2
“Where did you say you were spending Christmas?” Alex asked me much later, after a very satisfying demonstration of his twirling techniques.
“I didn’t,” I said, running a hand down his smooth, suntanned chest. “But I’m going to see my great-aunt. In Hampshire.”
He propped himself up on one elbow to look down at me. “Will there be many other family members there? As in, such a crowd of you that you won’t be missed if you don’t show up?”
I shook my head, listening to myself trot out my usual answer. Alex and I may have just slept together, but we were still strangers, really, so lying to him didn’t feel so bad. “No, it will be just the two of us, as in, my aunt’s depending on me.”
“Pity. I was going to suggest you cancel and spend Christmas with me and my family.”
“I’m sure your mother would love that.”
“Listen, Mum was so terrified me and Matt wouldn’t be back from our travels in time for Christmas she wouldn’t complain if I’d invited everyone from the pub to join us for dinner.” He reached out suddenly to grab me, pulling me in for a kiss. “Please, Lily,” he begged when we surfaced again. “Please phone your aunt. Tell her there’s been a rail strike. Tell her you’ve got an allergy to Christmas. She’ll understand. She’s a very understanding person.”
“You know nothing about her,” I pointed out.
“True, but she’s related to you, isn’t she? And you’re perfect in every way.”
“Sorry,” I said. “No can do.”
He sighed and flopped down onto his back. “I’ll really miss you.”
“Alex, you’ve only known me for five minutes.”
“Five hours and five minutes actually,” he corrected me, stroking a hand down my thigh, making me tingle with desire all over again.
But there was no way I would change my plans, so Alex had to make do with sizzling sex and a promise that we’d meet up as soon as Christmas was over.
The next morning, Inga and I called to each other through our open bedroom doors as we packed our suitcases.
“What a night. I really, really like Matt.”
“Yes, you said already. About fifty times.”
The boys had left earlier, and ever since then, Inga had been mooning about, doing nothing very constructive, checking her phone every five minutes for messages.
“You do like Alex, don’t you?” she asked me now.
“Yes, I like Alex,” I said. I knew it was what she wanted me to say. And it was true; I did like Alex. I just had no idea whether or not it was going to lead to something. Whether I even wanted it to. And now wasn’t the time to speculate about it. We’d see how things were after the whole wretched business of Christmas was done with.
“Well, then!”
I wasn’t sure exactly what point Inga felt she’d proved. I just wished she’d hurry up with her packing. At this rate she wouldn’t be finished by the time her taxi arrived, and if it drove off without her, she’d miss her train. And if she missed her train, she’d also miss her flight. Inga is half Danish, and her mum lives in Copenhagen.
“Your mother will never forgive you if you aren’t on that flight.”
“Ha! Nothing I do is right for her, anyway. If I miss my flight, I can just come to Hampshire with you.”
My brain whizzed into overdrive, conjuring up unpleasant images to put her off. “You won’t enjoy it. Auntie Alice isn’t exactly a great conversationalist. And her house is like an ice box. You think this place is cold—believe me, it’s a positive sauna compared to Auntie Alice’s house. Oh, and she has three cats.” Inga loathed cats. “The whole house stinks of cat wee.”
Inga appeared at my bedroom door, suitcase in hand. “Why d’you bother going there year after year, then? I hate that I miss your birthday every year.”
I avoided her gaze, managing to quip, “My fault for being born on Christmas Day.”
“Sweetie, I’m not sure that was entirely your fault.” She looked at her watch. “God, I really had better get going. I wish you could have at least caught an earlier train. We could have travelled part of the way together.”
I zipped my suitcase up and joined her as she went downstairs. “I told you; the connections work out better if I travel in the afternoon.”
Lie after lie after lie. But I’d been telling them to her for years, so I really ought to be used to it by now.
As we reached the front room, I saw a car pull up outside. “Look, here’s your taxi. Come here and give me a hug.”
She bundled herself into my arms, and I closed my eyes, inhaling the scent of her strawberry shampoo as I held her.
“Have a great Christmas and birthday, kiddo. Ply your aunt with whisky, and you’ll soon have her playing charades and pulling wishbones like a pro.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “And you remember to count to ten in Russian every time your mum says something annoying.”
“Why Russian?”
“It takes more concentration. And if that doesn’t work, think of Matt and all the fun you’re going to have when you get home.”
The taxi driver blasted his horn outside, and Inga disentangled herself.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said, trundling her suitcase to the front door. “If I start thinking about what I’d like to be doing with Matt, I’ll be heading straight for the airport to come home.”
“See you in a week,” I said, blowing her a final kiss.
