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‘Erm, sure,’ I reply cautiously. I dare to continue eating, mostly because I am starving and this is delicious, but how bad can what she is about to say really be?
‘Have you ever considered that you apologise too much?’ she asks me.
‘Well, yeah,’ I admit, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. ‘At work the other day, someone dropped a hole-punch on my foot and I apologised to them. Given half the chance, I would have apologised to the hole-punch too. Isn’t that just human nature?’
‘I used to think that,’ she replies. ‘But someone told me to try saying thank you instead. It doesn’t always apply but, more often than not, you can give it a go. Not to the hole-punch, obviously, but when I told you to leave dinner to me – thank you, not sorry.’
I can’t help but laugh. That’s kind of brilliant, although I don’t know how easy it will be. Mum finds everything easy, since her glow-up.
‘That’s actually, maybe, good advice… I think,’ I reply. ‘I’ll give it a go, but apologising is second nature to me.’
‘I know,’ she replies. ‘I would hear you apologise to Declan all the time.’
‘Noted, but this is a Declan-free zone now,’ I remind her. ‘In fact, it’s an ex-free zone.’
I think for a second.
‘Actually, no, it’s a man-free zone,’ I insist.
‘Let me know when you get where you’re going with this,’ Mum teases.
I quickly pick my fork back up. Dinner really is delicious. Well, doesn’t home cooking always taste better when you are not the person who has been slaving away in the kitchen for hours?
‘I am declaring this Christmas man-free,’ I state.
‘Okay, darling,’ Mum replies. It’s not that she doesn’t sound convincing, there’s just something in her voice, I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, though.
‘I’m serious,’ I insist. ‘No exes, no dates, no nice young men who move your furniture. No one. And no talking about them, either. It’s Christmas. Dwelling on the existence of men is not what Christmas is all about.’
‘I thought Christmas was about showing good will to all men?’ Mum dares to joke.
‘Well, I don’t know any that have earned it,’ I reply with a smile, to show her that despite coming across as aggressively feminist, I’m absolutely fine. ‘Okay, to clarify.’ I put my fork down, to show her that I mean business. ‘If there’s one thing I am going to insist on this Christmas, it’s that this house – from this moment on, until at least the new year – is officially a man-free zone.’
The front door opens and closes with a bang, causing us both to jump, before we’re joined in the kitchen by a familiar face.
‘Bloody men!’ my sister, Jess, announces as she drops most of her bags down on the floor. She keeps one in her hand. A white paper bag. It looks (and smells) like a takeaway.
Jess always looks cool, no matter what she’s wearing – even when she looks kind of scruffy, it looks like a style choice. Her latest dye job is fading, revealing previous dye jobs as it retreats, which you would think would look awful, but it gives her this unique iridescent hair colour that suits her. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a black leather jacket and, as she sniffs the air, the stud in her nose catches one of the spotlights above her, causing it to twinkle. The piercing is new, since the last time I saw her, and I noticed on her Instagram that she has a new tattoo somewhere too.
‘Oh, Jess, princess,’ my mum says as she jumps to her feet, running over to her daughter to give her a hug.
Jess has always been known as princess, which sometimes kind of makes it seem like Mum loves her more, but it’s a nickname that started when we were younger, when Jess was a bit of a brat. She always had to get her own way, she was quite possibly the fussiest eater known to man, and she absolutely did not do anything she didn’t feel like doing. So we started calling her a princess, because she clearly thought she was one, and even though over time she isn’t quite so fussy (although she still only does what she feels like doing), the nickname has stuck.
‘This is such a lovely surprise,’ Mum says after she’s given her a thorough squeezing. ‘I didn’t think we’d see you until Christmas Eve – if at all. I thought you and Armie were spending the holidays in Prague.’
‘Did you not hear me say “bloody men” as I walked through the door?’ Jess asks through a laugh. ‘Me and that clown are over. He was a prize weirdo. Aren’t they all, though?’
She directs this question at me as she hugs me.
‘You’re not wrong,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Also, hello, it’s been a minute.’
‘I know, I know, things have been mad,’ she replies. ‘If I’m being honest, I kind of lost my job a few months back, so the funds weren’t really there for travelling back from Edinburgh. Honestly, Armie was so tight. I would ask him for money and he would be like “no way, you’ve already spent enough money on plants this month, the house is like a jungle” but I let him keep them when we split. I don’t get his problem. Anyway, since then, my Etsy started popping off, given that it’s Christmas, and I sold all the wreaths I’ve been making, so I thought I’d use the money to come and stay with my mum and my favourite sister.’
‘Your only sister,’ I remind her.
‘Right. That’s why I saved you a wreath, I swapped the one on your door for it on my way in. That’s just the empty bag it came in. That bag is washing, the other one is clean enough stuff for now.’
She directs the comments about her dirty washing to my mum, as though it’s her problem.
