24. No Snow on Christmas Morning
Chapter 24
No Snow on Christmas Morning
‘ H e’s been!’ Harry flung back the bedroom curtains so a bleary-eyed Amy could see the dark, pre-dawn morning beyond the windowpanes. ‘But it hasn’t snowed. Can I open my stocking now?’ He carried the stocking she’d stuffed with gifts the previous night. It was lumpy and misshapen, and a long, thin parcel wrapped in red paper stuck out of the top.
He didn’t wait for an answer before he sat cross-legged on her double bed and she gathered the duvet around her. What time was it? She hunted for her phone which she’d put under her pillow last night. Five past six. If she’d woken Harry this early on a school day, he’d have thought she was mad.
‘Happy Christmas!’ She was determined today would be all about the boys.
The delight he got out of his Christmas stocking made up for the early start. The slime, the emoji stickers, and the chocolate sheep droppings all went down very well, but most of all Harry was over the moon with the new games console she and James had bought between them .
‘Can I start it now?’ He tore open the box.
‘Of course you can,’ Amy said. ‘I’m going to get dressed. You see if you can get it all set up. Hopefully Santa has made sure that you can play on it right away.’ She had already made sure that the games that went with the console were ready to play without the need to download anything. Nothing would frustrate Harry more than a brand-new games console that couldn’t be played until he got home.
He was deep in concentration on the small screen when she got back from the shower.
‘It’s epic,’ he said without looking up from his game.
She dressed in a new pair of black jeans and a Christmas jumper, decorated with sequin stars.
‘Can I open my other presents now?’ Harry demanded.
‘Not yet. We said we’d wait for Oliver and Matt, and Diane,and we could all open the rest of our presents together. You can wait, can’t you?’
Harry pulled a face. ‘Suppose.’
‘Why don’t you go back to your room and see if Oliver’s awake yet? I said we’d all have pancakes for breakfast so I’ll go and make some batter.’
Harry hurtled along the landing and back into the bedroom he shared with Oliver.
'Olly! Olly, wake up, he’s been! Wake up !’ Harry was loud enough that none of the other occupants of the cottage could possibly have slept through his excitement.
Instantly the floorboards creaked in the little bedroom where Diane was asleep. Perhaps a ghost would have visited her in the night and she would wake up, transformed like Scrooge, and demand Harry bring her an enormous goose in the spirit of the season, before bestowing her festive blessing on them all .
Or not.
‘Goodness me, is the house on fire?’ were Diane’s words as she peered around her bedroom door.
‘No, it’s Christmas. Happy Christmas Mrs Willis!’ Harry shouted from his bedroom.
‘I’ll just fetch my dress from your wardrobe, Amy. Then I think I need a cup of tea to soothe my nerves. That was a rather abrupt start to the day.’ She came out of her room in her silky dressing gown and velvet slippers. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a kettle on the stove yet, is there?’ she asked, pointedly.
‘Happy Christmas, Diane.’ Amy tried hard to smile. ‘No. I’ll go down and put one on, as I’d like a cup of tea myself. I’ll wake Matt up and he can light the fire in the living room.’
‘Nonsense, we’ll manage in the kitchen. No need for you to disturb him if he’s sleeping.’
After a lengthy period of rummaging in the wardrobe Diane followed Amy down the stairs, and sat at the kitchen table in the seat nearest the warmth of the AGA while Amy put the kettle on the stove. She felt she needed to make polite conversation as well as tea. Christmas Day was not the right time for meaningful conversations, especially with the excited squeals of two boys from their bedroom upstairs as a background. Food should be a relatively safe topic for discussion.
‘I thought we might all sit down together for breakfast, I’m going to make pancakes.’
Diane’s face was a picture – perhaps food was not, after all, a good choice of conversation starter.
‘Pancakes? It’s not Shrove Tuesday, is it?’ Diane said.
‘No, it isn’t, is it,’ she replied with a forced smile. ‘Then after breakfast we can open our presents,’ she added, as a piercing whistle announced that the kettle had boiled.
‘Presents before dinner?’
Did everything she said today have to be wrong? She channelled the spirit of the season, as well as the advice she had given Harry before they left Saddleton, and bit back the words that had sprung into her mind.
‘I don’t think the boys will want to wait any longer.’ She poured water into the heavy teapot, and gave it a stir before putting the lid on and setting it to one side to brew.
‘But that’s not how Stella would’ve done it. We have Christmas dinner first, and then open our gifts. Only Christmas stockings before dinner. I’m surprised Matt didn’t say.’ She lifted the lid off the teapot and gave it a second vigorous stir, as if she didn’t believe Amy had done a good enough job. ‘There. That’s more like it. Nothing worse than weedy tea, is there?’
