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Nanny Barb comes over and puts a hand on my arm. “We shouldn’t pressure the boys,” she says. “They’ll say when they’re ready.”
Somehow I missed the day in school where they taught you what to do when you were living in your boss’s house faking amnesia and his whole family showed up and decided you were his secret boyfriend but didn’t feel comfortable admitting it to them. In the end I figure it’s best not to argue. “So what are you all doing here?” I ask as friendly as I can, which is pretty friendly on account of me not being from the South and so not being genetically incapable of saying hello to a stranger.
“Funny you should ask,” Uncle Johnny begins, “because me and Jonathan were talking about this business opportunity I’ve—”
“Johnny, not now.” It’s the first time I’ve heard Les speak. He’s quiet, but firm. Sort of like I’d imagine Jonathan might be if he’d get over himself for five fucking minutes.
“Why we’re here,” Wendy goes on, “is because this whole thing with Jonathan not wanting to do Christmas is a load of—it’s—”
“It’s bollocks, is what it is,” says Del. “See love, you can’t wanker your way out of everything. Me and Barb do it every year—”
“Barbara does it every year,” Auntie Jack corrects him.
“—and we ain’t neither of us getting any younger. And it’s about time he stepped up.”
“Especially,” Wendy picks up seamlessly, “because we’ve got Barbara Jane coming in from Texas and she’s going to be very upset what with the divorce, and Donna will be in from Romford on the day, and we’ll have Kayla and Theo and little Anthea for some of it and Les’s mum’ll be down from Sheffield and it’s just too much, Sam.”
“I’m nearly eighty,” Nanny Barb explains. “You can’t be humping turkeys around all day when you’re eighty.”
“Thing about a turkey”—Del is patting me on the back and I’m not sure why—“is it’s just a big chicken.” He looks pointedly at my roast-to-be.
I’ve got my hands in the air like I’m surrendering and I’m not sure what I’m surrendering to. “Sorry, what do you want me to…”
Now Wendy’s right in front of me. “We just thought you could have a word with him, love.”
“I really do just work for him.”
She pats me and all. “We know, pet, we know. But the trouble is we hardly see him, do we, Les?”
“We don’t,” Les confirms.
“And he wouldn’t listen to us anyway, would he?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Time was,” Wendy goes on, “he’d listen to his granddad but even you can’t get through to him now, can you, Dad?”
Del gets this weird look of pride and irritation. “He’s an independent man,” he says, “and I respect that. He’s got balls.”
“Contrary to what you may believe, Derek,” observes Auntie Jack from the other side of the room, “not every sentence needs to contain a reference to gonads.”
I’m having a hard enough time figuring out a plan to make Jonathan not fire me. I’m really not sure I can do that while also talking him into hosting Christmas for his entire family in his empty serial killer house. “Look,” I try, “I don’t think—”
And then the door opens again, and Jonathan’s standing there on the threshold in his black suit looking like fucking Maleficent.
“What,” he demands, “are you all doing here?”
Everyone goes a bit quiet.
Then Wendy says, “I’m visiting my son. I didn’t realise I needed a special reason to visit my son.”
Jonathan’s trying to stare everybody down at once and doing a pretty good job of it. “You visited yesterday.”
“Didn’t realise there was a quota neither.”
“And you’ve brought everybody with you?”
Nanny Barb slides to the front of the group. “We wanted to meet your boyfriend,” she explains.
