Chapter Twenty-Seven
As it turned out, in spite of, or perhaps because of, all my stressing, Christmas ended up being pretty much perfect.
Rather than trying to get everything organised ahead of Layla’s return, I involved her in the Christmas admin once she was home, making it significantly more enjoyable and much less of a chore.
We bought a tree the day she returned, stopping on our way back from the station and wedging it into the boot alongside her rucksack, and we spent the rest of the weekend listening to festive tunes and decorating the house.
I also decided (was forced into accepting) that I didn’t have time to buy gifts as early as I wanted, so instead Layla and I shopped for everyone’s presents together in a hilariously cavalier ‘week before Christmas’ way that I haven’t done since I was a student myself, grabbing any old bargain from the town market with two days to spare.
And now that it’s become the norm for all civilised society to buy their gifts months in advance it seems that shops are actually keen to reward you for a lack of organisation by dropping their prices mid-December!
‘I can’t believe this is half price!’ I said now, holding up a cashmere-blend cardigan in a pale blush shade. Layla and I were in one of the last remaining nice boutiques in the town centre looking for presents for Mum.
‘It would be reckless,’ I said. ‘Going so wildly off script. But maybe we could pretend they’re golf trousers?’
‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I’d hate for him to think that we hadn’t stuck exclusively to the obsessive hobby brief. Do you think he’s aware that he’s now going to have golf-related presents to the end of his days?’
‘It’s just how it works,’ I said. ‘Once people have got hold of a themed gift idea it’s simply too convenient to ever let it go.
I remember Great Aunt Gladys always used to get elephant-related presents – elephant cushions, elephant ornaments, elephant mugs.
And it was all because she’d once expressed a passing interest in elephants in her thirties.
I think she admitted to Granmerry on her deathbed that she didn’t really like them that much, in fact it had been hippos that she’d really loved, and she’d come to hate the very sight of elephants.
Mum said that she was saying this whilst lying under an elephant-patterned duvet with about forty different elephant knick-knacks lined up on her windowsill. ’
‘God, how tragic,’ said Layla, laughing. ‘Fancy being defined entirely by a misunderstanding.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Much better to never express an interest in anything and remain an enigma. Speaking of which, what are we going to do about presents for Aunty Jaqueline?’
Layla scooped up a pair of chinos in Joe’s size and gestured to the scarf and cardigan. ‘I think we’ve done all we can here,’ she said. ‘We’ve got almost everybody covered. Let’s go and pay for these and save Aunty Jaqueline for Tuesday.’
‘The day before Christmas Eve?’ I said, aghast. ‘Can we really leave it that late?’
She nodded. ‘It’s like pressure-ordering at a restaurant,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s only when you’re right down to the wire that you can make a decision.’
‘Well, let’s just hope Aunty Jaqueline doesn’t end up with the equivalent of the lukewarm mushroom soup I had in that cafe for lunch,’ I said.
We had decided to make a full day of it today and had squeezed a quick lunch in between shopping duties, but so many places had shut down since last year that those eateries remaining open had queues stretching out into the road.
We’d counted ourselves lucky to find a cafe with spare tables but once our food arrived it was fairly obvious why it was so empty.
The food was horrible and the service decidedly lacklustre.
When taking my soup order the waitress had asked me if I wanted brown or white bread for the accompanying roll and when I’d asked for brown, she said they didn’t have any.
Which rather begged the question why she had asked.
Still, it hadn’t put a dampener on our day.
It had been so much fun just pottering around the shops with my daughter – it felt like old times, if anything slightly better.
Previously the only time I would have gone shopping with Layla was to buy things she needed, practical items like school shoes, underwear, or stuff for university.
We hadn’t really done ‘fun shopping’ for years, if ever.
Whereas now, her opinion regarding what Mum and Joe and Rich would like was genuinely useful and I was also able to gauge her interest in possible present ideas I’d had for her.
Just seeing her face when I held up a pair of skinny jeans as a possible option for her cousin Emily was enough to let me know that the baggy jeans I’d bought her last week had been the right decision.
By Christmas Eve, most of the work was done.
The presents had been purchased and wrapped, there was a turkey in the fridge (and no space for any other food item), a limited number of cards had been sent (admittedly a little late but with a note about Layla starting university for the old folk who’d be interested), and there was more alcohol in the shed than we’d drunk all year.
I’d finished my shift at the library in time to collect Layla from her job at the supermarket and make some emergency final purchases including carrots, brandy butter and the caramelised onion chutney that Joe’s father likes with his cheese and biscuits.
Thankfully nobody was staying over. Joe’s parents were coming for dinner and they lived at least two hours away but after years of offering I’d finally come to the conclusion that they were more comfortable getting back to their own beds on Christmas night and not even the opportunity to spend more time with their eldest granddaughter was enough to override the anxiety of being away from the cat, the garden or the what-to-do-about-the-curtains issue for more than twenty-four hours.