‘No. I’m afraid he didn’t say anything about Stella’s traditions,’ she said.
‘Perhaps he has other things on his mind. Shall I be mother?’
‘I’ll do it. I’m on my feet.’ She picked up the heavy teapot to pour a couple of mugs, then added some milk, straight from the carton, without putting it into a jug first.
‘A mug?’ Diane’s tone implied that Amy was suggesting she drink tea from a jam jar.
‘The good cups and saucers are in the dining room and Matt’s still asleep on the sofa. Of course, I don’t mind going in to wake him.’ She moved towards the door knowing Diane wouldn’t like it.
‘I’ll make do with a mug,’ Diane snapped back. Once she had finished pouring the tea, Amy sat down with her own mug at the other end of the table, as far from Diane as possible.
‘Perhaps I should explain, in our family we open gifts before dinner to stop Harry from asking when we’re going to open them on a constant loop between now and dinner time,’ she said. ‘Of course, if that’s what you’d prefer …’ She left the suggestion hanging in the air.
Diane sniffed, as if she found the mug of tea distasteful. ‘When you put it like that,’ she said, ‘I suppose it would be preferable not to make him wait. If we’re sharing a tiny cottage with an impatient small boy it’ll seem a long time until dinner.’
‘It’s not going to be too long ‘til lunch. It’s nearly seven-thirty now, so by the time I’ve made the pancakes it’s going to be eight o’clock-ish, and we’re booked in for the twelve o’clock sitting.’
Even as she said it, she knew she had done something else wrong.
‘Twelve o’clock? You mean noon ?’
‘Rather than midnight, yes,’ Amy said with a certain acerbity. She took a sip of tea, but it was still too hot to drink.
‘That’s too early for Christmas dinner. Stella always served dinner at two.’
‘There wasn’t a two o’clock sitting and we decided that, knowing the boys, three would be too long to wait.’
‘Oliver would wait if it was what his mummy wanted,’ Diane said with a little sniff.
Amy knew how important it was for Oliver to keep those precious links with his mother, but she began to suspect that this wasn’t one of them. This was all Diane, nothing to do with Stella or Oliver. More importantly, Harry had nothing to do with any of this, and she wasn’t going to let Diane make him suffer.
‘Well, Diane, Harry won’t wait. And I’m sure Matt agrees with me.’ She put the mug down on the table with a thump, rather more heavily than she intended.
The kitchen door opened. ‘What do I agree with?’ said Matt as he entered. He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all, the bags under his eyes were huge.
‘Twelve o’clock lunch,’ Amy said, before Diane had a chance to get her complaints in first.
‘It’s not how Stella would’ve done it,’ Diane protested. ‘She would’ve had dinner … ’ she stressed the word, and Amy realised that ‘lunch’ had been a faux-pas, ‘… at two, then the King’s speech, and then, and only then, would we have opened our presents. This is all wrong!’
‘I’m sorry Diane, but we made these plans before we set off. Presents after breakfast, lunch in the middle of the day when the boys are hungry, and then they can play with their presents and we can relax for the rest of the day. And, to be fair, that’s how Stella and I did it those years when you were at Veronica’s for Christmas, before you fell out with her.’
‘You did?’ Diane’s face fell. ‘I didn’t … I didn’t realise.’ She looked genuinely concerned, as if surprised to discover that Stella could have done anything differently. ‘It wasn’t the way we did it at home,’ she said weakly.
‘And as that’s how Stella would have done it, it’s what Olly will expect,’ said Matt to Diane. ‘I think that’s how we should do things today. Don’t you?’
‘If it was good enough for my Stella, it’s good enough for me,’ she said with a watery smile, dabbing her eyes with a tissue from her pocket.
It was only just past half-past-seven in the morning, and already Amy was grumpy, Matt short tempered and Diane on the brink of tears.
Merry Christmas, everyone .
Pancakes for breakfast were well received by the boys who didn’t care that it wasn’t Shrove Tuesday and only that they had plenty of chocolate spread to put on them.
‘Presents now?’ Oliver demanded, as soon as he and Harry eaten their final mouthfuls of breakfast and wiped the chocolate from around their mouths.
‘I’ll just go and get them,’ said Matt. He had stowed the boxes of Christmas presents in the dining room, to try and discourage Harry and Oliver from squeezing and shaking them if they were left on display. ‘You two put your clothes on, and we’ll have them ready by the time you come back down.’
The speed with which Harry and Oliver raced upstairs and then almost straight back down again made Amy suspect that they had simply pulled trousers and jumpers on over the top of their pyjamas, and there was certainly no evidence that they’d brushed their teeth.
