Buch lesen: «Love At Christmas, Actually: The Little Christmas Kitchen / Driving Home for Christmas / Winter's Fairytale»

Chapter One

December 2004

Maybe they’ll be merciful, Megan McAllister thought as she hung Christmas decorations onto the same Christmas tree they’d had every year since she could remember. Old Piney spent the year out in the garden, and was cruelly uprooted every December and brought into the sweltering heat of the living room, with the log fire crackling, almost as a warning of what happened to bad trees. It was starting to look like it was suffering. It wasn’t the only one.

Maybe they’d see it as a Christmas miracle, and look to the kindness and understanding of the people of Bethlehem when she told them. But she doubted it somehow.

She was meant to be off to Cambridge, to read English. She was meant to go off and do great things. She’d only just got her head around the idea of being independent, leaving their little village for a proper town. Leaving Lucas behind. And now…well, none of that really mattered any more, did it?

She paused, looking at the decoration she’d picked up. A red clay hand imprint, heavy and solid, with ‘Megan’s first Christmas’ marker-penned across the front.

Oh shit.

***

‘I don’t want to go, Anna.’

Skye heard her mother’s voice, arguing with her great-aunt. Skye was meant to be in bed, but Auntie Anna tended to let it slide if she was quiet or reading. Anna let a lot of things go for reading. Especially if Skye then recited something impressive from Shakespeare or a Wilde play. Anna was ‘wild for Wilde’, as she loved to say.

‘Darling, it’s important,’ Anna drawled, and Skye could imagine her sucking on her thin black cigarette holder, tracing the edges of her heavily lined lashes.

Her mum used to say Anna was a ‘theatre darling’ and ‘a bit of a cliché’, but Skye didn’t really think it was fair to call someone a cliché just because they enjoyed what they enjoyed. It was like when people called her precocious because she liked exact words and actions. Nothing wrong with that. For the most part, Anna was just eccentric, with her big jewellery and dramatic hand gestures.

‘What’s different now? She summons us and we have to come running? She’s wanted nothing to do with us for ten years, Anna.’

‘You know that’s not true, darling,’ Anna shushed her. They must have been talking about her grandma, Skye realised, because that was the only time her mum and Anna argued. Well, that and the time Skye had snuck into the fridge and had a bite of Anna’s special chocolate brownie that tasted weird, and she’d had to lie down for hours. Mum had been pretty mad about that.

‘Reminding me that you’re acting as her little spy is hardly going to endear me right now,’ Megan said pointedly.

‘She cares, my love, really,’ Anna said gently, and Megan stayed silent. ‘It’s taken ten years for her to reach out, don’t be stubborn and let it take ten more.’

‘You want me to be the bigger person?’ Megan asked.

‘I want you to do this for me,’ Anna said heavily, ‘and I want you to do it for Skye. She needs more people in her life than her mother, an ageing actress and a young queen.’

‘Jeremy’s hardly a queen.’

‘He does drag five nights a week, what else would you call him?’

‘A very talented actor?’

Anna sighed. ‘You and your delicate sensibilities, darling. I do wish you’d stop being such a goody two shoes all the time.’

Megan laughed bitterly. ‘I’m a single mother. My parents disowned me. I’m entirely too dependent on an evening gin and tonic, and I haven’t had a relationship in ten years.’

‘And you’re so bloody saintly about it all.’

‘Would you rather I’d run off and joined a biker gang? Or the circus! That would have been a good story, Skye could be a contortionist by now, or riding elephants for the crowds,’ Megan babbled on. ‘Maybe I would have stopped waxing, become a bearded lady, married the moustached strong man…’

‘Darling, I just meant perhaps you could stop punishing yourself for something that happened ten years ago, and has actually worked out pretty well,’ Anna sighed. ‘You are so very like your mother sometimes.’

Megan gasped. ‘If you’re going to say things like that I hope to hell you’ve made Sangria.’

Skye heard Anna sigh. ‘I made hot toddy instead. Look, I know you take such delight in being indignant and proud all the time, but from one black sheep to another, sometimes it gets a little cold out here.’

Megan was silent, and Skye could imagine her blowing on her drink, the steam curling out and warming her face.

‘I’ll think about it,’ Megan said quietly.

