The Christmas Wish, page 19
‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ I said, trying to dig myself out of whatever hole I seemed to have fallen into. ‘I only meant there wasn’t any grand plan for me. Half the reason I did a law degree was to impress you.’
Now that really did make her laugh.
‘Come off it, Gwen. As soon as Manny moved in, none of you would have noticed if I’d run off to join the circus.’
‘That’s not true at all,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘It was exactly like that,’ she replied. ‘And now all I hear from Dad is how amazing it is that you got a job at a Magic Circle firm, nothing I do can compete.’
I tried to keep my mouth shut, I really did, but I just couldn’t help myself.
‘As if my job could even come close to competing with you and your perfect kids,’ I snapped back. ‘They’ve written me off as a sad old spinster at thirty-two.’
‘God, I’m so sick of hearing about you getting dumped!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re not the first person on earth to go through a break-up. You’re so used to everyone pandering to you, that’s the problem. Baby of the family, everyone’s favourite, poor little Gwen.’
Cerys always knew exactly how to set me off. It was a good job we’d never come up against each other at work; wailing ‘I know you are but what am I?’ then crying in the toilets never went over well with a judge.
‘I am not the favourite!’ I argued, extremely close to tears. ‘They always paid more attention to you and Manny than they did to me and I never complained. I’m trying to fix things and you won’t even let me.’
‘Can you even hear yourself?’ She lowered her voice to a mocking hiss. ‘Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m just going to study law?’
I pushed my hair back from my face, trying to work out how we’d got here.
‘Why are you so angry with me? All I said was I didn’t grow up dreaming about being a lawyer.’
Cerys pushed her chair away from the table and stood up.
‘Maybe that’s why you’re so happy to throw it all away now.’
I stared at her and she stared at me, each of us as stubborn as the other. Finally, she turned away, tutting loudly as she grabbed her handbag.
‘Don’t go!’ I pleaded, jumping up to my own feet. We were so close to getting somewhere, even if I wasn’t quite sure where that somewhere might be. ‘Please don’t leave, Care, I really want to talk about this.’
‘Can you calm down?’ she whispered, slipping off her coat and draping it over the back of her chair. ‘I’m going to the toilet.’
‘Oh,’ I said, sitting down slowly. ‘OK.’
‘Drama queen,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Try not to spill your drink on my coat like you spilt your tea on my Sweater Shop top.’
‘It was twenty-five years ago!’ I called after her.
She would never, ever let that go as long as she lived.
Moving my glass away from the edge of the table, I took a gulp of gin and looked out the window at the heavy white clouds. I’d spent years trying to live up to Cerys’s example, earn her approval, and all this time she thought I’d been trying to outdo her. She was half the reason I’d gone into law in the first place, Dad being the other half. But what did that leave for me? I thought of all the things I’d inherited or learned from my family, my wavy hair, my round eyes, a superhuman ability to bottle up my emotions and a digestive tract that did not care for too much dairy. If only you could pick and choose your own traits or at least tailor them to your own needs.
‘Don’t use the toilets if you can help it.’ Cerys sat back down at the table and squirted herself with hand sanitizer, a grim look on her face. ‘Plus, someone left the door open to the basement; if you do have to go, try not to fall down and break your neck. Although if you did fall, we could sue, they’re a death trap. So, Mum said you’re living in a flat over a shop? That’s depressing.’
‘You’re just going to change the subject?’ I replied, opening my palms to her as she held out the little squeezy bottle. ‘Pretend the last ten minutes never happened?’
‘Ideally, yes.’
It really would be easier that way. Finish our drinks and go back to a comfortable, simmering resentment, but what was the point? Changing our relationship would be hard but whoever said worthwhile changes were easy?
‘I know I haven’t been the world’s best sister,’ I said, forcing out the words the same way I’d forced myself to eat Brussels sprouts every year. I didn’t like them, I didn’t want them but I knew it was the right thing to do. ‘But I’m going to do better. I want to spend more time together, I want to know what’s going on in your life.’
