Chapter twenty-eight
freya
Christmas morning does not feel like Christmas when you wake up and there is no small person launching themselves at your face. It feels like a Sunday. A quiet, slightly grey, slightly pointless Sunday.
I wake up because my body is used to waking up early on Christmas Day, because for the past seven years there has been a boy practically vibrating at the end of my bed whisper-shouting, “Mum, can I go downstairs yet?” as if Father Christmas might revoke his gifts if he makes too much noise.
This morning there is nothing. No whispering.
No rustling wrapping paper. No tiny feet padding across the landing. Just silence.
I lie there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the boiler and the faint sound of a car door closing somewhere outside. The house feels bigger without Theo in it. Not physically bigger, but emotionally. Like the walls have stretched and the air has thinned.
I reach for my phone, check the time, and then deliberately put it face down because I do not want to see whatever filtered, matching-pyjama, happy-family photo James inevitably posts later.
I do not want to see Theo in a jumper chosen by someone else, sat between people who get to wake up with him this morning.
I do not want to see a photo of my son with a baby that is his half-sibling.
A baby that got to feel the love of two parents from the day it was born.
This might be the hardest part of co-parenting. Not the logistics. Not the handovers. Not the polite exchanges in driveways. It is this. The quiet, the absence, the knowledge that your child is experiencing Christmas somewhere else and you are not part of the picture.
I eventually drag myself downstairs in yesterday’s jumper, hair unbrushed, and don’t even bother switching the lights on or opening the curtains.
The tree glows softly in the corner, twinkling to itself like it hasn’t noticed the room is half empty.
I scoop a tub of ice cream out of the freezer before nine a.m. and carry it to the sofa like it is a completely reasonable breakfast choice, then put on 50 First Dates because if I’m going to feel sorry for myself, I might as well lean into it.
It doesn’t even feel festive. It just feels quiet.
At some point, halfway through Adam Sandler trying to be charming, I glance out of the window without really meaning to.
Across the road, Rory is in his parents’ front garden with Isla.
He throws her into the air and she shrieks, and his mum is standing in the doorway laughing, and the whole thing looks fun and loud and painfully alive.
I smile, knowing how happy Rory must be.
And then I remember that we agreed to be friends.
The word still feels absurd in my mouth.
We both shook hands like idiots trying to pretend that chemistry can be filed neatly into a labelled drawer and revisited at a later, more appropriate date.
Or never. It was mature, sensible, devastating.
Because the truth is, I did not pull away because I didn’t want him.
God I want him. I pulled away because I want him too much, and because wanting him has never once ended well for me.
I have done the quiet longing before. I have done the waiting.
I have done the watching him build a life elsewhere while I stood in Oakwood pretending I was fine.
I have watched the Instagram engagement announcement and the filtered forever captions and the hollow ache that followed.
I am not doing that again. He said he felt like he finally had me back.
As if I am something you can misplace and then retrieve.
As if I have not been here the entire time.
The film plays on in the background but I’m no longer watching it.
My mind keeps replaying the way his voice cracked when he apologised, the way his thumb brushed the side of my waist when he didn’t even realise he was doing it, the way his eyes softened for a fraction of a second before he forced himself to be reasonable.
He looked torn, like a man trying to protect both of us from himself.
Across the road, Isla is now dragging him toward the door, probably demanding food or batteries or something urgent in the way only children can.
He bends down to her level, listening properly, nodding, completely present in a way that makes my chest tighten for reasons I don’t particularly enjoy analysing.
I wish I was with Theo right now. Not because I regret not being with James.
That ship sailed and sank and I have no desire to dive after it.
I am glad I do not have to spend today making polite conversation across a dining table with a man who broke my heart before our son was even born.
But I do miss my boy. I miss the chaos. The crumbs.
The wrapping paper blizzards. The way he insists on reading every card out loud.
This is the cost of building a life without someone who wasn’t good for me.
And I would choose it again. Even if it hurts today.
I curl further into the sofa and scoop another spoonful of ice cream, fully aware that this is neither nutritious nor dignified.
The truth sits there, quietly honest. I want a family. Not the glossy, curated version. Not the Instagram one. I want noise and mismatched baubles and someone to argue with over how to cook the turkey. I want someone who stays. Someone who does not disappear when life gets inconvenient.
And somewhere in the most inconvenient corner of my heart, that picture still has Rory in it.
Which is precisely why we cannot be anything other than friends right now.
Because if I let myself believe that he has finally chosen me, that he is finally brave enough, and then he pulls back again, I do not think I would recover from that twice.
Outside, I see him glance toward my house. It is brief, but I notice. And for a second, the silence inside this house feels louder.
I turn back to the television and tell myself that next year will be different.
Next year Theo will wake up here. Next year I will not lie in bed staring at the ceiling pretending I am fine.
Next year, maybe I will not feel like I am permanently half of something.
And if being friends with Rory Bennett is the safest way to get through this year without breaking completely, then friends is what we will be.
Even if it feels like the most complicated word in the English language right now.