AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nanny Barb, who had been waiting for Johnny to arrive before she’d let anybody get started, is already opening boxes. “Kayla and Theo’ll be around this afternoon. They’ve got their own family to take care of as well.”
“Whereas you, Johnny my boy,” Auntie Jack observes from her perch on the arm of the sofa, “have nothing and nobody.” She sighs. “Then again, neither do I. But I did bring gin.”
She brought a lot of gin, in fact. Pretty much everybody brought something, but most of the rest had stuck with nibbles.
“Right.” Now everybody’s together, things are kicking off proper, and as always Del’s the one doing the kicking. “Them boxes there is tinsel. Them ones there is stuff that hangs off the tree. That one’s the stuff for the ceiling, and the one at the end is the family baubles.”
“You mean like every Christmas?” Barbara Jane asks. She’s wearing another ironic jumper—this one just sayingBah Humbug—and has already started making good use of the gin.
Nanny Barb looks pointedly at me. “He’s explaining for Sam.”
That doesn’t seem to convince Barbara Jane. “And who was he explaining for last year?”
“Not that anybody’s asking,” Jonathan adds, “but theseotherboxes are decorations I bought yesterday to make sure we have enough.”
Del looks at the new additions the way you might look at a mole you were sure you didn’t have last time you checked. “We’ll have enough.”
“Well, if we don’t, we’ve got more. You asked me to host, I’m hosting.”
“And a lovely job you’re doing too.” Wendy’s wearing a somewhat less ironic Christmas jumper. It’s bright white with a massive reindeer on it. “Though I’d have brought sausage rolls if I’d known you’d not have any.”
“He’s been very busy, love,” Les reminds her. “Now come on, let’s get started.”
He gets up and opens the nearest box, and once he has, things plunge very quickly into anarchy. Johnny goes straight for the fairy lights—not the new ones that we got for the windows, but a huge tangle of them ones from the ’80s with the coloured shades that look a bit like flowers. Barbara Jane pounces on a set of little bells, and Jonathan is trying to remind everybody that you have to do the tinsel first or else it’ll snag.
Sitting in one corner, Les is unspooling a very long, very faded paper chain made from wonkily-glued links, some of which have come undone entirely. “You got any Pritt Stick?”
“There’ll be some in the office,” Jonathan calls from over by the tinsel that he’s still trying in vain to get people to prioritise over more interesting ornaments. “Sam, can you grab it?”
I’m about to go, but Les tells me he’ll find it. Although that leaves me at a bit of a loose end because while I don’t want to be standoffish, I also don’t want to be inserting myself into somebody else’s big family ritual. Even if I have been given a guinea pig of my very own to participate with.
“Ladder?” That’s Del. He’s holding a sparkly, if slightly creased, foil mobile in one hand, and looking fixedly up at the ceiling. “Or should we just pull over a table and stand on that?”
Giving up tinsel duty as a bad job, Jonathan hurries back over. “No, you shouldnot. I’ll get the ladder from the garage.”
Johnny looks up from his tangle of lights. I’m sure they’re in a worse state than they were when he started. “Get the extension cord while you’re there.”
“You get used to it,” says a voice in my ear. I turn to see Auntie Jack. She’s got a glass in one hand and a tiny plastic Santa in the other. “They’ll calm down in a minute.”
I look from her to the rest of the family, then back. “Will they?”
“Not by much, I admit. But you shouldn’t worry about being in the way. If nothing else, it’s practically impossible togetin the way. It’s like getting in the way of a cruise ship.”
Jonathan comes back in with a stepladder and an extension lead and then gets immediately into an argument with Del about which of them is going to be going up it to stick pins in the ceiling.
“So”—I lean over to Auntie Jack—“I don’t want to pry but—are you with this lot every Christmas?”
“For a very long time, yes. Since before Barbara was married.”
“Must be nice.”
She gives a nod that manages to have a much deeper edge of melancholy than a nod should. “In a lot of ways.”
“Stand back everyone.” This is Johnny again. He’s located the plug end of the Christmas lights and found a socket to plug it into.
Barbara Jane looks around from where she’s trailing a line of artificial greenery along a windowsill. “Do we really have to? It’s lightbulbs, not fireworks.”
“Just giving it a sense of occasion.” Johnny slams in the plug, flips a switch, and with a flash and a plink the lights go on and immediately off.
