‘I don’t know why you have to spend so much money. You do this every year.’
‘So it’s about the cost?’
‘No,actually it’s not.’ He looked defeated. ‘But last year you bought new patio furniture and a fire pit, the year before it was a garland for the back door as well as the front so guests could appreciate it if they went out to the back. Every year you spend hours, days, weeks even getting ready for one night that always falls on us.’
She swallowed hard. This felt like a personal attack and it hadtaken her by surprise. ‘Everett, where is all this coming from?’
His glare faded away and as though he was exhausted from it all he told her, ‘It’s as though you’ve lost sight of what Christmas is all about.’
‘It’s about people, I know that. Hence the neighbourhood party.’
He set the microwave to the correct time to warm his dinner. ‘It’s about family and friends. It isn’t about perfection.It isn’t about formal invitations, extra luxuries to make guests more comfortable, the right glasses, the right wine, the right accessories dotted around. What’s wrong with a casual invite, everyone bringing a plate of food and some drinks, popping in when they like?’
She wasn’t even going to answer that. ‘I’d love to hear about how terrible I am for organising a party, Everett, but I have workto do.’ She poured herself a glass of wine. With any luck she’d be done this side of midnight if she actually made a start.
‘Why are you working tonight?’
‘It’s hardly uncommon, Everett,’ she snapped.
He reached for her hand and she let him take it, his touch calming her enough for her to explain, ‘I screwed up, dropped the ball.’
‘That’s not like you.’
And before she could think that understandingand communicating were a start, she snapped, ‘Well, after parents’ evening we both know that’s not true, don’t we?’ And she took her hand away.
The microwave pinged, he took out some cutlery and sat himself down. ‘Regardless of that, Fern, it’s not like you to make a mistake at work, that’s all I’m saying.’ He looked as fed up with their sniping at one another as she was. The way his hair, stilldamp from his shower, had left a crescent-shaped water mark seeping onto his marl grey T-shirt, made her want to reach out to this man who was her world.
‘You don’t seem to like me very much lately.’ Her frustration with the tension between them meant her accusation was out before she had a chance to think about whether she really wanted to say it or not.
He looked at her as though she mightbe crazy. ‘How exactly do you work that out?’
‘Your criticisms of me, the fact you would rather play squash than have an evening in with your wife.’
‘You’re putting words in my mouth. And you told me to go even though I offered not to. Don’t analyse me like you would one of your clients.’
Before either of them said anything else, she stalked out of the kitchen, narrowly avoiding slopping thewine from her glass in her haste.
‘I’ll make sure the boys don’t disturb you,’ Everett muttered after her without looking up from his dinner.
In the dining room she switched on the laptop and wished it was so easy to ignite her energy levels, which felt as though they’d depleted ten-fold since she got home. It wasn’t long before she heard the faint murmur from the television Everett must haveturned on in the lounge and imagined him putting his feet up for the rest of the evening. Lucky him.
Fern was forty-one and as she’d edged into her fifth decade she’d occasionally wondered whether Everett would lose interest and trade her in for a newer, sexier model. Sometimes she wouldn’t blame him. Not that she didn’t trust him, it was just that despite living in the same house they seemedso far apart from one another. And Everett was too good at keeping his thoughts to himself rather than blurting them out like she’d just done – perhaps that was part of the problem, that he didn’t feel the need to talk the way she did, and so as time went on they shared less and less about how they were feeling and nothing ever changed.
She made up her mind there and then that no matter how tiredshe was or what hour she finished her work, she intended to put on her sexy lingerie and make love to her husband. It would be an unspoken way of making peace. And although it wouldn’t get to the bottom of their problems, she needed the connection, to remind herself there was plenty to fight for when it would be all too easy to give up. And it was one thing to drop the ball at work but it wasquite another to do it in her marriage.
Fern worked for hours. Only when she’d checked everything in triplicate and emailed the documents to her boss, did she switch off the laptop for the night. When her phone rang at a little after ten o’clock and she saw it was her mother her thoughts instantly went to panic mode. Was she all right? Was Grandad? They usually spoke once a week. Fern regimentallycalled her mum every Sunday night at around seven o’clock, never this late. It was a pattern they’d got into when the boys were little and Fern had had to manage bedtimes and her work and it had stuck.
Panic simmered down to relief when she answered and Loretta assured her that everyone was alive and still breathing.
‘I’m calling to check arrangements for Christmas,’ Loretta told her.
It seemedodd she’d chosen to do it so late at night, but Fern reiterated the plan they’d already agreed upon. ‘We’ll come to you on Christmas Eve and stay two nights, if that’s still OK?’ It was always a squeeze and tensions ran high over the festive season squashed into the house with at least one of her sisters, but Fern and Everett did it every other year like clockwork. Next year it would be theirturn to see Everett’s dad.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Loretta went on. ‘Two days isn’t really enough, is it?’
Fern, Ginny and Daisy had seen one another on and off over the years, but it was usually fleeting. In the summer they’d all been in Butterbury together for their mother’s birthday, but other than that, they hadn’t all slept in their childhood beds under the same roof at the same time foryears. Two days would be plenty. None of them would ever admit it but it was as though they did their best to avoid being in the same place, together, for too long. The Christmas before last when it was Fern and Everett’s turn to be in Butterbury, Daisy had gone off to New York with a friend who had a cousin with an apartment that was a steal apparently, an opportunity not to miss, and Ginny had beenin Europe finally making it to Butterbury on Boxing Day in time to wave goodbye to Fern. Two years prior to that Ginny had been in Vienna from Christmas until new year, and with Daisy tucked up in bed with the flu, Fern hadn’t had much to do with her youngest sister at all.
Loretta carried on. ‘Your grandad is getting older—’
