A stranger stays her arm. ‘Steady there, love!’ urges the woman. Amy forces down the window and cranes her head out. Tears whip away as the train gathers speed. Already the station crowd has merged into an indistinct mass and her mother, or the person she thought was her mother, has disappeared.
‘You alright love?’ The woman is still holding her arm. ‘You got no shoes on. Where are they, love? Should I call the conductor?’
‘No, no, leave me alone, will you? I’m sorry…’
Indifferent to the tears that are rolling down her cheeks, Amy makes her way back to her seat. On the way, she stops to help an elderly woman who is struggling to lift her case into the rack. Back at her seat, Amy wraps a jumper around her head and weeps.
Last night was bizarre. Seymour had arrived at the farm after nine o’ clock, banging through the door in his usual way, bags in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. He was trailed by Stella who was hidden by an enormous bunch of glitter-sprayed branches.
‘We knew it,’ Seymour said grandly. Plonking everything on the floor, he wriggled a thigh-high brass urn, a treasure from his great-grandfather’s travels in the Far East, into the middle of the room. ‘Christmas Eve tomorrow and the tree’s still not dressed. Voila, decorations commence!’
Tiny golden bows had been twisted along the branches and glinted in the firelight. As Stella knelt to arrange them in the urn, her ruby-red dress pooled round her like blood.
‘A modern version of Christmas! Isn’t Stella clever? Now the whole room will be bedecked. Look what I’ve brought!’
Seymour whipped out boxes of fairy lights.
‘Drape these lights anywhere you like, Maggie my dear. I’ll pour us a drink.’
‘I will… in a minute.’ Maggie was drying her hair by the fire. The champagne popped with a sibilant sound.
‘You might have to tighten the bulbs to make them work,’ he said, handing her a glass.
‘I know what to do, you know. I have helped my mother decorate for Christmas before,’ Maggie was irritated. The man always had to be centre of attention.
Seymour ignored her. ‘It’s a great shame you won’t all be here for Christmas. Now, where are the boys? It’s time to celebrate!’
When Maggie didn’t reply, Amy said: ‘They’ve gone to the pub with Bob and Helen. Suspect they’ll be back soon. You two must be hungry. Shall we eat? I’ve made some soup.’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ Seymour followed her into the kitchen. ‘I’ve brought some Italian nibbles, if you’re tempted. Prosciutto, salami, a piece of dolcelatta, focaccia and panettone… ’
The boys had not returned by the time they’d finished eating. It briefly crossed Amy’s mind it would have been nice to spend her last night before Christmas with David. But Seymour was so entertaining with his stories of ‘nightmare models’ that she wasn’t bothered.
After the second bottle of champagne, the four of them pushed back the furniture and started to dance. Maggie had recovered her spirits and flung herself about in her usual way. In a dramatic response to Marc Bolan’s insisting they should ‘Get it On’, she accidentally knocked over ‘the tree’. Insisting it was nothing, Seymour knelt down beside Stella to re-arrange the fallen branches.
That was when Amy noticed what the low light failed to hide and what she only remembered later when David woke her up as he crashed into bed. Seymour’s hand under the sheath of Stella’s hair, his fingers trailing softly down the girl’s velvet-clad bottom. That was puzzling enough. What was even more perplexing was realising she felt a twinge of jealousy.
The train pulls into the station. Her father’s car is parked by the kerb. He leans from the driver’s seat to open the passenger door, just as he had in June when he picked her up here.
She would never forget his bizarre turn of phrase. As she’d settled in the car, he had taken her hand and said: ‘Your mother has joined little Jesus.’
The way he told her that Shirley had died.
Gingerly she opens the door. He says: ‘It’s lovely to see you, Amy. How are you?’
He’s wearing a shirt she’s not seen before. He’s had a haircut. She can smell he is wearing aftershave. He does not usually wear aftershave.
‘Hi Dad. Good to see you too. You look well.’
‘I’m fine, you know, considering. Train trip okay?’
‘Yes, no problem. Thanks for the ticket money, Dad.’ He starts the engine.
‘I was thinking, Dad, do we need to buy the food for tomorrow?
We don’t have to eat turkey if it feels a bit…’
‘It’s sorted, darling. I’ve bought the food and all the trimmings.’
‘Really? Alright then.’
They do not speak as they drive home. In her family this is not unusual and it is something she appreciates today. The silence gives her a chance to prepare for arriving at the house, the first time she’s been back since Shirley died. Will her father have put up a Christmas tree?
John does not take the usual route for that would mean going past the funeral parlour. Instead he drives by the common, a gorse-covered piece of land crisscrossed with footpaths. Sometimes she walked back from school that way. Memories of the pineapple smell of the flowers on early summer days flood back.
‘Do you remember that incident, Dad, the man who flashed at a young girl walking on the common?’
‘I do. He was caught by the police. Local, wasn’t he? Your mother got worried about you walking home alone after that. Insisted you come home on the bus.’
‘And that day she found mud on my shoes and accused me of walking on the common. And you stuck up for me. Do you remember?’ Amy reaches over to touch her father’s shoulder. ‘I appreciated that, you
