Chapter 14 Jacob
Jacob
‘Well, that went well, I thought,’ Aunt Marjorie said, sliding across the lock on the tearoom door. ‘I mean, more or less. Apart from that little incident with the milk … but she was nice about it, wasn’t she?’
Jacob looked down at his feet. ‘She didn’t slap me. That’s something.’
‘And there was enough left for tea. It was only the one carton that broke, wasn’t it?’
‘Luckily. I suppose.’
‘Talking of which, let’s get a nice cup of tea, shall we? You’ll feel better then.’
‘I’m fine now,’ Jacob said, somewhat indignantly.
‘I can’t understand why you chose to go in around the back anyway,’ Marjorie said. ‘You usually come in the front.’
‘It looked busy,’ Jacob said with a sigh. ‘I thought it would look unprofessional in front of the customers.’
‘That step out the back gets icy, doesn’t it?’
Jacob sighed again. ‘Yes, it does. I really should put a mat on it, if we’re going to get a long spell of snow like this.’
‘I suppose we’ll see how it is in the morning. Perhaps it will have melted by then.’
Jacob glanced out of the window, where streetlights illuminated heavily falling snow.
With snow making the roads impassable, the street was completely car free.
A few lines of footprints were all that marked a pristine line of snow.
Across the street, in the window of an estate agent, someone was hanging Christmas lights.
‘I’ll just make the tea,’ Aunt Marjorie said.
Jacob stared out at the snow. The back of his trousers still felt damp from falling over, but far worse was the feeling of utter embarrassment that continued to linger.
Charlotte had apologised as though it had been her own fault for coming out of the back door, but Jacob knew the truth.
He had been rushing, the single plastic bag overloaded, and had been over eager to make up for not responding to Aunt Marjorie’s message.
Charlotte’s best friend had given him a piece of her mind, pointing out, among other things, that Charlotte’s shoes were expensive, that it was her grandmother’s wake, and that she was extremely fragile right now.
Christmas was a difficult time—she didn’t elaborate why—and the suggestion was that he should have known all these things, perhaps by way of mindreading or sixth sense.
All of this was communicated in a rather overtly, borderline-shouting way, in the tearoom’s back corridor after Charlotte had returned to the wake and Aunt Marjorie had rushed off to make the overdue tea.
Feeling suitably chastised, Jacob had been unable to face Charlotte again, opting instead to help out in the main tearoom, while Aunt Marjorie attended to the wake in the backroom.
His hopes of getting to talk to Charlotte had been dashed.
He had kept himself busy, trying to keep his mind off things. When the wake had come to an end and Charlotte had come through to the kitchen to thank Aunt Marjorie, Jacob had scooted around her and her best friend—flanking her like a royal guard—and got to work clearing up.
‘So, what exactly was it that made you so late?’ Aunt Marjorie said, coming back with a cup of tea and putting it down on the counter. ‘It’s not like you to just disappear. I was about to call the police.’
‘I was with the police,’ Jacob said. ‘Some of the time at least.’
He gave her a shortened version of what had happened with Nora, how he had found her unresponsive, called the ambulance, and then gone with her to the hospital. ‘I have to go up to her place after this to collect some more stuff for the hospital.’
Aunt Marjorie sighed. ‘Oh, Jacob. I had no idea.’
‘I forgot to charge my phone. I’m sorry.’
‘If you need any help, just let me know.’
He nodded. ‘I’m not sure what I can do. It’s just … it’s nearly Christmas, isn’t it?’
Aunt Marjorie smiled. ‘It’s going to be a busy one, that’s for sure.’
The snow was so heavy that Jacob had no choice but to push his bike back up to Nora’s place after the tearoom closed. He had arranged to meet a fireman there, and found them repairing the door. With no one else to give one to, the man let him have a set of keys, then wished him good luck.
Inside, he couldn’t resist doing a little tidying up.
He bagged some rubbish, found a dusty hoover in a cupboard, and then washed up as best he could, using the trickle of water coming out of the hot tap.
Then, with the rubbish cleared out of the way, he took more pictures of the threadbare carpets, the damp on the walls, the fraying light fittings, and another video of the low water pressure on the kitchen tap.
After gathering some more clothes and toiletries, he decided to have another hunt for any kind of next of kin.
Worried that he was invading her privacy, he poked through kitchen drawers and then her bedside table, but found nothing of any note until he pulled out a drawer beneath the bed and found a plastic bag filled with wrapped Christmas presents.
