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‘You go sit on the sofa,’ I insist. ‘I’m sure Jess will help me.’
Jess looks at the mess in the kitchen and pulls a face.
‘Yeah, of course,’ she says, without a hint of enthusiasm. ‘Everything just goes in the bin or the dishwasher, right?’
Yeah, apart from the hand-wash only bits and the recycling. I’ve always suspected Jess purposefully does a bad job of things so that you don’t ask her again. Unfortunately, because these have only ever been unprovable suspicions, it’s always worked really well for her.
‘Don’t worry, you go help Mum get set up on the sofa with the TV, I’ll tidy up,’ I insist with a heavy sigh.
‘You sure?’ Jess says as she heads for the sofa, she doesn’t wait for a reply, though. ‘Two sugars for me, please.’
I guess I’m making the cups of tea too, then.
I stand in the kitchen, between the island and the worktop behind me, and slowly twirl around, taking in all the mess. Pans, utensils, chopping boards covered in colourful peels from varying vegetables. There’s even a bit of mashed potato on the wall, probably from Mum’s over-enthusiastic mashing, but thankfully it’s only on the splash-back. Then there’s Jess’s mess. All the takeaway containers, all the food that didn’t quite make it to the plates, and worst of all, all the leftovers that are looking more unappetising by the second.
I sigh, then get to work. After scraping food into the bin, rinsing plates and sorting the recycling, I grab the binbag with the food in to take it outside to the wheelie bin. It’s only on my way back into the house when I notice the wreath Jess has placed on the door. The one I had up – which is currently on the floor propped against the house – was a classic green one with a golden bow. It features dried oranges, cinnamon sticks, pinecones and tiny, delicate gold baubles. Jess’s wreath couldn’t be more different. The dark green of the wreath is almost completely covered, the dried orange slices are swapped for grapefruit (with extra synthetic pink colouring to make them pop) along with a chaotic barrage of pink fluff, gigantic sparkly baubles in everything from peach to fuchsia, and then there’s all the mad details, like plastic flamingos, and mini replica cocktails dotted around. I don’t have the energy to even think about how I’m going to deal with this right now, so I go in and close the door behind me.
Mum and Jess are curled up on the sofa, cackling at reruns ofThe Royle Family. It’s nice to see them both smiling, I must admit. The women in our family don’t have much luck with men. I already knew it was true, but it’s good to confirm that we don’t need them to be happy.
So quiet Christmas has turned into mini-family Christmas. I’ll just have to make the most of it – it really will be good, to spend time with them both – so long as they don’t make any more mess, that is.
4
Our local branch of Wilson’s, the boujee farm shop chain, isn’t somewhere I shop often, but it turns out it’s one of the few stores that isn’t hell on earth to visit in the run-up to Christmas time. The aisles are wide, the place isn’t rammed with frazzled shoppers, and they have so much delicious-looking food that you can’t get in the supermarkets. However, things didn’t go exactly to plan when we arrived there earlier today.
First of all, other than boasting a healthy (but actually quite unhealthy) array of snack foods, it turns out that if you’re wanting anything for your Christmas dinner, then you have to pre-order it.
The second issue was that Jess’s gift voucher was only for £30. When I say only, don’t get me wrong, there was never any expectation that Jess should pay for the food over Christmas, but she definitely made it sound like the voucher was going to cover a lot of it. She hyped up a sort of Supermarket Sweep spree on the drive there. In the end, we spent the whole amount on extortionately priced snacks – and we don’t even have much to show for it, just a bottle of apple juice, a few bags of crisps, some sweets and a couple of tins of biscuits. The crisps and one packet of biscuits had gone by the time we reached a supermarket in town.
Someone bumps their trolley into mine before giving me a dirty look and storming off. See, this is more like what I expected shopping for Christmas supplies to be like. It doesn’t matter which supermarket you go to; everyone is in holiday mode. We’re all stressed, over-shopping – picking up enough food to feed a thousand people – and rushing around like the world will end if we don’t secure six different snacking cheeses by the time the shops close on Christmas Eve. I’m no different. In fact, with Christmas Eve being this time next week, this is probably the earliest I’ve ever done my Christmas big shop. I really have got my organisational skills together over the past year – well, compared to before, at least. Neither my mum nor Jess is a naturally organised person, they’ve both kept marvelling at how early we’re doing the food shop, but my mum is the kind of person to be zooming around the Co-op on Christmas Eve because she forgot to buy potatoes four hours earlier when she was doing her shopping last-minute, and Jess is the kind of person to do absolutely nothing, and just turn up at someone’ssomethingto spend the holidays – whatever was going on, that would suit her if it was free and easy.
Mum grabs two bags of nuts – the net ones full of a variety of nuts in their shells, the kind you only really seem to see at Christmas.
‘Does anyone actually like those?’ I ask curiously. ‘I know one of the things we aren’t mentioning used to, but I’m pretty sure he was the only one.’
The thing we’re not mentioning being my dad. Mum would always put out a basket of nuts at Christmas and Dad would be the only one who ate them. She would leave a fancy nutcracker in the basket and Dad would be back and forth to it all Christmas break, cracking nuts, leaving bits of shell everywhere. No one else would touch it, though.
‘It’s Christmas, Billie,’ Mum insists, as though I’d missed the memo.
She used this same excuse when she put a bag of clementines and two bottles of sherry into the trolley too.
Another thing she keeps saying is ‘just in case’, as a reason to buy extra items, or random things that would be good for people dropping by. I politely reminded her that no one will be dropping by. Auntie Jane has taken Grandma to Australia with her for Christmas, to spend it with my cousins, and when she mentioned inviting my next-door neighbour around for a drink (because apparently you have to keep your neighbours on side, if you want them to call the fire brigade so you don’t die in a fire) I had to break it to her that Kenny, the divorcee who lives next door, would happily watch my house burn to the ground, as I would his. We definitely don’t love thy neighbour on this street.
I’m going to stop complaining and just let Mum and Jess do whatever they want. It’s easier that way. At least we have a good system. Mum grabs what we need, Jess scans it on her phone using the shop’s app (which is fantastic, because the queues to pay are long), and I place it in the trolley – which I regret offering to push, because I’ve managed to pick one with a dodgy wheel, so half the battle today is trying not to take out all the shoppers on my left, although lord knows I’d like to with some of them. What is it about Christmas time that makes everyone so selfish? People keep ramming me, others block the aisles, and I’m pretty sure I saw a woman lean into someone else’s trolley and take her gravy, rather than heading back to the aisle where the instant stuff lives.
We’re nearly done now – thank goodness. I’m currently hovering by the trolley, behind my mum, while she deliberates between buying legit Rennies or the off-brand ones. Either way, antacids are the cornerstone of a decent May family Christmas. We’re all prone to a bit of reflux – apparently something passed down from my grandad’s side – and there’s nothing like a double dose of my mum’s Christmas cooking to fan the flames.
‘Won’t you move out of the way,’ a delightful old dear in her seventies says as she shoulder-barges me out of the way with a strength that will make me think twice about labelling people an ‘old dear’ again.
‘Sorry,’ I reply, as Jess and I move out of the way.
‘Honestly, the youth of today,’ she rants to herself. ‘Pathetic.’
‘She thinks she’s insulting me, but I’m pretty jazzed to be thought of as a youth,’ I joke to Jess under my breath.
Sadly, there’s nothing wrong with the lady’s hearing, because she stops in her tracks, turns around and approaches me. Jess, my darling sister, steps out of her line of fire.
‘What did you say?’ the lady asks me.
