The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(39)

There’s none of that easy joy today; we’re all subdued, brittle, smiling because we need to rather than because we want to. I feel bad that my whole family have had their Christmas overshadowed too. It’s as if a huge raven has landed on the roof and folded his wings down over the windows, dulling the lights on the tree and underscoring the day with melancholy. At least it’s just us, though. My Auntie June tried her best to get us to go to them for a change, which was lovely of her, but we decided to stay put in the end. Going somewhere else wouldn’t have lessened the impact of Freddie’s absence, and at least here I can sob into my turkey if I need to. I feel a bit bad for Auntie June though, I know she’d have loved to have us all over, if only to water down the acerbic effects of my cousin Lucy.

‘Your mum’s in a panic, she’s forgotten to put the roast potatoes in,’ David says, coming through from the kitchen wearing his customary Christmas jumper. He and Freddie used to try to out-jumper each other, every year more garish than the last. David wasn’t going to wear one at all today; Elle told me so a week or two ago, sending me instantly online to remedy it. I went for one bearing a huge reindeer in sunglasses with flashing antlers – I think it would have been Freddie’s choice had he been here. I gave it to David just now and he made a bad job of hiding his emotions as he slipped it over his head. His serious expression makes a strange contrast with Rudolph’s crazy grin; I sigh and smile at the same time at the sight of it now.

It’s like a stone has been dropped into the middle of a pond; ripple after ripple, concentric circles, hurt spreading outwards. Freddie was the stone. I am the tightest circle around him, then his mum and Jonah, and then outwards to everyone else who loved him: my family and his, Deckers and co at the pub, his colleagues and friends. All those ripples, all those people who might think of him today.

Anyway. I try to pull myself up out of my thoughts and concentrate on the task at hand, navigating through Christmas lunch with my family. Afterwards I can go home and spend my real Christmas with Freddie.

‘No roast potatoes?’ I frown. My mum brags insufferably about her roasties and, to be fair, she has good grounds. ‘That can’t be right.’

In the kitchen, I find Mum face down in the freezer with her backside in the air.

‘What’s this I hear about roast potatoes?’

She straightens and turns to me, her deely boppers flashing red and tears coursing down her face.

‘Don’t even look at me, Lydia, I’m being a stupid old woman who sobs into the frozen peas. It’s the bloody menopause, I’ve got the memory of a goldfish. No, worse, a guppy. I just wanted to make it perfect and I’ve gone and forgotten the bloody roast potatoes and now it’s all ruined,’ she says. ‘I thought I might have a bag of those horrible frozen ones hanging around, but I haven’t even got any of those sodding rotten things.’

I feel a smile start to twitch my lips despite myself. ‘Shall we call the emergency services?’ I say, putting my hands on her shoulders. ‘Declare a potato-related disaster?’

She sniffs. ‘Don’t joke. It’s not funny.’

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I could put some roast chicken crisps in a bowl and we can have those instead? No one will notice once they’ve gone soggy with the gravy.’

She rolls her eyes, and I rip off some kitchen roll and hand it to her.

‘It doesn’t matter, Mum,’ I say, not joking any more. ‘Honestly, it doesn’t.’

She looks unconvinced, but nods. ‘No crisps though,’ she says. ‘This isn’t a student squat.’

‘No crisps,’ I say. ‘No sprouts either?’

It’s a running joke; she always hides sprouts underneath other things on mine and Elle’s plates because she knows we hate them.

She laughs, half-hearted. ‘Help me start putting things out on the table.’

I carry the turkey through to the dining room and place it down in pride of place, my eyes scanning Mum’s gorgeous festive table. It’s always the same: fresh flowers, her best crystal and a Christmas log ornament Elle and I made together at junior school. It’s not very impressive, a chunk of sawn-off branch covered with raggedy clumps of spray-on snow, a threadbare robin clinging to the top of it with spindly wire feet. Mum’s dressed it up with fresh holly and a fat, creamy candle as she always does, a silk purse of a sow’s ear. I find it comfortingly nostalgic. So many things in my life have changed, but there are some things that will always stay the same.

Half an hour later the food is in its place and we’re all sitting round the table when we hit our next hurdle: who is going to carve the bird.

My mum picks up the carving knife, uncertainty all over her face. It was always Freddie’s job.

‘Let me,’ David says, clearing his throat as he gets to his feet. He looks as nervous as he did before his wedding speech.

We all love David, but he is the least practical man on the planet and famously clumsy. Mum’s eyes round slightly as if she can’t quite bring herself to hand over the carving implements in case he slips and someone ends up in A&E.

‘He’s been practising carving from YouTube videos,’ Elle says softly.

Mum looks at me and I nod because there is something so endearing about the idea of David studying how to carve a turkey on YouTube. We all watch as he tries not to make a hash of it, poking an experimental fork in before going for it, his teeth sunk into his bottom lip in concentration. It’s not a complete disaster; I’d give him a three for technique and a ten for effort, which more than makes up for the splinters of bone in my dinner.