She is overwhelmed by guilt. ‘I lied to you, Dad, do you know that? I lied! I don’t know why but I lied.’
He pulls the car over to the verge. Amy twists round in her seat to cry on her father’s shoulder. Damp spots blotch his shirt.
‘I’m sorry, Dad, I did walk across the common. Mum was right all along.’
For several minutes, he holds his blubbing daughter.
When she is calm, he says: ‘Better now, Amy?’ He starts the engine. ‘By the way. I’ve got a girlfriend.’
Christmas Day is dominated by absent women; Shirley and her father’s ‘girlfriend’. Amy tries to imagine her mother is sitting at the table eating turkey and potatoes and stuffing. She thought people exaggerated when they said they couldn’t remember what their dead relative or friend looked like – how could they forget a loved one’s face? But now she knows it is true; she cannot summon Shirley’s face. Instead the shadowy and nondescript presence of ‘the other woman’ is palpable.
‘Look, I’ve found it!’
Her father’s cream-coated fingers wave a silver shilling, the coin her mother hid in the Christmas pudding every year. It appalls Amy that he can take such pleasure in the absurd ritual but she also senses he wants to impress ‘the other woman’ even though she is not present.
‘Where does Caesar keep his armies?’ Her father insists they pull the Christmas crackers. Thankfully he ignores the paper hats. Amy assumes that’s because he fears looking silly when he has his girlfriend on his mind.
‘Go on, Amy. Where does Caesar keep his armies?’
‘I don’t know, Dad. Tell me.’
‘Go on, guess,’ he urges, starting to laugh. His mirth is unbearable. It suggests he is light-hearted; how can that be?
It was only later when watching Morecambe and Wise on television that her feelings turn to fury. She cuts her father a piece of the fruit cake she made. Every few days since November she has dutifully dripped leftover beer into holes made in the cake’s surface. Now she can’t stop thinking that while she was doing this, thinking about him, he was leering over another woman, thinking about someone else. Her mother’s ashes were barely cooled. It is all Amy can do not to throw the cake at him. Instead she flounces off to bed. Despite her anger, she falls asleep immediately.
Her first thought on waking next morning is that she’s late for milking. Then she remembers where she is.
On Boxing Day, they eat leftovers for lunch, then walk in the woods. Afterwards, John leaves in his car without saying where he is going. She does not ask. At six o’clock the car pulls up at the house. She watches from her bedroom window as her father checks himself in the mirror, perhaps wiping lipstick from his collar. He springs from the car.
Later they watch the Old Grey Whistle Test on television, something she cannot do at the farm as there is no reception. His foot taps to the music.
The next day passes in a similar way. They have breakfast, take a walk, boil up the turkey bones for soup and eat supper. Then John leaves in the car.
Amy decides she will make bread. Searching in the cupboards, she finds the round baking tin Shirley used for baking birthday cakes. Squatting back on her heels, she examines its discoloured base. There’s a tiny piece of burnt cake on the rim. She chips it off with her finger nail and lets the hard crumb dissolve on her tongue; it is still sweet.
All the cakes Shirley made for her over the years. Plain sponge with pink icing, chocolate cakes with cream filling, and once a fruit cake that Amy didn’t like. She’s ashamed to remember that she flew into a tantrum. And when she was fifteen, Amy put in a special request for coffee and walnut cake. It sounded so sophisticated and Amy’s friends came and… Tears overwhelm her. Amy pushes the tin to the back of the cupboard. She and her father can eat sliced bread.
Later, she wanders into the back garden but it’s like a parade ground. Plants cut back hard like they’ve had an over-zealous haircut.
Her father arrives back before seven o’clock with take-away rice and curry. They eat in front of the television. Amy goes upstairs to read. She can hear him downstairs, humming as he washes up the beer glasses.
On the fourth day, she blurts out at breakfast: ‘I want to meet her.’
‘Meet who?’ her father says innocently. ‘Your friend. What’s her name?’
‘Vi. But why so you want to meet her?’
‘Because she’s obviously making you happy.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘You seem happy.’
‘I mean, are you sure you want to meet her?’ Amy does not answer.
Her father sighs. ‘Have you got anything you could wear?’
He is irritating when he is not direct; she wishes he’d say that he hates her second-hand clothes bought at jumble sales, her ‘granny dresses’, her thick tights, her clogs.
‘This is all I’ve brought. I don’t have money for clothes,’ she snaps.
‘If you had a proper job, you would be able to afford them,’ he replies coolly. ‘What about your place at secretarial college? You’ve missed that for this year. Are you going to try again for the spring intake? I fetched an application form in case you want to complete it while you’re home.’ He waves it at her.
‘I don’t want to.’ She sounds like a petulant child. ‘Alright, I’ll look at it…soon.’
Outside, a young couple walk by. Their voices are animated, they are in a hurry. The woman wears a matching hat and scarf, perhaps a present from the man.
Her father is still talking. ‘You’ll need a job. You can’t live at that farm for the rest of your life, you know. How are you going to earn a living? Is that David going to marry you? There’s no talk of that I suppose?’
‘Drop it, Dad. We don’t talk about that sort of thing. We’re happy the way we are.’
‘I bet he is. Living in
