‘Merry Christmas, Tom!’
‘HULK SMASH!’ he shrieks, bypassing me completely to rugby tackle Ed.
‘Merry Christmas, little man,’ Ed replies laughing, his voice muffled by the eight-year-old climbing on his face. ‘I surrender, I surrender!’
‘Let them get in the door,’ I hear Gary yell from the living room.I step over Ed and Tom, rescuing the bag of presents before it gets squashed entirely.
‘Merry Christmas!’ I say, plonking the bag down beside the couch. ‘If I’d known the Hulk was here, I’d have put on some body armour.’
‘Merry Christmas, Kate,’ Mum says, pulling me in for a hug.
‘Don’t you look sparkly!’ I say, being careful not to dislodge any of the five thousand sequins on her jumper. ‘I feel underdressed now.’
‘Nonsense,’ she replies. ‘Did you forget your straighteners? You can borrow mine if you like.’
‘No,’ I reply, disregarding her obvious dig at my hair. ‘Just couldn’t be bothered taming the beast this morning.’
‘Merry Christmas, Kate. I won’t hug you yet, I’m covered in god knows what.’
‘Oh, you’re cooking?’ I say, admiring Gary’s food-splattered apron. ‘There’s a first.’
Mum never lets anyone else cook at Christmas. Once a year she adopts this weird nineteen-fifties’ housewife persona, taking over the kitchen that she barely uses the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.
‘I just had my nails done,’ Mum informs me, wiggling her fingers. ‘I’m not stuffing anything with these bad boys.’
‘Did anyone lose a superhero?’
I turn to see Ed carrying a giggling Tom upside down into the living room. They both look adorable. Even upside down, I can see Tom eyeing the gifts in our bag. He gets his presents before Christmas lunch as it’s unfair to make him wait all day to open them with the adults in the evening.
‘That depends,’ I reply. ‘Do superheroes like presents because I think I have some around here. . .’
Mum leaves to pick up my grandma at two. My grandma (or Gubba, the name I gave her when I was one and couldn’t saygrandma) recently moved into sheltered housing in Bamford and her eighty-one-year-old face has been tripping her ever since. I don’t blame her. She sold her beautiful cottage in Castleton and was forced to reside alongside ‘those bloody coffin dodgers’ as she lovingly calls the other residents. Ed and I visited the complex when she moved in, and it’s surprisingly nice. Around twenty flats all built around a communal garden, with a community hall, lounge and a bus stop right outside. The flats are all brand new and everything is accessible, but it just reminds Gubba that she’s older now and needs extra help, as much as it pains her to admit it. Mentally, she’s as sharp as ever, but her legs don’t hold her up quite as well as they used to, especially since falling last year and breaking her ankle in two places.
The sleeping arrangements have changed since last year, with Mum and Gary now in the new loft conversion and Tom in their old bedroom, which leaves Ed to lug our bags upstairs to the bedroom that used to be Tom’s but also mine. They haven’t redecorated yet, meaning that Ed and I will be forced to sleep surrounded by Marvel wallpaper and a dinosaur lamp. Gubba always sleeps on the sofa bed, claiming it’s better for her back than Mum’sbillowy mattress, but also, it’s nearer to the bathroom.
I wander into the kitchen and slice into the baguette that’s sitting on the worktop beside the biggest jar of Nutella I’ve ever seen. This is the only advantage I can see to having kids, I think, scooping some on to my bread. Well, that and seeing their faces when they’re opening Christmas presents. That melts my heart. I’ve never seen anyone so thrilled to get a Fortnite gift card and a Thor hoodie. Munching on my bread and chocolate I watch Gary and Tom from the kitchen window, now joined by Ed. Seems he’d rather stand in the cold than be alone with me. Gary crouches down, followed by everyone else, as he pointstowards the grass about five feet to the left of him. I stand on my tiptoes and catch sight of a robin, pecking at the ground near by before being startled by Ed sneezing, losing his balance and Tom laughing his head off. Gary walks over to his magnificent copper bird table and starts filling up the little feeding stations, while Ed and Tom kick a ball around the garden. For a moment, I’m taken back to watching Ed on the football field at school. I never had any interest in football, I just liked the way he looked in shorts. He was so exciting to me back then, and to a lot of the other girls, which bothered me. He was fit, musically gifted, handsome as hell– but most of all, he was a great guy. No bravado, no ego, just funny and kind, and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me, why he was into me. Maybe there’s part of me, deep down, that still can’t. Watching him, I realise that he isn’t outside in the cold to avoid me. He’s outside to be with Tom. He’s out there playing with my eight-year-old brother at Christmas while I’m alone in the kitchen making everything all about me. Shit. I don’t like this version of me at all.
Ed
I’m about to let Tom win his sixth game when I hear Paula yell that Gubba is here. Tom abandons the ball and zips back inside, knowing that more Christmas presents are on the cards, leaving me to score my first goal of the day.
‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ Gary says, fiddling with the bird table. ‘I’m just replacing the battery in this solar light.’
‘No probs,’ I reply, smiling. Gary is the first and only bird watcher (or ‘twitcher’, as he likes to call himself) I’ve ever known, and probably the most mellow bloke on earth. He’s at least a decade older than Paula, which was a source of great embarrassment to Kate when her mum first introduced him. My folks are both older, so to me it was no big deal but compared to her dad, she thought Gary was practically ancient.
He owns a garden centre, Ed! My mum still goes clubbing, for god’s sake. He must be loaded or something. It’ll never last. She’ll eat him alive.
But it did last, as did his garden centre, which everyone around here, including my parents, speak very highly of. Kate was right, of course; he was loaded, and she wasn’t the only one in the village who thought Paula was taking advantage of the poor widowed twitcher, but my mum always said something that stuck with me.
Sometimes, the only way to leave chaos behind is to grab hold of calm and never look back.
Having met Brian, Kate’s dad, this made perfect sense. Paula didn’t fall in love with Gary for his money. She’s never once asked him to move somewhere bigger, or upgrade her car; Christ, she still works part-time at the post office. She fell in love with him for his heart.
I can already hear Tom whooping as he rushes inside, followed by Gubba laughing. I feel so stupid calling her Gubba, instead of Grandma, or even her actual name, Marian, but everyone else does, so I just play along.
‘Merry Christmas!’ I say, giving her a hug before taking a spot on the couch beside Kate. ‘Lovely to see you, Gubba. You look well.’
‘Do I heck,’ she replies, handing Tom another gift. ‘I’m holding on to water like a bloody camel. Could hardly get me shoes on.’
