A car engine starts up outside, and its radio bursts into life midway through ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’. I can hear the family inside singing along as they drive off. For some reason, the sound fills me with an intense sadness. My family was Mum and Daphne. One is gone and now the other might be too.
Those old feelings of self-pity start to stir inside me again: the childish sense of injustice, the inclination to hide away, feeling sorry for myself, getting angry at things I can’t define and forces I can’t see.
I have to fight that. Another nugget of Harv-brand wisdom pops into my head: You’re not going to get Daphne back by wallowing in your own misery, are you? You have to believe in yourself a bit more.
He said it off the cuff, I think – out of sheer frustration with my moaning – but for some reason, it gives me strength. I can do this. I can be a better man. I can make Mum proud, make Daphne proud, make myself proud.
I take a deep breath and stand up, and as I pull the curtains open, sunlight floods the room. The sky is a clear blue, and it’s cold, crisp and bright outside: a beautiful Christmas Day.
I seal the lids back on the biscuit tins. Enough digging through the past. It’s the present that matters now. As I take them back up to the attic and tidy up the mess I made, I spot something else: the box of Christmas tree decorations. I did promise Daphne I’d put them up. And even if it’s way too late, it’s about time I started keeping my promises.
Downstairs, in the sun-soaked living room, I open the box and start stringing tinsel and fairy lights around the tree’s branches in much the same haphazard way I remember Mum doing when I was a kid.
I know it’s not much, and there’s no one else here to see it, but still … It feels like the first step on a long road ahead.
Chapter Fifty
London, 25 December 2021
The kettle’s boiling, the bacon’s sizzling and the scrambled eggs have just hit that split-second sweet spot between too runny and too firm.
I dish the food out onto two plates, humming along to ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, which is currently thumping out of the radio on top of the fridge. Moving quickly around the tinsel-lined kitchen, I plunge the cafetière and pour two cups of fresh hot coffee, as well as two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice. I arrange everything neatly on the trays and stand back to admire my work: perfect.
I flick the radio off, but just as I’m about to head up to the bedroom, I wonder if, actually, I should let her sleep in a bit longer.
I look down at my watch – the watch – which is somehow still ticking faultlessly after all this time. It’s not even eight yet, and we were out late last night. Well, late for us, anyway.
For the first time in ages, I’m hung-over – that eggnog brandy was lethal – but I just can’t sleep in these days. In my freelance years, I’d sometimes stay in bed until mid-morning, trying to summon the resolve to get up and get on with things. Now, though, I have to be up at 6.30 on the dot most days, and the routine has installed a sort of internal alarm clock within me. Not that I need it: starting the day is something I genuinely look forward to now.
These last few months have been maybe the happiest of my whole life, which is crazy, really, when I think back to how this year started. On Christmas Day 2020, I would never have imagined that next Christmas could look like this. Not for the first time this year, I’m struck by how incredibly lucky I am.
I pick up the trays. I’ll just go up and see if she’s awake.
I walk slowly out of the kitchen, trying not to spill anything, and as I pass the living room, I see the Christmas tree. It’s heaving under countless layers of multicoloured ornaments, and I can’t help smiling as I remember the chic, scarcely decorated tree that greeted me in that unfamiliar flat on Christmas Day 2023. If that was the Anna Wintour of Christmas trees, then this one is probably the Dame Edna Everage. And let’s be honest, Dame Edna is the look every decent Christmas tree should aspire to.
I tiptoe up the stairs, balancing the trays precariously as I go. Holly and ivy and tinsel have been draped at random around every photo or painting on the staircase, and right at the top, a combination of all three frames my favourite picture. It’s one I found recently while going through some of Mum’s stuff. It’s of me, Daphne and Mum, huddled up in coats and scarves, in Queen’s Park on Christmas Eve 2011. We’re all mugging cheerfully at the camera, our cheeks pink from the cold, arms flung around each other’s shoulders.
On the wall at the end of the landing, just outside our bedroom, there’s another picture I discovered in the same box. This one’s of Mum and her dad – Grandad Jack – on the beach at Whitley Bay. Mum must be about nineteen. She’s grinning, a towel around her shoulders, while Grandad stands next to her, beaming, his blue eyes twinkling. This photo always
