Three Christmases: A Things We Never Said short story bonus. Read online

  Three Christmases

  A Christmas bonus for readers of

  Things We Never Said.

  Dear Readers.

  This is a little sequel to Things We Never Said, a feel-good, short-story-length (52 pages) glimpse into the future for all those readers who have been begging to know what happens next. Hopefully, the answer to that is, not what you expected.

  It will be offered free of charge for five days every quarter (the maximum permitted by Amazon), including over the Christmas period, so you don’t need to pay for it (unless you simply can’t wait until the next free period).

  Above all, please, PLEASE, DO NOT READ THIS if you haven’t read Things We Never Said yet. IT DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS.

  Love to all. Nick.

  One: The Bittersweet Christmas.

  Sean:

  I hadn’t intended to buy a tree at all. It was April who’d insisted.

  “Christmas isn’t Christmas without a tree, Dad,” she said. “So, you can either have a spotless, minimalist Christmas on your own in your spotless, minimalist new pad, or you can buy a bloody tree, cover it with sparkly things, and spend Christmas Day with the wrecking crew.”

  I knew she was right, of course, but I was struggling with the fact that it was only my second Christmas without Cathy. That first Christmas, the previous year, had gone by in such a blur of grief, expectation of Jake’s birth, and the myriad hassles of packing up ready for my move, that I now realised I hadn’t been entirely present. This year, Cathy’s absence weighed heavily upon me and I wondered if I would cope. Yet, at the same time, I desperately wanted to go the whole hog and celebrate baby Jake’s first visit from Santa.

  That ambivalence towards things – towards life, really – pretty much summed up the year. I’d be busy doing something like putting up shelves or painting a wall and I’d pause because the light in the room had suddenly changed. I’d turn around to see that the sun had come out and was pouring in through the wall of glass at the end of the lounge, and I’d remember how lucky I was to be living here. And then, literally milliseconds later, I’d think about the fact that Catherine would have loved to doze on that sofa in the sun, and I’d be swamped by a tidal wave of sadness; I’d feel emptied, eviscerated, really, by the loss. This sensation of gaping emptiness was generally followed by a depressing belief that I’d never be happy again, not truly. I’d often note the shocking about-turn my emotions had just performed and feel guilty that I had felt so happy just a few moments before, and then sometimes I’d even feel a complex, perverse double-layered sense of guilt at the fact that I was beating myself up over something as essential to survival as momentary happiness. At this point, I’d note the absurdity of even attempting to analyse it all, widen my frame of reference to the absurdity of life itself, and then get back up, brush the wetness from my treacherous eyes, and continue putting up the damned shelves, but with a fresh sense that my desire for shelves was in reality as absurd as everything else. I really was all over the place.

  At least work, and the move – the worst of which was not moving, per se, but disposing of three-quarters of my (our) possessions – kept me busy. As, of course, did decorating and furnishing the flat.

  Any gaps in the month that weren’t filled by work or moving or painting or shelves were rapidly filled by April and baby Jake. That busyness was my saviour really, because it kept moments of calm and reflection to a minimum. Moments of calm and reflection were generally horrific, plunging me quickly into a state of utter misery I sometimes doubted I was strong enough to survive.

  Jake, when he was around, was like an antidote, though. Or at least a damned good treatment.

  April had surprised me by being a capable, up-beat, no-nonsense mother. After Catherine’s somewhat hysterical mothering technique, this came as a great relief.

  My daughter seemed as happy as she had ever been, but essentially unchanged by motherhood. She simply had a new and rapidly growing bundle slung over her shoulder as she went about her day. And whereas Catherine had been terrified to take April out of the house in the early months, April had strapped Jake into his car-seat and driven him up to see me before he was even a month old.

  March was undoubtedly the horror-month of the year. I had told myself that I didn’t believe in dates or anniversaries. I had all-but convinced myself that I would be immune, that the 28th of March would be like any other day. But the truth was that I counted down to it for an entire month. In fifteen days, I’ll be fine, I told myself. In fourteen days’ time. In thirteen...

