Chapter 5 #2
My pulse quickened as I racked my mind for a solution to my festive faux pas.
I didn’t have much time since the station was only a ten-minute drive away from their cottage.
I looked across at the large canvas bag that Josh had placed on the backseat next to me and gently sifted through its contents as subtly as I could manage, grateful that Dad was filling the silence with his usual chat about temporary traffic lights, potholes and flooding hotspots.
Josh had predictably segued the conversation to the climate emergency at the first mention of the word ‘flood’.
In his bag, underneath his crocheted scarf, I could definitely detect the presence of a modest selection of fabric-wrapped gifts and a couple of bottles of wine.
Argh, I hadn’t even brought a sodding bottle.
‘Yes, she’s very much looking forward to seeing you both.’
The conversation was suddenly involving me again, so I removed my hand from the bag as speedily as I could while Dad tried to catch my eye in the rear-view mirror.
‘Believe it or not it’ll be the first time the four of us have been together since last Christmas.’
The realisation that we’d not spent any time together for practically a year compounded my daughterly guilt even further.
I mean, I’d popped down for the odd weekend or two by myself in the last twelve months, but those trips had – quite deliberately – never coincided with Josh. It was easier for everyone that way.
Mum was waiting for us at the front door when we arrived, sporting her Alpine-themed pinny. The cottage was aglow with fairy lights in the dull late-morning light, and I felt a faint festive tingle spark up inside me.
‘Come here, sweethearts.’ She bundled us both into an awkward hug and Josh tensed up even further. He definitely wasn’t the hugging type. He was barely the touching type.
‘Let’s get you inside, out of this horrible rain. It just hasn’t let up, has it, Bob? I’ll pop the kettle on so we can all have a cup of tea with some gingerbread men I’ve just taken out of the oven.’
My mouth moistened at the mere thought of Mum’s legendary festive biscuits that she used to sell for charity every year in Scarnbrook. I took off my boots and hung up my damp jacket and scarf in the hallway above the scalding-hot cast-iron radiator.
‘Josh!’ I hissed, as he began following Mum through to the kitchen.
‘Hmm?’
‘I haven’t brought any presents!’
He rolled his eyes. ‘And you’re telling me this because…?’
‘Because it suddenly feels like this is effectively our family Christmas. Can we say one of your gifts is from me, too, just for today?’
‘Sorry, won’t work – Saskia got our gift tags made up by a contact who does customised calligraphy so your name will stick out like a sore thumb.’
I rolled my eyes and muttered ‘Of course she did’ under my breath.
‘Listen, “Mally”…’
You could hear the inverted commas around my name as he said it.
‘…you can think what you want about me but please leave Saskia out of it, okay? You know nothing about her.’
Yeah, and that was the problem. Since they’d got together a couple of years ago, I’d barely had a conversation with her.
It was obvious she felt superior to us and had no intention of wasting her time getting to know her extended family.
In fact, the first time I’d ever heard about Saskia was when they’d announced their engagement.
I sighed.
‘Fine. Sorry. Can I at least have one of your bottles of wine to give them, then? Please? You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel so guilty about it.’
He thought for a few seconds before reaching a conclusion.
‘Okay, hang on.’ He took three bottles out of the bag one by one and inspected each label.
‘Right, you can give them this one. But you’ll need to pay me back for it. And it’s not cheap.’
‘Mum, this is really delicious. Where did you get this recipe from?’
Josh took a photo of his plate while asking the question and tapped his screen for a minute or so – audible keyboard clicks and all – before placing his phone back on the table.
I assumed he’d cropped out the untouched – and unacknowledged – place at the table that Mum had set opposite him, as always.
The presence of their best Portmeirion crockery – given to my parents when they got married – confirmed that this meal was indeed an early Christmas dinner.
‘Oh, it was one from that cookbook you gave us last Christmas,’ Mum replied.
Yeah, it was probably a gifted PR product – he’d given the same one to me.
‘The Jamie Chops book? Nice. Yeah, his recipes are great. Top guy, too.’
‘I forgot you knew him. Strange name, though – Jamie Chops ,’ Mum said.