‘It’s always a worry,’ Joe’s mother had once said to me.
‘Do you shut the curtains and let everyone know you’re out of the house during the day or do you leave them open and advertise the fact it’s unoccupied all night?
’ Needless to say, they didn’t tend to travel much and Joe’s sister, Amanda, saw them even less than we did, Blackpool being just too far to drive when ‘you know how your father feels about the motorway’.
Joe’s parents were only a couple of years older than Mum, but they felt almost like a different generation, so I had made her promise to behave herself and not make too many references to her boyfriends over Christmas dinner.
However, that promise had been given many weeks ago, prior to the STD clinic episode, and she might now choose to go full shock and awe just to spite me.
I’d just have to rely on the fact that Rich and Jaqueline would be there with the boys and Mum was far less likely to be mischievous in their presence.
‘How many men has Granmerry got on the go at the moment?’ Layla asked, tucking into one of the mince pies that had just come out of the oven. We were ostensibly preparing the veg for tomorrow’s dinner together, although so far Layla had only peeled half a parsnip.
‘Uhm, I’m not entirely sure,’ I said, immersing two kilos of potatoes in a pan of salted water.
‘She still sees Robert, the retired plastic surgeon, although I think she finds him a bit tedious. Maurice has moved into a nursing home on the south coast near his family, so it sounds as though that’s over.
I don’t think she found his company so compelling that she’d be prepared to visit – you know how she feels about nursing homes. ’
‘How about the retired chef? She had a couple of dates with him, didn’t she? She said he had a very varied palate, and “quite the appetite, darling”.’ Layla could do a very convincing impression of Mum.
‘I think Armando’s varied and voracious appetites might have been the problem,’ I said, raising an eyebrow.
Layla didn’t know about the clinic visit or the relief of Mum’s subsequent clean bill of sexual health.
She also didn’t know that we’d fallen out.
It was probably the only time since she’d left for university that I had seen a single benefit of her absence – the fact that she could remain blissfully ignorant of the family politics.
Layla had seen Mum within days of coming home and her presence had provided the ideal buffer when the three of us had been together, but other than the curt text message I’d received (My results are back from the laboratory and the swabs are all clear) two weeks ago, Mum and I had had no direct communication that didn’t involve Layla as an unwitting intermediary.
‘Did she tell you about the guy who stood her up?’ I said, changing the subject from gonorrhoea-riddled Armando.
‘Oh yes, but that was a mistake apparently,’ said Layla, pouring me a Baileys.
‘Roger, wasn’t it? She mentioned some misunderstanding on the first date but said that he’d had some sort of family emergency and that he’d then tried to get in touch to explain via the dating app but ended up blocking her because he was just so inept with the tech and in the process he’d lost her mobile number. ’
‘Oh!’ I said. This was news to me.
‘Did she not tell you?’ Layla gave me a curious look.
‘She called me a few days before I came home. I think she just wanted a second opinion on whether it sounded like a plausible excuse. We ended up agreeing that it was possible. After all, most of her generation are useless with apps. Granmerry’s practically a tech-bro in comparison. ’
‘Hmmph,’ I said, taking a large angry swig of my Baileys.
Typical of Mum to dump the emotional trauma of being stood up and feeling rejected on me and then neglect to inform me of the resolution.
‘So they’re back on then? Well, it sounds like you know more than me about Granmerry’s dating life in that case. ’
‘I don’t know if they’re back on as such, just back in touch.’ Layla’s phone pinged and she glanced down at it. ‘Ah, they’re here,’ she said, slipping her arms into the jacket she’d flung over the chair earlier.
‘Who’s here?’
‘Ella and Lizzie,’ she said, leaning over to give me a kiss on the cheek. ‘We’re off to the pub. I’ll be back by midnight so I can be asleep before Father Christmas visits, don’t worry!’
‘But I didn’t know you were… going out,’ I said, as the door slammed behind her.
Oh well. It would give me a chance to wrap her stocking presents I suppose.
And she’d done the same last year so it shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise.
I remember that excitement of the first festive holiday back home from university myself, seeing friends from school on Christmas Eve, comparing stories, reminiscing, gossiping about the people who’d already dropped out and those who’d hooked up with each other now they were free of the school hierarchy.
I absolutely did not begrudge my daughter these moments, touching base with the old crowd.
If anything, I told myself as I sliced the carrots, actively maintaining her school friendships was more likely to keep her coming back home.
It would have been nice if she’d let me know her plans, just like it would have been nice for Mum to have told me about Roger.
But then I guess, teenagers gonna teenage.
And feisty widowed pensioners gonna do whatever the hell they like.