  On the morning of the 28th, I found myself unable to get out of bed. This was a surprise to me because it had never happened to me before. Not even illness has ever managed to keep me bed-bound for an entire day. But on the 28th, from the second I opened my eyes, I knew that today simply wasn’t going to happen. It was raining gently outside, and my legs were refusing to launch me into the rhythm of a normal workday. My arms felt leaden, my eyes, moist.

  At about ten o’clock, I got a text from April. “Are you OK?” it asked, simply.

  “I’m fine,” I replied. “At work. Masses of meetings.”

  But it wasn’t true. Instead, I was lying in bed, staring watery-eyed at the ceiling. After a couple of failed attempts at getting up, I gave in to it. “Fuck it,” I thought. “I’m allowed this.”

  So I plumped up the pillows and the quilt so that they felt at least a little bit like a body, there, beside me, and then I nestled against them and slept pretty much all day.

  By summer, I was feeling a little better. I’d had fifteen months to get used to the fact of my loss, and was having more ‘up’ days and feeling less guilt over them, too. Work was busy, Cambridge was sunny. Friends dropped in for brunch on my new balcony. April, Ronan and Jake would come up once a month and we would head across the green and throw a blanket out for baby Jake to crawl on while we picnicked.

  Surprisingly, as other friends reappeared, Maggie faded into the background.

  Things felt awkward, that was the thing. It was as if we were rehearsing for a dodgy theatre piece, and though we knew what our roles were supposed to be, we could only acknowledge our inability to act them out.

  Neither of us ever tried to put words to either the awkwardness or the roles themselves. I don’t think we had any idea how to express any of it. No mention was made of the strange conversation we’d had in the car park, and more and more, even thinking about it made me feel inexplicably uncomfortable.

  So when we did see each other, which was an increasingly rare event – usually baby Jake was the catalyst around which such get-togethers occurred – we acted, quite simply, as if it had never happened. In the back of my mind, I suppose, if I’m honest, I was holding on to the idea that there was at least a possibility of something there, and that if it was meant to happen, at some point, it probably would. And occasionally that idea, that feeling of vague promise, would help me through a moment of extreme loneliness.

  But the only times I ever tried to remember the exact context of that car-park conversation, the only times I tried to imagine what form that promise might take, the overriding sensation was that thinking about Maggie in that way made my teeth hurt. And as, like most human beings, I’m quite adept at not thinking about things which make me feel uncomfortable, I thought about Maggie less and less.

  Anyway, for Christmas, there had to be a tree. And this is why, just three days before Christmas, I found myself out at Homebase looking through the sad leftovers – the trees that no one else had wanted.

  “How much are these?” I asked, holding one of the less-dead looking si
x-footers upright.

  “Fifty,” the salesman replied, sounding overwhelmingly bored.

  “Fifty pounds?” I exclaimed.

  “It’s Norwegian Spruce,” he explained in the same tone of voice. “They don’t drop their needles ‘n shit.”

  When a voice behind me commented, “It looks like it already has dropped all its needles ‘n shit to me,” I turned to find Maggie grinning at me.

  “Hello!” I said. “What brings you out to the Homebase winter wonderland?”

  “Not the trees,” Maggie said, “that’s for sure.” She then pulled a box of tree-lights from a carrier bag and added, “Lights, actually. Mine packed up. Well, I may have stepped on them whilst trying to untangle them.”

  I smiled. “Well, ours still work, which is always a bit of a miracle. Now I just need the tree.” I frowned momentarily at my use of the word ours, but then decided, forcefully, that I had meant mine and April’s.

  “You’re not going to actually buy that thing, are you?” Maggie asked, raising an eyebrow and nodding at the tree I was holding.

  “No... No, I don’t think so,” I replied, leaning the tree back against the wall.

