The next thing was the complex task of bringing the kitchen table into the living room. Drew and Jessica took an end each, and by twisting and tilting it, they got it through the two doorways. A gleaming white damask tablecloth was produced, and the cutlery laid out. Jessica disappeared, only to return holding a creation made of pine cones, baubles, beads, ribbons and gold-sprayed evergreens. A red candle stuck up from the middle of it.
‘Your centrepiece!’ Stephanie cried. ‘It’s fabulous!’
Everybody clustered round to admire it, repositioning glasses, mats and tablespoons to accommodate it. The candle was lit, and the table deemed ready for the ceremonial presentation of the turkey, along with plates, bowls and dishes containing all the necessary accoutrements. Thea wiped the sweat from her brow, and let Drew take over the carving.
As with the presents, so with the food. It was all gone in no time, with the unsightly wreckage stacked uncomfortably on all the kitchen worktops. ‘I’ll need that table back again before long,’ said Thea.
‘Shouldn’t somebody be taking the dog out?’ Jessica asked.
‘Feel free,’ invited her mother. ‘After you’ve done the washing-up, of course.’
‘I love you too,’ said Jessica.
At Crossfield, Ant and Digby were making very little effort to celebrate Christmas. Everything felt wrong. They could barely even be civil to each other, with the undercurrents and anxieties making them both sharp-tempered. Poor Percy found the situation increasingly worrying. Nothing was going as usual. His devoted mistress was absent for much too long. People came and went, leaving the atmosphere even worse than before. He hadn’t had a decent walk for days, and when he tried to encourage Ant to play a ball game with him, the response was chilling. And he had a sore foot. Nobody had noticed that he was constantly licking at it, to the point where pink skin was now showing through. He’d scarcely noticed when the damage had first been done, but now it was getting more painful every day.
Ant was impossibly restless, roaming the house like a small child searching for his mother. He went into her bedroom, with the vague idea of finding a clue as to her whereabouts. Standing by the bed, he tried to form a telepathic link with her. Where are you, Mum? he thought, forming the words silently on his lips. What have you gone and done?
Something was different in the room, he slowly realised. There was a gap where there shouldn’t be one. Seconds later he was downstairs again, confronting his father. ‘Aldebaran’s ashes have gone!’ he shouted. ‘What’s happened to them?’
Digby blinked up at him from his customary chair. ‘What? What do you mean, gone?’
‘They’re not there. The shelf is empty. They’ve gone.’
‘Never. They never have.’
‘Go and see for yourself. You’re telling me you don’t know where they are?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea where they are. I haven’t touched them, if that’s what you mean. Your mother must have moved them to somewhere else. Maybe she found them upsetting, sitting there like that.’ The elderly man was thinking more quickly now. ‘That’ll be it. She’ll have put them in a cupboard somewhere. They won’t have gone, as you put it. We went to too much trouble to get them for that to happen.’
It was true that there had been a wealth of paperwork, expense and argument before they could take possession of Ant’s sister’s remains. They had been transported across the Atlantic by special courier and submitted to intense scrutiny by the British customs people. There had even been an article in the newspaper about the whole exercise, when Beverley decided to make the matter public in an attempt to highlight the insane levels of bureaucracy.
‘I’ll find them if so,’ said Ant, who proceeded to ransack every cupboard in the house. Twenty minutes later he reported that they were definitely nowhere on the premises.
‘Well, it’s a mystery to me,’ said Digby crossly. ‘Now can we have something Christmassy, do you think? I got you this, look.’ He thrust a badly wrapped parcel into his son’s hands.
‘Oh! I nearly forgot. Hang on a minute.’ He went to the slightly crooked Christmas tree that had been part of his own stock, and sifted through the modest pile of parcels at its foot. ‘Here,’ he announced finally, proffering a small item wrapped in sparkly gold paper.
Each man unwrapped his present with an air of going through a wholly irrelevant ritual. ‘Hope it’s not a gold necklace,’ Digby muttered.
‘Very funny.’ Ant was holding up a cellophane pack containing a pair of trousers that appeared to be old-fashioned moleskins. ‘Great, Dad! Thanks very much. Just what I was needing.’
‘That’s good. There’s more, look.’ There were two T-shirts still inside the wrapping, one blue and one black. ‘Should be the right size.’
Ant held them up against himself. ‘Perfect,’ he said. Then he watched his father picking carefully at his own present, intent on keeping the paper from getting torn. It was a family joke the way Digby still kept paper of every sort to be used again. ‘I can’t help it,’ he would say. ‘My mother drilled it into us from infancy.’
Finally, a leather pouch was revealed, and from inside that Digby extracted a penknife made of something dark brown and a large compass in a silver case. ‘I got them in a junk shop in Cirencester,’ Ant said. ‘The knife’s made of Bakelite. It’s very unusual.’
Digby opened the knife and inspected the blade with his thumb. ‘Nice and sharp,’ he approved. Then he examined the compass. ‘For when I go yomping about on the wolds, I suppose? Lovely case.’
‘It’s solid silver. Nineteen-o-six, according to the hallmark.’
‘Beautiful. Thanks, son.’ He seemed genuinely moved, blinking rapidly and shaking his head. ‘Very thoughtful. You know I’ve got a thing about Bakelite.’
‘I do.’ Digby’s collection of unlikely objects made of the early form of plastic was arranged on a shelf in his bedroom, along with old radios made of the