‘Are you sure you aren’t dying?’ Cerys asked with suspicion.
‘Almost positive,’ I nodded. ‘What if I came to stay with you and the kids for a few days? Or we could go somewhere like Center Parcs all together, I bet Dad would bloody love that. Or I could look after the kids while you and Oliver go to Paris for a romantic weekend away, that might help you two?’
‘Are you trying to make things better or worse?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If I went to Paris with Oliver right now, only one of us would come back alive. You can stop trying so hard, Gwen, you’ve made your point.’
‘My point is I should already know all this stuff that’s going on with you,’ I exclaimed, ignoring the judgemental looks from the ladies at the next table for raising my voice. God help me, it was two of the women from Mum’s aqua-aerobics group. I was in for it when this got back to her, Bakers did not air their dirty laundry in public. ‘I should know your stuff and you should know mine and neither of us should be ashamed or embarrassed or trying to score points off each other. I can’t go back in time and fix how we felt when we were kids but I can change how we feel today.’
‘No, you can only change how you feel,’ Cerys replied, pulling the sleeves of her dress over her fingers the same way I did when I was uncomfortable. ‘You can’t control other people’s emotions.’
‘But I can try to understand them,’ I reasoned. ‘And I can want them to be different. That’s half the battle, isn’t it? Understanding why things are the way they are and working to make a change?’
Cerys dropped her head back and groaned. ‘So what? Now you’re not just younger than me, cleverer than me and prettier than me, you’re more insightful as well? How very dare you.’
‘I am not prettier than you,’ I scoffed. ‘And I wasn’t trying to be more anything I—’
‘Gwen, I’m joking,’ Cerys interrupted me with an unexpected laugh. ‘You’re right. You know I hate to admit it but you’re right.’ She took my hand off my glass and covered it with her own. ‘And don’t worry, I know you’re not prettier than me.’
‘You’re such a bitch,’ I whispered, turning my hand over to give hers a squeeze.
‘A jealous bitch,’ she corrected with a rueful smile. ‘I’m so jealous of you, I can hardly stand it. I sit at home at night and I think about you living this amazing life in London with your incredible job and your glamorous friends and your gorgeous boyfriend, who admittedly turned out to be a wanker but still. I’m up here juggling Oliver and the kids and the business and trying to make sure we don’t run out of toilet paper and there’s nothing left for me. I mean, where does it go? What do they do with all that loo roll? Are they eating it? There’s never enough, no matter how much I buy. This isn’t the life I dreamed of and I took it out on you.’
‘Michael used to go through a four-pack a week,’ I said, delighted. ‘Just him, on his own. One week I kept my own roll in the drawer under the sink to see how much he was using and it was nuts. I was genuinely worried there was something wrong with his insides but now I realize he just shits a lot.’
Cerys laughed again, a true, heartfelt cackle and it was the best sound I’d heard in ages.
‘Four rolls in a week?’ she replied. ‘I hope his new missus is the heir to the Andrex fortune.’
‘I hope he shits them out of house and home,’ I replied smiling when she laughed again. ‘He’s literally full of shit, Care.’
She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, leaving black smears on her grey sleeve.
‘Oliver got one of those Japanese toilets installed in our bathroom but he set the jet too high and it went up his arse and scared him so much he only uses the downstairs loo now. I hear him in the middle of the night, running down the stairs to make it in time.’
‘Can’t you turn the jet down a bit?’ I asked.
‘I turned it off months ago but why tell him that?’ I recognized the look on her face as that of someone who took great comfort in winning life’s small battles. ‘I know he’s not perfect, but we’ve been together for eighteen years, we’ve got kids, we’ve got a business. I always thought things would get less complicated when I got older, but it really is the opposite.’