  “You need to go out to Barton,” Maggie told me. “They have trees that actually look like trees.”

  “Would you mind not doing that, Madam?” the salesman said, edging towards us, his hands in his pockets.

  “Doing what?” Maggie and I asked, in unison.

  “Would you mind not sending my clients elsewhere?”

  “Oh, that’s funny,” Maggie laughed. “I was just about to ask you not to do something as well. I was just about to ask you not to sell half-dead overpriced trees to my friends.”

  Which is how it ended up that Maggie and I followed each other out to Barton to choose a tree.

  It was a good call, though, because the trees at Burwash Manor, though still unreasonably expensive, did at least look like Christmas trees. There was something surprisingly romantic about choosing a Christmas tree together, too.

  It was a cold day and we could see our breath in the air. Many of the other shoppers had children with them and that special pre-Christmas excitement, that kids seem to manufacture, seemed to infuse everyone and everything.

  Even three days before Christmas, there were hundreds of trees to choose from and Maggie giggled as I haggled with the man in charge of sales. He was disguised as a Christmas elf.

  “You’re a hard man,” Maggie whispered in my ear once the deal was concluded. “Haggling with an elf, indeed! I hope you’re not hoping for any favours from Santa this year!”

  As we carried the tree back to the car park, it crossed my mind that Maggie might be alone for Christmas and that because I’d seen so little of her recently I hadn’t, in fact, invited her.

  On reaching the car I opened my mouth to pop the question but was interrupted when Pete, a friend from our quiz-night team, spotted me.

  “Are there any left in there?” he asked.

  “Oh, hello,” I replied. “Yes, loads.”

  “We were supposed to go to Sylvia’s sister’s place,” Pete explained, as he reached us and shook first my, then Maggie’s hand. “But they fell out over Christmas dinner. Her sister’s gone vegan now, and you know Sylvia. She’s, like, a one-hundred-percent carnivore. Anyway, we’re doing it at home now – turkey and all the trimmings – so I thought I had better get my skates on and sort the tree out.”

  “We planned ours ages ago,” I explained. “But I’ve only just got around to it. You know how it is.”

  “Yes,” Pete said, somehow with meaning, as he glanced between Maggie and me. “Yes, well, that’s great.”

  It took a moment before I realised that he had understood the “we” in my sentence as referring to Maggie and myself.

  “My, um, daughter’s coming up,” I said, cock-handedly trying to explain without sounding as if that was what I was doing. “With her partner. And baby.”

  “Great,” Pete said, looking, if anything, a little more confused. “One big happy family then.” He smiled tightly at Maggie as he said this and, clearly sensing the same pressure to explain, Maggie opened her mouth, shook her head, and eventually spoke.

  “I’m not… you know… part of this. I’m, um, actually going to my brother’s place for Christmas.”

  “Oh,” Pete said. “That’s a shame. Still, commitments, eh? Just pray he isn’t vegan.”

  Maggie grimaced in frustration at this, then said, “Anyway, great to, um, bump into you like this, Sean! But I really do need to get back home and, um, wrap some presents. Lovely to meet you too, er…”

  “Pete.”

  “Yes, Pete. Lovely. Um, have a great Christmas, then.” And then, forgetting her handbag, which she had rested on the roof of my car, she started to bustle away.

  “Mags,” I called out. “Your bag!”

  “Yes,” she said, turning back and swooping it up. “Right, thanks.”

  “I’d better get going, too,” Pete said, nodding towards the gate. “Before they’re all gone, I mean.”

  Once I got home and had wrestled the tree upstairs, I send Maggie a text saying that if she changed her mind about her brother’s place, she was welcome to join us for Christmas.

  “Oh no,” she replied. “I’m absolutely going to Brian’s place. I’m leaving tomorrow morning. But have a good one.” I somehow didn’t believe her.

  Christmas Day was like a concentrated version of the rest of the year, a mix of crazy ups and downs.