Josh cast a glance at me as if to say, Can you believe her? but I had no idea what she’d said wrong this time. I furrowed my brow and shrugged.
‘Mum, Jamie Chops isn’t his name! I mean, his first name is Jamie, but his surname isn’t Chops. It’s “Jamie chops”, as in, “Jamie chops vegetables”. That’s his username on Instagram and TikTok – Jamie, underscore, Chops.’
‘Oh, I see. That does make more sense, I suppose.’
This was a classic Mum gaffe. A bit like the time she thought the chicken chasseur recipe had called for 3 or 4 pints of water, rather than 3/4 pint. She’d opted for four, and we’d ended up with enough (tasteless) sauce to feed the entirety of Scarnbrook.
I helped Mum carry the dishes into the small but perfectly formed country kitchen – complete with Aga, Welsh dresser and original flagstone floor – and started loading the dishwasher.
‘Honestly, Amelia, you don’t have to do that.’
A chill shot down my spine. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had called me that. I’d never specifically told them that I’d chosen to go by Mally in an attempt to start afresh in London. But I’d never tried to hide it, either.
Elle had started calling me Mally – a mash-up of Milly and Allister – not long after she’d moved next door with her mum when her parents got messily divorced.
My family and other friends at the time had been bemused by it, but the moniker had stuck.
I used the name on all my greetings cards and had proudly given them my business card when I’d started working at The Helix , which bore the name Mally Allister above my job title.
But if they’d ever had any questions about my decision, they’d never asked them. Not in front of me, anyway.
‘It’s fine, Mum, I’d like to help. It’s a luxury being able to shove it all in a dishwasher, to be honest.’
‘You’ve still not got that new kitchen, then?’
I’d been saving up for some indistinct ‘renovations’ since I bought the flat, but the very act of existing had been eating into my funds slowly but surely ever since Elle had moved out.
‘Nah, the flat’s still the same as when you and Dad last visited.’
Which must have been around eighteen months ago when they stayed at mine for Josh and Saskia’s ‘intimate and low-key’ wedding they’d practically livestreamed on social media.
‘You’re still happy there?’
‘Happy’ was a bit strong. But… ‘settled’? Sure.
‘Yeah, although the baby upstairs has just started to walk and seems to enjoy jumping about above my head from about five o’clock each morning.’
‘He won’t be little forever, love.’
‘I know.’
‘And work’s going well?’
I swallowed. Why were these chit-chatty interactions with Mum some of the hardest conversations I ever had?
Because you have to hold back so much.
‘Everything’s fine, Mum. Although Elle keeps saying I should be trying to push for a promotion.’
Mum sighed, but still didn’t look up from the dishes. ‘And is that what you want?’
‘I mean, maybe? Why do you say it like that?’
Mum didn’t answer immediately. She kept scrubbing the baking tray, which was caked in a layer of hardened polenta. The insides of my stomach could relate.
‘I’d just love you to find your own way a bit, love, you know? Do something for yourself rather than doing whatever Elle wants you to do all the time. From what I remember, you didn’t even want to work there in the first place.’
We’d had different versions of this conversation over the years. The worst of which had been when she’d discovered I’d turned down an offer to stay home and study English literature at Bristol University in favour of going to Cardiff with Elle.
Mum wasn’t the shouting type. But she’d shouted at me, voice quivering, that day: ‘You’ll regret it, Amelia! One day you’ll look back at this conversation and see that I was right.’
If only she knew just how much I regretted it, for all the reasons in the world.
My plan had been to move straight back home after graduating, but by the time I’d left university, home no longer existed.
Mum and Dad had sold the house, Josh had gone travelling and Elle had convinced me to move straight to London with her, where she’d secured an entry-level job at a teen magazine.
Armed with not much beyond my underwhelming 2:2 degree and some initial temping leads, I followed Elle to the Big Smoke – and I didn’t even step foot in Scarnbrook on the way.
The week of Livvie’s funeral had been the last time I’d been there.
Did I really want that to be the final time I’d ever visited the place that had once been so special to me?
