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“I did.”
Wendy isn’t about to give false-tea-making credit to anybody, even her own daughter. “You didn’t, you just left some mugs out with teabags in them.”
“That way people can make their own how they like it.”
“Oh, you fucking saint.” I can practically hear Jonathan rolling his eyes.
I feel like the whole tea issue is distracting us, so I try to pull things back to sleeping arrangements. “It’s not a problem,” I say. “I’ve been here a while so if there’s anybody should be giving their room up it’s me, and I can always just go back in with the tree.”
“We had to move the bed,” Jonathan reminds me. “It’s propped against the wall.”
“So I’ll sleep at an angle.”
“You will not.” I think Wendy knows I’m joking, but it’s sort of hard to tell. “He will not. Jonathan, you’re not letting him sleep at an angle. We didn’t raise you to let guests sleep at an angle.”
Jonathan sighs. “He’s not going to sleep at an angle, Mum.”
“It’ll be bad for his back,” she tells him. Then immediately tells me, “It’ll be bad for your back.”
“Okay.” I spread my hands in a gesture of surrender. “I promise, I won’t be trying to sleep propped up like I’m in traction. I’ll probably just grab some pillows off the sofa and do myself something up on the floor.”
Wendy is giving Jonathan a look.
“Really,” I say, “it’s fine.”
She’s still giving Jonathan a look.
“How about,” Jonathan says at last, sounding only a little bit like he’s reading from a script, “Sam takes my room and I sleep on the sofa.”
“Really,” I begin. “You don’t hav—”
“There we are.” Wendy beams. “That’s all sorted. Come on Les, give’s a hand with this.”
I’m not sure, but I think I see Les give his son an approving look as he crosses the room to help Wendy with the suitcase. The rest of the family make similar moves to grab their things and ship them upstairs, except for Uncle Johnny, who heads off to pick up a dozen boxes of remaindered Halloween decorations.
Getting the whole family settled takes a bit, especially after they realise that one of the rooms—the one I’ve just moved out of as it happens—is much smaller than the others, but since Johnny has made the mistake of leaving the house for twenty minutes, he gets stuck in it by default and comes back to a very smug Barbara Jane.
When everybody’s unpacked, we drift into the middle reception room and sit around the still mostly green Christmas tree.
“Shame we never got the decs up,” Wendy muses, staring up at it. And the moment she says it there’s a—not quite tension like, but asomethingin the air between Les and Jonathan. Because one of the elephants has just wandered in and it’s hanging about under the tree like a very big present nobody wants to unwrap.
“Honestly”—Barbara Jane has given up on the tea and started on the gin that Auntie Jack left last time she was here—“it was probably a bit ambitious anyway.”
But Wendy’s not one to be bent off a point once she’s on it. “Still seems a shame. Just leaving it there all half-naked.”
“I’m not getting the stepladder out,” Jonathan protests. “Not at this time of night.”
Les gives a quiet nod. “It is how it is, and it looks all right to me.”
“And really”—Barbara Jane waves her glass in a little circle—“what saysChristmasmore than something getting abandoned because you had a pointless row in the middle of it? I mean that’s basically every game of Monopoly we’ve ever played.”
“That’s because you cheat at Monopoly.” The accusation comes from Uncle Johnny, who has just come in from the garage.
“Well, it’s tedious if you don’t.”
“No, BJ.” Jonathan sighs. “It’s tedious if you do, because all that happens when you steal money from the bank is that the game lasts longer.”
“And also,” I add, “because cheating is wrong?”