She sat across from me nursing her drink, and instead of my older sister, I saw a younger version of our mother. A woman so frustrated with life, she was throwing down with a woman over leeks in Tesco. I didn’t want to watch Cerys end up in the same place.
‘You’re hardly one foot in the grave,’ I said, treading lightly. ‘You’re not even forty yet, you’ve got everything in front of you.’
‘There are no simple choices once you’ve got kids,’ she replied, matter-of-factly. ‘And I don’t mean that in a smug “You couldn’t possibly understand” way, it just is what it is. Every decision I make, I have to make it with three people in mind. Would I love to get up, call in sick and sod off to Paris for the day? Totally. But who would take the kids to school? Who would pick them up? Who would remember whether it’s football practice or ballet lessons or coding class?’
‘Arthur plays football?’ I asked.
‘No, they’re all Artemis. She’s keeping her options open in case she decides to bring down civilization via sports, the arts or tech.’
I really did need to get to know my niece better before she became the global supreme ruler and banished me to live on an oil rig with the deposed royal family.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Cerys said as I quietly wondered if any of the Windsors were better cooks than me. Fingers crossed. Deliveroo probably didn’t drop off in the north Atlantic.
‘Anything,’ I replied.
‘Do you like working at Abbott & Howe? Do you like your job?’
‘That’s a weird question,’ I said, huffing out an almost laugh. ‘It’s a brilliant job, isn’t it? Lucky to have it, everyone says so.’
‘Right,’ she turned her lips inwards, the edges turning upwards but not quite making a smile. ‘I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have said what I said. You’re not responsible for the way Mum and Dad made me feel or for the way I make myself feel. I want to try harder as well.’
‘You want to go on a family holiday to Center Parcs?’ I asked hopefully.
‘I’d rather kill myself,’ she said kindly. ‘But maybe we can make this pub thing a regular event.’
We sat quietly, drinking our gin in companionable silence. It was only when the snow began to fall, I realized what time it was. My drink was almost empty when Cerys’s phone dinged inside her not-even-slightly-stained suede handbag.
‘It’s Mum,’ she said, tapping out a reply without showing me the text. ‘Checking to see if we’ve killed each other.’
‘Tell her yes but I put up a good fight,’ I replied, watching the snow start to gather on the ruby red Royal Mail post box across the street. ‘Care?’
‘Gwen?’
‘If you got the sixpence in the Christmas pudding, what would you wish for?’
‘No idea. I never get the sixpence because I never actually eat the pudding.’ She put her phone away and took a deep breath in. ‘I take it so Mum doesn’t whine about it. But if I had got it, I’d wish to know why they’re here.’
She nodded across the bar and I turned around to see two uniformed policemen walk up to the bar, speaking to the landlord in hushed tones.
‘Oh shit,’ I whispered as they all looked over in our direction at the exact same moment.
‘What’s wrong?’ Cerys leaned back in her chair, glass in hand, temporarily without a care in the world. ‘Worried they’ve come to take you away?’
‘You’re going to think I’m joking but yes, I am,’ I replied, scooping up my coat and bag. ‘I’m going to nip to the loo, if they come over here, tell them I went home.’
‘Gwen, what are you talking about? Where are you going?’ Cerys asked, eyes wide with alarm. ‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing.’ I slipped out of my seat and onto my hands and knees, crawling around the back of her chair. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘You just asked me to lie to the police and now you’re on your way to hide from them in a pub toilet that is quite frankly unsanitary to say the very least,’ she hissed, snatching at the collar of my dress. ‘Tell me what is going on.’
‘Gwen Baker?’
I looked up to see the two police officers, one man and one woman, glaring down at me. The woman looked slightly more stern than the man, but he looked more annoyed to be working at all on Christmas Day, so it didn’t really feel as though I had a friend in either of them.
‘Yes?’ I squeaked from the floor.
‘We’d like to speak with you in regard to a break-in at Chatsworth House this morning, would you mind coming with us?’