  Jake gurgled and spluttered and took particular delight in ripping up bits of wrapping paper while Ronan and I cooked up a Christmas dinner that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would have been pleased with. This we ate on the big swivel-out dinner table that I had designed some twenty years previously and which was now, finally, mine. I felt surprisingly proud of the whole thing.

  When we reached coffee-time, I realised that we’d managed a Christmas without tears, and it was only then that I noticed that April had been missing for the last ten minutes.

  “April?” I inquired of Ronan.

  “Bathroom, I think,” he said.

  I found her in my bedroom, gripping the sill and staring out at the landscaped grounds behind the building.

  “Are you OK?” I asked, and by way of reply, April merely shook her head.

  Joining her at the window I could see that her cheeks were wet with tears. I slipped one arm around her waist.

  “I miss her so much! ” she said, quietly. “It’s like a pain, you know? Like a real physical pain in my chest. It feels like there’s a hole or something – a big bloody hole right in the middle of me.”

  “I know,” I told her. “I know exactly what you mean. Especially today.”

  “Yes,” April croaked. “Yes, today’s really, really hard.”

  We stood in silence for a moment and then April pulled a towel from the radiator and dabbed at her eyes. “Sorry about that,” she said. “But I’m done, now.”

  “Please don’t apologise. It was bound to happen at some point.”

  “You know, I kept…” April started. “Actually, never mind.”

  “No, go on.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing… It’s stupid. But I kept thinking of things I could get her. For Christmas, I mean. I kept thinking she’d like this, or that… in shops and stuff. It’s daft, like I say.”

  “It’s not,” I told her. “I keep doing that, too.”

  April exhaled jaggedly. “It’s so hard,” she said again. She pursed her lips and blew through them. “Right,” she said, taking my hand and pulling me back towards the lounge. “Onwards and upwards, eh?”

  Ronan had moved to a chair by the window and was jiggling Jake up and down on one knee. “Here she is!” he said, leaning in to Jake’s ear. “Here’s that mummy you’ve been so worried about.”

  Jake smiled and gurgled and reached out with his right hand, stretching his fingers in April’s direction. And then, to everyone’s surprise, he said, “Mumumum.�
��

  We all froze for a second, then April, crouching down, whispered, “Did you hear that?”

  “I did,” I said. “He’s never said that before, has he?”

  April shook her head. “Say it again, sweetie,” she urged. “Mummy. Say, Mummy.”

  But Jake merely grinned and gurgled some more.

  “You did hear that, right?” April asked again. “He definitely said Mummy, didn’t he?”

  “Well, he said, Mumumumum,” Ronan laughed. “So he was either trying to say Mummy or mumble. Or Mumbai. Or it could have been Mummification.”

  “Stop it!” April admonished. “You’ll confuse him.”

  Eventually she hid back in the bedroom for a few minutes, in the hope that her return after an absence would inspire a repeat performance.

  But it would be January before Jake would make the Mum sound again.

  All the same, it was the best Christmas gift he could have given us.

  Two: The Awkward-Kiss Christmas.

  Maggie:

  Sean and I saw surprisingly little of each other following Jake’s birth. I think it was just because we felt so awkward around each other.

  To be honest, I was wishing that conversation had never happened. Because whether something ended up happening between us one day, or whether it didn’t, it seemed to me that everything would be have been easier, somehow, if we hadn’t pre-empted the whole thing by talking about it.

  When Jake was about eighteen months old – it was July, I think – April dropped by, unexpectedly. She was visiting Sean, she explained, but he had popped into work for the morning, so she’d decided to come to see me instead.

  I was incredibly happy about that. Because of the awkwardness of things with Sean, I’d seen far less of Jake than I’d hoped or, indeed, expected when he was born. I had kind of thought I’d be an unofficial aunty to him, but that didn’t seem to be happening.

  He was at a gorgeous age, running around my flat, grabbing everything, chattering and gurgling and laughing almost constantly.