Queenie(47)

I look like my dad. Darker than my mum, with nearly black eyes, eyes that are either narrowing with suspicion or rolling. I also, as my grandmother says, have “the same figure as your dad.”

“Okay,” my mum said, smiling gently.

A line of choir boys and girls walked past, singing and swinging incense. My phone buzzed.

Diana

This stuff is gonna make me have an asthma attack



Queenie

Can you pretend to have a coughing fit so that I can take you outside. Please



Diana

NO, because I’d have to squeeze past the whole row and I don’t want to wake Granddad up



I looked down the row at my granddad, who was already fast asleep, his head as far back as it could go and his mouth wide open.

“If Granddad is allowed to sleep, am I?” I whispered to my grandmother, who kissed her teeth loudly in response until she remembered that we were in a church.

“Once, in royal David’s city,” the priest began to sing, his microphone-amplified voice ringing out much louder than the choir and congregation. He was ad-libbing in a way that he probably hadn’t been taught in priest school.

Diana

This guy must think he’s on X Factor



Queenie

Would you put him through?



Diana

Not gonna lie, his voice isn’t bad, you know. Put a little auto-tune on it, he might get into the top 10



“Diana. Put the phone away,” I heard Maggie hiss as I mumbled along to the hymn, my eyes grazing the words on the song sheet. To my right, my grandmother belted the words out in an accent-tinged trill, most of the lyrics free-styled, while my mum sang along quietly and sweetly to my left, not missing a word or a note. I glanced at her. She wasn’t even looking at the lyrics. “Years of Sunday school,” she broke out of song to say to me. “I’ll never forget a word.”

I ignored her and zoned out for the hour, conjuring up a frame-by-frame imagining of what Christmas would have been like with Tom this year. I looked up to the ornate church ceiling.

I closed my eyes and tried out a little prayer. “Dear Lord,” I started in my head, “I know that I don’t pray to you often, or really ever, but I just wanted to ask, please, if you do exist, could things be a bit more smooth sailing from now on? I know that maybe I don’t deserve your pity or your mercy, but I am having a really bad time and I don’t know what to do. Maybe I can just have some clarity?” I squeezed my eyes tightly. “What if you just get Tom to text me and tell me he wants to see me? That’s an easy request, it’s not like I’m asking for him back immediately. I understand that these things take time.” I paused to think if there was anything I should add. “And eventually, whether Tom does or doesn’t love me again, can I maybe just be a bit happy? I feel like I was born miserable and never given reason to change that. Oh, and I am so sorry for all of the casual sex, so please forgive me for that also,” I prayed. “I know that it’s awful, and against everything Catholics stand for, but—”

“Ow!” I yelped as my grandmother pinched my arm with her bony fingers.

“Don’t go to sleep,” she growled. “The priest looked right over at us.”

“I wasn’t!” I whispered. “I was deep in prayer!”

Diana

LOL



Queenie

How is she so strong?



Diana

Porridge every marnin’ fi 100 years



“Amen,” I said out loud in response to Diana’s text, joined by the congregation as the whole ordeal came to an end.



* * *



Christmas with my grandparents meant nothing fun. No alcohol, no Christmas TV, and definitely no pigs in blankets. Maggie was dominating the kitchen and barking orders at anyone who came near, so my granddad was hiding in his little shed, while the head of the house had left in search of custard powder.

Diana was with her dad, so instead of having the only other young person to talk to, I was in the spare room under seven duvets that my grandmother had put on me before she went out. I lay there, a constant chain of Ferrero Rocher entering my mouth, watching Love, Actually, a film that usually made me roar with laughter through sheer disbelief when I wasn’t heartbroken.

I don’t know how I could feel any bleaker. I hadn’t felt this alone in such a long time. It was fine BT (Before Tom) because I hadn’t known what such closeness was like, to be able to share everything with one person, to have someone love you unconditionally, and to love them, despite each other’s -isms. AD (After our Division) it was truly unbearable.

I heard the front door open and paused the film, holding my breath. “Look who I found on the road!” my grandmother announced to the house. “Sylvie’s here!”

I strained my ears. “Hi, everyone, it’s me!” I heard my mum say very quietly.

“Go up, say hello to your daughter,” my grandmother told her. “She’s eating her way through her feelings, go and take the chocolate away.”

Hearing my mum shuffle up the stairs, I pretended to be asleep.

“I know you’re awake, Queenie. You’ve been pretending to be asleep since you were little, I know the signs,” she said. I felt her sit down on the bed, and opened my eyes.