‘We’re present for presents!’ Oliver joked.
‘We’re present, where’s our presents?’ Harry copied him.
‘Under the tree,’ said Matt, and indeed, there were all the gifts, which Matt and Amy had arranged in place. Bows glittered and caught the lights from the tree, and there were plenty of oddly shaped parcels in all the colours of the rainbow, and more colours besides.
‘There’s loads!’ exclaimed Harry, his eyes out on stalks.
‘They’re not all for you boys. Some of them are for me and Matt and Diane,’ said Amy.
‘But most of the big ones are for me and Olly, right?’
‘Maybe some of them. You can be Santa’s little helpers for today, and make sure everyone gets the right gifts,’ she said.
‘Yeah! I’ve got one. I don’t know who it’s for though.’ Harry picked up a gift wrapped in green paper from the top of the pile and gave it a good hard shake as if to try and guess what was inside. It rattled.
‘Then read the label. Here. It says ...’ Oliver turned over the label. ‘… To Harry from Matt and Oliver . It’s not making a good noise. I think you’ve broken it, Harry.’
Harry tore off the paper. ‘No, it’s not broken. It’s Lego. Lego Batmobile. Awesome, thanks Olly and Matt.’
‘What did you get me? I need to find yours now,’ said Olly, going through the pile of gifts.
‘Wait a minute, is no-one going to make a list?’ said Diane.
‘A list?’
‘So that the boys can write their thank you letters after they’ve opened their gifts.’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll remember,’ said Amy.
‘That all seems very casual. I think it’s terribly important to thank people properly, don’t you?’ She gave Amy a dismissive stare, as if she considered her incapable of gratitude.
‘Absolutely,’ Amy agreed with her. ‘And we’ll send some video messages as soon as we get to somewhere with a signal.’
‘Video? Deary me, in my day it was handwritten notes.’
In the meantime Oliver had found his present and ripped off the paper. Amy hadn’t had much money for gifts this year, but she had plenty of fabric and the ability to make things with it; Matt had given her some snippets of fabric from an old shirt of Stella’s to make a stuffed sheep toy for Oliver. Oliver hugged it to himself.
‘It looks like Harry’s Sammy Sheep. I’m going to call it Sean the Sheep. Thanks, Amy.’
‘Here’s the next one.’ Harry dumped a rectangular parcel in front of Matt. ‘It’s yours, Matt, it’s from me and Mam. We went to Poundsavers and bought the biggest one we could find.’
‘Poundsavers?’ said Diane in a tone that suggested they had picked out Matt’s gift from the tip. Matt and Amy had agreed that they would allow the boys to pick the gifts that they would give each other in front of Diane and they’d left their real gifts at home to exchange at New Year instead. It would have looked as bad for them to have given no gifts at all as it would if they had exchanged romantic gestures. So instead, Amy and Harry had gone Christmas shopping and she’d allowed Harry to pick Matt the biggest …
‘Car washing sponge! Thank you. It’s just what I wanted.’
‘It’s for the campervan. You could get them with emojis on, so I got the poo one, see?’ Harry said proudly.
‘Here’s yours, Amy.’ Oliver handed her a smaller parcel. ‘You like things that smell, so we got you this. I picked it. It’s blue.’
‘Is it a poo? A smelly blue poo?’ Harry said.
Amy removed the paper carefully. ‘That’s such a kind thought. I might even have a bath tonight so that I can use my bath bomb, thank you.’
‘And I made these, but we didn’t bring any paper,’ he said, proudly. He’d made glitter pictures for all the adults. Amy was touched .
‘Thanks Oliver. It’s beautiful.’ Amy propped all the pictures up on the mantlepiece. ‘Now, would you find my gift for Diane, please, Harry? It’s a gold one, about the size of your school pencil case.’
Harry dug through the pile of presents.
‘Here.’ He nearly fell over the hearthrug in his eagerness to give it to Diane and get back to hunting for his own presents under the tree.
‘I made them myself,’ Amy explained. ‘You know I have a business making items out of loved ones’ clothing? Matt very kindly gave me a shirt which had been Stella’s so that I could make the sheep for Oliver, and I thought you might like these.’ She had made three matching lavender bags out of the floral cotton, trimmed with ribbons and lace. Diane opened the parcel, and stared at them for a long time. Amy began to worry that she’d offended Diane. She probably thought cutting up Stella’s old clothes was disrespectful.
‘I’m so sorry. You don’t like them.’
‘You’ll have to excuse me.’ Diane stood up and left the room.
‘I’ve upset her. I knew I should’ve got her soap or something. Could things get any worse?’
Upstairs, Diane’s bedroom door thumped shut behind her.