‘You broke into Chatsworth House?’ Cerys bellowed. ‘Gwen Baker, are you on drugs?’
‘No, Cerys,’ I replied before smiling broadly at the officers as I rose to my feet. ‘I am not on drugs and what’s more, oh no, what’s that outside the window!’
I was the clever one. The one who always had a plan. Except when it came to choosing what to do with her life, recognizing problems in her relationships and running away from the police. Everything flashed bright red as I hurtled towards the toilets, skipping around pub tables with hastily delivered ‘excuse me’s and ‘beg your pardon’s.
‘Stop!’ called the policeman. ‘Stop right where you are!’
But I couldn’t stop, momentum had got the best of me. Just as I reached out my arm to open the door to the ladies, the door to the ladies opened out towards me, knocking me off balance and sending me flying across the room.
Fantastic, I thought as I toppled backwards. Not only am I going to be arrested, I’m going to be arrested in the pub on Christmas Day in front of the women from my mother’s aqua-aerobics class and I’m going to fall flat on my arse before they carry me away in handcuffs.
Only, instead of hitting the floor, I carried on spiralling backwards as though the ground had opened to swallow me up. It was only when I caught a flash of the terrified face of the policewoman on my way down, I realized what had happened. I had fallen through the open door to the steps to the pub basement.
Just like Cerys had said, they were a death trap.
Before I even had time to cry out for help, everything went black and Christmas number six was over.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My hands were still shaking when I woke up in bed the next morning.
‘What are you doing still in bed, chicken?’ Dad asked, popping his head around the door. ‘He’s been.’
‘He can’t bloody stay away!’ I shouted, throwing off the covers and leaping across the room. ‘No, sorry, absolutely not. I’m not doing this again.’
‘Doing what?’ Dad stood on the landing, utterly nonplussed, as I pulled a jumper over my pyjamas and grabbed my handbag off the chest of drawers.
‘All of it!’ I replied. ‘Christmas is cancelled!’
Not stopping to explain further, I dashed downstairs, grabbed a bacon roll and my dad’s car keys and flew out the back door.
With my foot flat on the floor and hunched over the steering wheel like a less stylish (but more puppy-friendly) Cruella de Vil, I hurtled around the Peak District in my dad’s car, aimless and directionless, both metaphorically and literally, since I hadn’t bothered to bring my phone. The roads were practically deserted as I sped up hill and down dale, circling reservoirs, occasionally honking at terrified ramblers with bits of tinsel woven around their walking sticks, and blasting Steven Baker’s in-car CD collection out of the open windows. Nothing said confused, angry and possibly trapped in an eternal time loop like two Coldplay albums, The Best of U2 and the soundtrack to The Greatest Showman. The perfect soundtrack to my mental state.
What was I going to do? What if I was stuck here forever? There was so much more I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to fall in love again, I wanted to see the world, I wanted to know if The Rock would ever be president. This couldn’t be it for me, it just couldn’t. After three hours of driving, singing, laughing maniacally and occasionally sobbing, the car began to slow down. I jammed my foot on the accelerator but nothing happened. The engine sputtered, the car lurched forward for a few feet more then rolled to a complete stop.
Note to self, cars need petrol, I thought, cringing at the sight of the little orange needle hovering accusingly over the bright red E on the fuel gauge. High tech, high speech, Hyundai, my arse.
There was only one thing I could do and that was throw a tantrum.
The car rocked from side to side on the quiet country road as I thrashed around, restrained only by my seatbelt, beating my fists against the steering wheel and screaming at the top of my lungs. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. I was trying so hard to help Mum and Dad and Cerys. I didn’t push Michael in front of a car or anything, why was I being punished like this? When I was finally done, I opened my eyes, panting, and saw three sheep stood in front of the car, each looking less impressed than the last.
‘Do you have a better idea?’ I asked.
One of the sheep leaned down to grab a mouthful of grass and chewed slowly while the other two continued to stare at me.
