He homed in and gave her a peck on the cheek, his lips dry and cool as they grazed her skin. She inhaled his familiar Armani aftershave and for a moment she was tempted to grasp hold of him, to be back where everything was familiar, but she steeled herself. Just because something was familiar and easy didn’t mean it was good for you, and besides, she’d done the hardest bit, the actual leaving, and look how far she’d come. No, there was no going back. Still, she acknowledged as he took a step back and ruffled Noah’s hair, it was sad how it had all worked out. They’d both gone into their marriage full of hope and look where they were now.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said as Noah wrapped himself around his father’s legs. There was a time Colin would have been irritated by his son’s playful affection but since they’d separated, he seemed to appreciate these gestures more. There was always a silver lining, Rosin mused, and she smiled back at him. He hadn’t needed to say that, he was making an effort and so would she. ‘The tree’s a beauty.’
‘Mummy wanted the biggest we could find.’
But it was going to be hard.
Chapter 3
‘Noah if you shake that any more whatever is inside the wrapping paper will be in a million little pieces by the time you get to open it.’
Noah looked at his mother, the frustration evident on his face and she felt a tug on her heartstrings. ‘Could he not just open one before lunch, Colin?’ she whispered, watching him pick up another parcel. ‘We don’t need to tell Elsa.’
Colin looked at her aghast. Her ex-husband was a rule breaker in the business world where he seemed to think they didn’t apply to him but when it came to the rules laid down by his mother, he might as well have been the same age as his son.
Roisin sighed and managed to inject some steel in her tone. ‘Put it down, Noah.’
He did so, sitting back on his haunches and crossing his arms sulkily.
‘Colin, can you get the door for me?’ Elsa’s voice trilled from the hallway and Colin moved toward it. She appeared with a tray, upon which three steaming goblets of mulled wine, a stick of cinnamon peeking over each of the rims, were perched along with an orange juice for Noah. It was proper juice with bits in it which for some strange reason was his favourite.
‘Elsa, let me take that for you.’ Roisin remembered her manners.
‘I can manage, thank you.’ She placed the tray down on the coffee table. ‘But you could be a dear and go and get the mince pies for me. There’s a plate on the worktop in the kitchen.’
‘Of course. Noah, you’re not to wander about with that juice, do you hear me?’ His sulk over the presents was forgotten and he nodded as Elsa perched down on the sofa next to Colin. She left them to it and headed up the hallway, the walls of which were adorned with photographs of Colin at varying ages. She paused as she always did to smirk up at the last one, taken in his final year at high school. His face was spotty with adolescence and he looked like he was being strangled by his school tie. It was his hair that made her laugh though. It was hard to imagine her husband had ever idolised anybody other than himself but in that old pic he was rocking his curly mullet and had clearly been a fan of Hall & Oates. A tiny sign of rebellion because she was betting Elsa had pestered him day and night to get to the barber shop for a short back and sides. Colin’s dad had passed away when he was small and she used to wonder what Colin would have been like if Elsa had had someone else to fuss over in their family dynamic.
She pulled herself away from the photograph and followed her nose into the kitchen which despite the preparations was in an orderly state with neatly stacked dishes. It was the opposite of the last Christmas spent in Dublin two years ago now when the dishes had haphazardly been piled so high, an avalanche of china was a very real threat. There’d been the usual arguing over who’d been put in charge of the roasty potatoes and who’d left the cabbage stewing. She could hear Moira proclaiming the pot of boiled greens smelt like a urinal and the memory made her grin. Mammy had thwacked her with the wooden spoon for that one.
She might not be a fan of goose but it did smell good and as she inhaled her tummy rumbled. The potatoes she saw, lifting a lid off one of the pots on the stove, were waiting to be parboiled before being tossed in the goose fat and cooked until they’d transformed into crunchy roast taties. The Brussel sprouts were ready to be put on along with the carrots and peas. Colin was terrible on the baby cabbages but it wasn’t her that would have to put up with the aftermath all evening, not this year. The thought buoyed her and she picked up the mince pies, homemade of course with a dusting of icing sugar over the top of them, and carried them back through to the front room.
Noah was just hanging the last of his special decorations on the tree and as she stood in the doorway he began entertaining his granny and daddy with tales about Beyoncé the gerbil. He lived vicariously through Charlotte when it came to that gerbil of hers, she thought, wavering on her stance of not buying him
