Chapter 2
Ihit Mam’s number on my phone as I walk to Park Royal tube station at eight o’clock sharp the next morning. Better get this conversation over with: the one where I admit I won’t be coming home for Christmas.
Predictably enough, the image that greets me is a close-up of Mam’s ear, all flesh-coloured and blurry.
‘… not sure if this is a FaceTime or a phone call,’ Mam mutters.
‘Mam! Turn your head!’
‘What the—’ There’s some static and then Mam’s face.
There she is. I wave a bit manically. I’m not sure why I do this—call them at breakfast time.
Seeing Mam and Da and Clodagh at the breakfast table is what makes me the most homesick, which is ridiculous, given I haven’t lived at home for a decade.
But being in Dublin is one thing.
Being in London, away from my family and friends and three million (all right, thirty-eight) cousins is something else.
Mam has her full face on. She looks great.
She dies her hair jet black. Has done for years, so I’m not sure when she started greying.
All I know is that she was young, because Mam loves to remind me to keep a relentless eye on my roots.
She’s one of the managers at Avoca Handweavers, a mill and restaurant that turned the town of Avoca in Wicklow into a huge tourist trap years ago.
She loves her job, and the change in her these past few months, as things have started to open up a bit in Ireland and the tourists have crept back, has been amazing.
‘Is that a new lipstick, Mam?’
‘It is.’ Mam rubs her lips together. It looks great, actually, against her huge green eyes. Another thing I have to thank her for. ‘It’s Charlotte Tilbury; would you credit it? I got it in Brown Thomas on Saturday.’
‘Very swish. Mam, I—’
‘Say good morning to your father, would you?’ Mam does not, of course, flip the screen, but instead turns the physical phone over and pans vigorously to where she imagines the camera will pick up Da.
Instead, I get a lovely view of the dresser.
There are already a few Christmas cards on there.
Already? Who on earth sends cards by the 3rd December?
‘Mam. Mam? A bit to the left. I can only see the dresser.’
Mam adjusts accordingly, and Da comes into view. The image bumps around a bit. He raises his mug of tea, and I know, without being able to see, that it’s tar-black. Barry’s teabags. Two in the mug. Revolting.
‘How are ya, pet.’ Da is a man of few words. Which is just as well. Mam has plenty of words for everyone. Da retired a few years back. Mam will never, ever retire. They’ll have to drag her out of Avoca Handweavers, feet first. Preferably in a handwoven shroud, if Mam has her way.
‘Morning, Da. Is Clodagh there?’
‘She’s straightening her hair,’ Mam yells.
‘Right.’ Of course she is. Clodagh is the only one of the five of us left at home, the baby of the family. She’s doing her Leaving Cert in June and has made it very clear that she will hot-foot it to London after that, presumably requiring me to babysit her.
Mam turns the phone over again and comes back into view.
‘Where are you off to, love? I thought you finished the Montague job yesterday?’
‘Yes, well. About that. I got a new job, actually. Looking after a little four-year-old girl. Bea. She’s a dote. Um—her dad actually owns the hotel.’
‘He what? He owns it? Sweet Jesus. He must be made of money, then.’
‘I don’t think he’s short of a pound or two. They’re staying in the hotel for a few weeks. In the Dickens Penthouse. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it?’
‘It certainly does. What’s his name? Frank. Give me your phone. Is he paying you a decent wage? These billionaires can be cheap as sin.’
‘He’s not a billionaire. And yes. He’s paying me about four times more than I was getting in the creche.
And he’ll still pay me weekly.’ That clinched the deal last night.
There’s no way I can turn down that kind of money.
It’s just one Christmas. Christmas was cancelled last year and we all survived.
I can do another low-key Christmas Day. And besides, the mere idea of spending Christmas in London (even with a man who seems unfriendly if not downright hostile) is a dream come true.
I have serious plans. Most of them will have to wait until the evenings, when I’ve clocked off duty, but that’s okay. Hot chocolate in Covent Garden. Hot chocolate on the Embankment, looking across at the London Eye. Hot chocolate at Liberty’s. And Harrods. A lot of hot chocolate, basically.
It’ll be like living in Love, Actually. Minus Hugh Grant, or Colin Firth, sadly (although my new grumpy boss does look weirdly like Theo James.
Which is definitely an enjoyable bonus).
But still. London at Christmas. The magic of how it will be already creeps over my skin like goosebumps. I. Cannot. Wait.
Which brings me to the point of my call.
‘Nice work, love.’ Mam whistles approvingly. ‘That’ll come in very handy for you. So will you have to put your flight back? Or is he letting you come home on the 17th? You’d better get it checked out now. You know Ryanair aren’t the most flexible.’
‘That’s the thing, Mam. He wants me to work over Christmas. Till the 31st. Apparently, they’re flying to the Caribbean on New Year’s Eve.’
‘He can’t have you working over Christmas! Tell her, Frank. Doesn’t he know we all missed Christmas last year? Surely he and his wife can bother themselves to look after their own daughter and let you have a few days with your family, for God’s sake?’
‘I’m not sure there is a wife.’ I have a weird desire to keep Mr Montague’s private life private. Even if Mam can find out everything she needs to know online in an instant. ‘I’m sure he’s very busy with all his businesses. He’s giving me Christmas Day itself off, and I’ll spend it with the girls.’
Mam has put her phone flat on the table, so all I can see are the spotlights on the ceiling.
‘Right. What’s his name?’
‘Miles Montague. But—’
‘Miles. Montague. Wife. Oooh.’
I grit my teeth as Mum inhales sharply at the other end.
‘Oh, it’s not good. Oh, Jesus, really? That poor little dote.’
‘Mam, do you know what? I don’t want to know. I purposely avoided googling him last night. I just feel weird. You knock yourself out, okay? But don’t tell me anything—I’m aware of the basics. I’m sure he’ll tell me in his own time.’
‘Fine, fine.’ Mam’s voice is airy. She will most definitely be spending the rest of the morning googling Mr Montague and discussing him with her colleagues. God help the poor man. Not that he cares what a bunch of randoms in Wicklow think of him.
‘Listen to me, Saoirse. You have to stand up to people like this. Never accept their opening offer, or they’ll walk all over you. Ask him if you can come back, even for two or three days over Christmas. It won’t be the same without you, love. We miss you.’
My eyes prick. A large part of me does feel shitty. I got close to my parents again after being locked down with them for so long. Far better to have been in lockdown in beautiful Avoca than in my bedsit in Dublin.
‘Don’t listen to her, pet.’ Dad’s voice is firm. ‘Do what you need to do.’
‘Thanks, Da. Listen, I have to go. I’ll chat to you later. Love you.’
I pull the phone from my ear, double click and hold it to the tube station scanner.
The Piccadilly Line never fails to seem like a magical portal to me.
I get on at Park Royal, which has to be one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been, let alone lived in, and I ‘alight’ (as the robot tube voices say) at Hyde Park corner and emerge into open space and utter splendour.
The Lanesborough, a delicious ice cream of a hotel perched right on the corner.
The Wellington Arch, Piccadilly stretching ahead of me to the east, the park laid out to the north, and the Montague’s regency symmetry a couple of hundred metres to the west, on the way to Knightsbridge.
This is the London I came to immerse myself in.
Definitely not Park Royal. No wonder I never want to leave the hotel in the evenings.