“See you, gorgeous,” she said, flashing me a smile, and then she was gone, the front door closing behind her, her boots clomping down the garden path.
I stood there, waiting for the taxi to disappear. Then I locked the front door, put a ready meal in the oven and went upstairs to unpack my suitcase. I wasn’t going to see my great-aunt Alice at all. Great-Aunt Alice didn’t exist. I wasn’t going anywhere.
When I’d first met Inga in the halls of residence at art college before our course started, she was in the process of dumping a long, very unsexy nightdress into the kitchen bin.
“Early Christmas present from my mother,” she explained. “I think she wants me to live like a nun. Fat chance of that.” She turned to grin at me. “I’m Inga, by the way.”
I smiled back. “Lily.”
She stuffed the nightdress and its packaging further down into the bin and let the lid thwack closed on it. “And have you got a controlling mother like me, Lily?” she asked, turning to look in my direction.
I walked over to the kettle—I’d come into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea—and filled it at the sink. “No,” I said, “I lost my mum four years ago.”
“God, I’m sorry,” Inga said. “What did she die of?”
At that point, of course, I had no idea Inga and I would quickly become such good friends. I’d seen her around before, and she was stunningly pretty and confident, while I was more of a background kind of a person, not wanting to draw attention to myself. So I trotted out the usual lie I told when I was asked about my mother.
“Breast cancer.”
“Gosh,” she said, “that’s awful. Poor you.”
When our course started, just by fluke, Inga and I were given neighbouring workspaces, and we got into the habit of going to the college canteen for coffee breaks together. I discovered that her father—whom she’d adored—had died in a car crash two years previously, which was when her mother, who was Danish by birth, had decided to return to Denmark.
“Mum tried to insist I go with her. I mean, no way. I’ve always lived in England. Sure, we’ve always visited Denmark a lot, Mum’s family are there, and it’s a cool place and all that, but this is my home. Besides, Mum and I have never really got on. Not the way me and Dad did.”
She had an intent way of looking at me over her coffee cup, her eyes a brighter blue than the sky on a faultless summer’s day. “What about you after your mum died? How did your dad cope with it?”
I didn’t have to lie about that. I’d never known my father, and for various reasons, I’d never been curious about him.
“Mum was a single parent,” I said. “I’ve never met my father.”
“Wow,” Inga said. “So, what happened to you after your mum died, then?”
But there was no way I was telling her the details about that. Art college was my chance for a new start; I didn’t want the awful recent years intruding on it. So I just shrugged. “I took care of myself.”
I was still cautious back then, I suppose. Reluctant to become too attached to anyone in case they vanished from my life. But Inga—with her enthusiastic invitations to join her for a drink, go to the cinema or the theatre, or to see an art exhibition, quickly wore me down. We could chat for hours on end about art, about boys, about everything. It was like a miracle to have a friend like her, to have met someone who so obviously cared what I thought and felt.
One night when we’d had a lot to drink at a music gig, Inga started talking about how she’d always wished for a sibling growing up, and I found myself telling her I had a sister, Violet, whom I hadn’t seen since I was seventeen years old. That she’d been taken into care after Mum died, and we’d lost touch. When Inga’s eyes widened and she began pumping me with questions, I soon regretted saying anything. So I told her it was painful to think about, and then some other friends joined us, Inga just gave me a sympathetic shoulder squeeze, and the moment passed.
Sometimes I wondered whether, if I could rewind time and be back in that kitchen, watching Inga dumping that nightdress from her mother in the bin, I’d tell her the whole truth about what happened to Violet and me. Inga was such a generous friend; she certainly deserved my honesty.
But I couldn’t rewind time. The lie was a tangled mess I couldn’t bring myself to dwell on, and I couldn’t risk Inga thinking I was some kind of weird freak she’d better avoid. So, I left the lie where it was and said nothing. Because, after all, being honest would require me to confront past events myself. And why would I want to do that? No, far better to just get on with my life. To make new memories.
Except for times like Christmas, when I was incapable of forgetting.
So, with my suitcase back under my bed and dressed in my cosiest pyjamas, I went downstairs to eat—a TV dinner without the TV, since I didn’t bother to turn it on, loath to watch the usual seasonal diet of Christmas specials and repeats. A cup of tea, a spot of washing up so my plate wouldn’t be encrusted with dried-on lasagne, and then I took the first of the sleeping tablets from the stash I’d hoarded earlier in the year when I’d told my GP I was suffering from exam stress.
Ten ought to be enough to take me right through Christmas if I rationed them, enough to block out the memories and the nightmares.
I could only hope.