Did her mum want a relationship? Skye had never really questioned their life together, it just was. And what was wrong with a grown-up having a gin and tonic if they wanted it? Her mum was a good mum.

Skye crept back up the stairs and into her room, crawling across the floor to slide into her fort, which was where she did all her Big Detective Thinking. Skye was going to be a private investigator when she grew up, and her fort housed all her tools for the job. The fort was really just strips of old faded pastel print sheets Megan had sewn together, decorated with fairy lights and turned into a tipi. Skye loved it.

She supposed her life looked strange to other people. Certainly to Britney and Chanel and that group of girls at school that always wanted to know why she didn’t have a dad. When kids came round to the house, they always used to ask if Jeremy was her dad. Sometimes she said yes. When he babysat her, back when Mum used to work nights and Anna was at the theatre, Jeremy would let her play with his glittery make-up, and curl her hair up so she looked like Shirley Temple. The problem with saying Jeremy was her dad was that eventually all her friends fell in love with him, because he had this silky blond hair, and bright blue eyes, and this lovely smile that made everyone smile back.

Besides, it was wrong to lie. Her real dad was a nice enough man that wasn’t good at being a dad, but that was okay, because Mum was very good at being a mum. That’s what Anna said, anyway. Skye knew there was more to it than that. She knew that her mum was prettier and smarter and younger than all the other parents. That her friends’ dads used to act weird around her mum, and the mums never invited her to the PTA. But it didn’t matter, because her mum would always find out where the bake sale was, or the fundraiser, and always turn up with homemade cookies or a donation, and then disappear again, never saying a word.

‘Hey, cheeky monkey, aren’t you meant to be asleep?’ Megan came in, eyebrows raised.

Her mum was beautiful, Skye thought. She had this warm brown hair that fell to her shoulders, and hazel eyes, and a little diamond that sparkled in her nose. Skye thought she’d never be as beautiful as her mum.

‘Anna said it was okay if I was reading.’

‘What are you reading then?’ Her mum sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her tipi. Skye stuck her hand out, book displayed.

‘Animal Farm?’ Megan exclaimed, then shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know why I’m surprised any more.’

‘Jeremy said it would make me a politician, and he thought I would make the world a better place,’ Skye shrugged, ‘but to be honest, it just makes me think we’re right to eat bacon.’

‘Smart call, girlie,’ Megan grinned. ‘Want to read some to me? In bed?’

‘Anna says you’re entirely lacking in subtlety,’ Skye informed her, crawling out of her tipi and jumping under her duvet.

‘I don’t need to be subtle. I’m your mum. It’s my job to tell you what to do.’

‘For how long?’

‘Until you’re better at making decisions than I am?’

‘Two years?’ Skye grinned, baring her teeth.

‘You’re lucky you’re cute, you know.’ Megan cuddled in close, tucking her daughter’s long brown hair behind an elfin ear. ‘But you’re not wrong.’

Before long, Skye’s eyes were closing, weighed down and heavy even though she wanted to keep reading. She felt warm arms around her, cushions and blankets rearranged and tucked in, and her mother’s voice saying the same words she’d said every night since Skye could remember.

‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.’

***

November 2004

‘You’re looking fat, M,’ Belinda said, stuffing chips down her throat, barely chewing.

Megan looked down; her jeans were a little tight, creating a red crease along her middle.

‘I thought breakups were meant to make you lose weight. Or are you already over Lucas?’

‘B, how about you don’t speak with your mouth full, so that I don’t feel like I’m a victim of a terrible potato storm.’ Megan pursed her lips. ‘And when you do speak, you can stop talking such utter shite.’

‘So you weren’t getting off with Joey Monroe at the party a few weeks ago?’ Belinda grinned like the vindictive bitch she was, so pleased to finally tear Megan down. ‘You weren’t upstairs in his room for hours?’

‘You think Joey could last for hours? Get a life, B.’ Megan rolled her eyes.

‘What, not much in comparison to Lukey?’

Megan rounded on her. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you picking on me?’

‘Because you’re always the good girl who gets everything she wants, and Lucas doesn’t want you any more. There’s some justice in that.’