I pushed the question back down, switching my mind back to Mum.
‘I’ve done okay for myself, don’t you think?’
‘Of course, and you know how proud we are of you. But yours and Elle’s paths do still seem to be very much… aligned, don’t they?’
‘It’s just the way things worked out, I guess.’
She and Elle had never got along very well.
It wasn’t helped by the fact that she and Elle’s mum had never clicked when the two of them had moved next door back in 2000.
My parents had been really community-minded back then, but despite their repeated efforts to get Elle’s mum involved in their endless social activities, she’d never accepted any of their invitations.
Mum had never said as much, but it was obvious that she’d taken the rejection personally.
‘It’s fine, Mum. I’ve got a great job, I’m financially independent, I’ve got a foot on the property ladder unlike most of my generation. It’s all good – you don’t need to worry about me.’
Apart from the fact that I’m lonely as hell.
Mum finally turned to me, fixed her mouth in a straight smile and nodded. ‘I know I don’t. You’ve always been the steady one, haven’t you?’
She dropped her gaze and turned away quickly, upping the speed at which she went at it with a scourer on the stubborn pan.
I wanted to give her shoulder a gentle squeeze – or give her an unexpected full-on bear hug from behind, Joey-and-Chandler-style – but I knew it’d tip her over an edge that none of us ever wanted to confront.
So, instead, I silently loaded up the rest of the dishwasher, spritzed the surfaces with that familiar citrus-laced chemical scent and wiped them down to the soundtrack of scrubbing.
As she busied herself with dessert, I could see she was trying her hardest to hold it together.
I left her to it: over the years I’d learnt that she, Dad and Josh preferred to falter privately. I preferred not to falter at all.
Before I went back to the table, I took a detour to the downstairs cloakroom.
As I sat on the loo, massaging my temples to calm myself after yet another conversation with Mum that was somehow both empty of everything yet overflowing with so much, I remembered the time a few Christmases ago – under the influence of at least one too many snowball cocktails – I’d brought up the subject of Scarnbrook with Dad once Josh and Mum had gone to bed.
‘Will you ever go back, do you think?’ I’d asked gently.
Dad got up and shut the living-room door before answering. ‘No, love, we won’t.’
He told me about how the pain had been too much for Mum.
She’d tried her best to continue her life in Scarnbrook after the funeral and in the run-up to the inquest. Like Dad, she’d been born and bred there and had been such a lynchpin of the community that the thought of leaving had never crossed her mind.
But, despite all her friends’ best intentions to balance their ongoing sympathy with a desire to ‘keep things normal’ for her in the months that followed Livvie’s death, Mum simply couldn’t face the prospect of either.
She hated the pitying looks and soft shoulder squeezes wherever she went.
But she was also floored when her friends spoke about mundane things, too.
It was the seemingly innocuous comments about teenage mischief that crushed her the most. About birthday parties Livvie should’ve gone to, mock exam results she should’ve received, hearts she should’ve had a chance to break.
Staying in Scarnbrook became a melting pot of triggers, and cutting ties became the only way to escape them.
Dad’s primary focus became their escape.
I could imagine how he would’ve filled his mind with budgets and plans and spreadsheets to do what he could to shelter her from as much pain as possible – and distract himself from his.
They’d escaped to Auntie Sandra’s holiday cottage in time for Christmas that year.
They hadn’t moved – or sent out one of their Christmas round-robin updates – since.
As I washed my hands, I came to a definitive realisation: if I was ever going to go back to Scarnbrook, I would have to do it alone – and without Mum and Dad finding out.
If they ever discovered I’d been back without them – even though they had no intention to return – it would fill them with guilt and anguish I couldn’t even bear to think about.
And the thought of going there with Josh felt like a scenario that belonged in another timeline altogether.
With my parents going away just as I had this opportunity – more than that, this urge – to revisit the place we’d all once called home, I felt in my polenta-lined gut that the stars would never align like this again.
By the time I returned to the table and Dad set alight the Christmas pudding (vegan, ofc), my mind was made up.
Sure, I’d write this article for Elle – but I was going back to Scarnbrook for me .