s child.