Surprised, he pulled them out and put them on top of the bed.
Each one had a neatly written label, folded and sealed with a little reindeer sticker, the gum of which had come unstuck.
Picking open one, he read, ‘Dear Philip, Merry Christmas, love Grandma and Grandpa.’
From a gentle shake of the rectangular box, he got the impression it was Lego.
There were others too, addressed to the same members of the family who had sent the Christmas card.
One, addressed to ‘Our dear daughter’, felt like a soft-covered book.
Feeling something that felt like a metal clasp over the pages, Jacob took a chance and gently unwrapped it, finding a leatherbound diary inside.
The year, however, was 2022. If Nora had bought a diary for the coming year, that meant this present had been wrapped nearly four years ago.
Gently pressing down the tape that had lost most of its stickiness, Jacob stared at the pile of presents. Then he sat down on the bed, pulled out his phone, and did a little bit of searching.
After a few minutes of searching, he came across an obituary for a Robert “Bert” Shapton.
He had died in November 2022, perhaps not long after Nora had wrapped the Christmas presents.
Poor Nora must have suffered some kind of breakdown afterwards, the presents never being sent, her life entering a downward spiral which had culminated with her collapsing in her hallway, alone and forgotten.
Her daughter’s name was Rita Crennick, according to the obituary. Jacob was able to find her on social media with a short search. His elation turned to horror, however, when he realised that the family now lived in Texas, USA.
Retrieving the Christmas card from where he had left it in the hall, he peered again at the blurry postmark, the stamp with a Christmas robin design he had thought was just a Post Office gimmick.
Straining his eyes, he was just able to make out the letters U.S.A. Nora’s daughter’s family lived abroad.
Rita Crennick’s profile was locked, but her son Philip’s profile was public, so Jacob sent the boy a message, asking for him to pass it on to his mother. He then gathered up Nora’s things and headed for the hospital.
The snow had stopped, but now covered the town in a blanket of white that glistened in the street lights.
Some people had appeared with shovels to clear the pavements, but others were in a more Christmassy mood and had taken to the streets only to hang fairy lights around front garden fir and pine trees, or to build snowmen with their children.
Jacob pushed his bike, the snow crunching underfoot.
With each step, the weariness he had felt all day began to lift; the sparkle of each Christmas light shaking a little more weight off his shoulders.
It would be all right. One way or another, everything would be all—
The growl of a powerful engine appeared at his shoulder.
He slowed down, stepping away from the kerb as a large car pulled in beside him, a big, powerful Mercedes, snow spraying up from its tyres.
A rear window was wound down. Jacob smelled incense over something like pipe tobacco, then reluctantly turned to face the man peering out at him from a luridly glowing interior.
‘You.’
Jacob grimaced. There was no way to escape; he could tell from the size of the tyre tread that this vehicle was equipped for all weather, and there were no alleyways or junctions nearby. He turned to face his stepbrother, peering out from the back seat of the car, still wearing a wide-brimmed hat.
‘James?’
‘I wondered if you were still in town. You never left, did you?’
‘I had no reason to.’
‘You lacked the ambition. Or maybe the skills. Or maybe both.’
Jacob opened his mouth to drop one of the lines he had wanted to say to his stepbrother for a long time about how he had treated what was left of their family, his mother in particular, but now that he finally had the opportunity, he could no longer see the point.
He had said enough at the time, and it had had no effect whatsoever.
Some people were impervious to criticism, and saw nothing outside the exoskeleton they had built around themselves.
Instead, all he said was, ‘I didn’t want to leave my mother.’
‘A noble excuse. Tell me, how is waiting on tables? How does it feel to have a flat so small you can reach out and touch both sides with your fingertips? How does it feel to be pushing a bike in the snow while I sit beside you in the back of a car that cost a decade of your salary?’
‘I’m paid by the hour,’ Jacob said. Then, looking up as snowflakes began to fill the air once more, he added, ‘To be honest, it feels pretty good.’
James scowled. ‘I work with illusion; you work with delusion. Nothing has changed.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Anyway.’ James flicked a hand and three pieces of paper spun through the air, landing in the snow at Jacob’s feet. ‘A peace offering. Since I’m prepared to forget.’
Jacob stared at his feet. The car window rose and the car roared off. Jacob waited until it had turned at the next corner, then bent down and picked up three complimentary tickets to James’s show, water beginning to soak through the words printed in black ink.