Chapter 20
? A Christmas wish
The rental felt like the opposite of home when I arrived back there,
my bum damp from the graveside bench and my face now, apparently,
permanently damp from two decades’ worth of released emotions. As I
climbed the stairs for a shower, I thought about the DVD, still dormant
in the player, that had broken the seal.
Had Becky known the footage of Livvie was on it? I very much doubted it. Was I glad that I’d seen it? Probably, yes. But it’d been so unexpected that it’d knocked the wind out of me.
Thank God Tom had arrived when he had. If he hadn’t, I’d probably still be watching the concert on a loop right now, my heart even more disintegrated than it already was.
Tom Brinton. Well, what a revelation he’d been.
I’d always sensed at school that he had a kind heart, despite his cheeky exterior, but his steadfast sensitivity over the last few days had well and truly won me over.
And here I was, just a few hours away from spending an entire evening alone with him.
It felt crass to admit this to myself what with all the pain that was still swirling around inside of me, but I felt kind of…
excited at the simple prospect of being in his company.
But then I realised that it wasn’t excitement I was feeling at all.
It was something both much simpler and more substantial than that. It was the feeling of belonging.
So why did I also feel a niggle of doubt? Sure, I felt a bit nervous about tonight given that I was guaranteed to end up doing or saying something to embarrass myself, but this particular feeling of fear ran way deeper than the usual tummy-dwelling butterflies.
I concluded it was partly because Tom – the entire day so far – had begun to unfurl me somehow. I knew it was an important process that was probably long-overdue, but I’d come quite accustomed to folding myself smaller. Because the smaller I was, the less surface area there was to harm.
But, as I rinsed out my shampoo, I found myself admitting that the niggle was also partly down to that game of ‘snog, marry, avoid’ on the DVD.
It was curious that Tom had put me in the ‘marry’ column all those years ago.
Yet it was also clear that everyone in that room at the time had known that the pairing of Tom and me was so unlikely that it’d warranted its own teasing nickname: ‘Tomelia’.
And, by the sounds of it, his mates had been using it to poke fun at him ever since.
In all likelihood, all the game meant was that, out of the three names presented to him, Tom had been prepared to tolerate me for the longest.
I stepped out of the shower and began rubbing myself dry, trying to get my head around why this annoyed me so much. It didn’t take long for me to reach the blindingly obvious conclusion: because my ultimate wish wouldn’t be for him to tolerate me forever. It would be for him to want me forever.
I took a final look at myself in the bathroom cabinet’s mirror – the only mirror in the house – in the minutes before the taxi was due to arrive.
My hair had turned out pretty nicely, its natural wave working in my favour for once, and a generous upside-down spray of Silvikrin (Maximum Hold) finishing it off nicely.
My make-up looked decent enough – tinted moisturiser and cream blush as per, but this time I’d upgraded my look with a thin line of jet-black eyeliner with the tiniest flicks at each end, mascara and a berry-red lip.
I bared my teeth and scrubbed a dot of lipstick off a canine. There. Not bad, I suppose.
I took a few steps back onto the landing and smoothed down the skirt of my cold-shoulder midi-dress as I turned and twisted my neck to catch microscopic glimpses of myself from various angles.
The dress was an old favourite – a dark emerald-green colour with a sweetheart neckline and skater-style skirt that skimmed and hugged in all the right places.
Best of all, it had properly deep pockets, which made it perfect for work events when, more often than not, I had no idea what to do with my hands.
Elle called it my ‘Mary Berry dress’ as she’d seen her wear something similar on The Great British Bake Off Christmas special one time.
But, unlike me, Elle never struggled to find clothes that looked good on her.
She was one of those people who could throw on an oversized sweater and look effortlessly cool and stylish.
Whereas, in the very same top, I’d end up looking like Miss Trunchbull teaching PE.
Like Dame Mary, my go-to dress was classy, reliable and timeless.
I knew I looked all right in it. Best of all, its heavy fabric meant that it never needed ironing and still looked freshly pressed, despite being screwed up into a ball at the bottom of my suitcase all week.
Hopefully, with my thick black tights and simple ankle boots, it struck the right balance between ‘potential festive date’ and ‘just threw this outfit together, NBD’.
The car was right on time – a disconcertingly silent Prius, no less – the driver sporting a Santa hat and in chatty spirits as we began the twenty-five-minute journey into town.
Ten minutes into the drive, I spotted the old chocolate factory where my nan used to work in the on-site discount shop.
Posh flats now, of course. A snort of hilarity erupted from my throat as an old memory catapulted itself to the front of my mind.
The noise caught the driver’s attention and he glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘You all right, love?’
‘Yeah… I’m… good.’ I was full-on cackling now. ‘Sorry, I just remembered something really funny about the chocolate factory.’
‘Well, go on, then, don’t leave me hanging.’
I told him about the time my grandparents had been on holiday in Devon, and had decided to treat themselves to a ‘mystery coach trip’.
Ninety minutes later, the coach pulled into her work car park for a tour and chocolate tasting, her colleagues baffled as to why she was buying bargain bags of broken biscuits with a gaggle of tourists when she was meant to be on holiday.
The anecdote went down well with the driver, and I’d enjoyed sharing it.
It’d been one of my grampy’s favourite stories, which we’d begged him to re-tell, over and over.
I’d always assumed that letting my frozen memories thaw would do nothing but remind me of everything that had broken in my life.
But joy and comforting nostalgia were also beginning to fill in the cracks.
And, just like Grampy used to say to us every time he brought home a massive bag of seconds for us from the chocolate factory shop, ‘Broken biscuits might well be broken, but they’re still delicious. ’