Megan knew Belinda wanted Lucas, she always had. She remembered all the times Belinda had invited herself along on dates, wanted to talk through their relationship in detail, wanted to be as involved as possible. She was overjoyed when Megan and Lucas called it off, chasing him down the second she heard. She’d spent the last few weeks curled around him in corridors. It was hard to tell if Lucas liked Belinda too; Megan was having a hard time making eye contact with him these days.

‘You fancy Lucas,’ she stated.

‘And he’s not with you any more,’ Belinda said triumphantly.

‘He’s still my best friend, B. We’re still in the band together, we’re still in each other’s lives. If you think you’re going to get anywhere with him, you’re wrong.’

Belinda grinned. ‘Who says I haven’t already? You weren’t the only one up in a bedroom at Joey’s party.’ She flounced off, her stupidly bouncy hair moving dramatically as she departed.

Megan felt sick. Sure, things with Lucas had become a little…weird. But he was her best friend. They’d been in each other’s lives since they were kids. There was no way…but if there was, then maybe it was time to see Joey again, to try and make it clear to Lucas that she didn’t care at all.

Her heart sank, and she knew she was a liar. She cared. She definitely cared.

***

‘So I have some news,’ Megan had told Skye that morning on the walk to school. ‘We’re going to do something different for Christmas this year.’

Skye tilted her head at her mother. ‘Disneyland?’

‘Sadly not,’ Megan said, thinking she’d much rather do that. ‘We’re going to spend it with your grandparents.’

Once she’d said it, nothing really changed. A weight wasn’t lifted, all her anger wasn’t dissipated. She hadn’t reached the acceptance stage of grief. Anna had said that her mum wanted to see her, that Heather McAllister had finally realised life was short. Well, it was short, too short to spend with people you didn’t love at Christmas. Too short to sit around hearing endlessly about how she’d wasted her life. And how were they going to be with Skye?

A small part of her longed for home. For the big worn-down dining room table they’d all squished around. The real fire her dad would make in the living room, where everyone bundled onto sofas and cushions on the floor, marvelling at the tree, drinking tea and eating Christmas cake, exhausted and elated.

‘But what about Anna? Is she coming too?’ Skye asked.

Megan smiled gently, stroked her long brown hair, looked at her serious face. That was Skye, always worrying about who was left out and how people might feel. Maybe she’d get home and her parents would say how good a job she’d done of raising a smart, wonderful girl. And if they didn’t, they could go to hell, because they were wrong.

‘She wants to have a Christmas party with her theatre friends this year, doll.’ Megan squeezed Skye’s hand to let her know the next part was secret information, it was their code. ‘Between you and me, I think a lot of Anna’s friends are getting a little old and weary, and she wants to spend some quality time with them.’

Skye nodded slowly, then paused. ‘But you don’t want to go to grandma’s.’

‘I guess you could say I’m a little nervous.’

‘And angry,’ Skye added.

‘And angry,’ Megan confirmed, ‘but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have grandparents. It’s lovely to have them. And uncle Matty will be there, and he has a kid now. So you’d get to know your cousin too.’

She was hard-selling, she knew. She might as well promise her a pony. Skye had never particularly wanted for a family, as far as she knew. They had Anna, and Jeremy, the reams of elderly debutantes who arrived with sparkling gifts for ‘the little darling’.

‘What’s my cousin called?’

‘Jasper, I think. I’m pretty sure they went with Jasper over Reginald.’

‘Are they rich or something?’ Skye asked.

‘I have no idea,’ Megan lied, thinking of the embossed wedding invitation that came in a silk-lined box, with Swarovski diamonds around the edges. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Because names can be signs of socio-economic status,’ Skye said proudly.

‘So…sometimes rich people have posh names?’ Megan raised an eyebrow. ‘You just wanted to use the words socio-economic in a sentence.’

‘Yup,’ Skye grinned, swinging her hands back and forth.

‘What on earth are they teaching you in that school?’

‘Boring stuff. I learned that from Jeremy. He was talking about the boys he went to school with, and they all had strange names. So I asked.’

‘It’s good to be curious,’ Megan said, thinking perhaps Megan better not get all of her information on society from an embittered drag queen. ‘So, we’re on board for Grandma and Granddad’s?’

Skye shrugged, trying not to seem pleased. ‘If it doesn’t work out, next year we could go to Disneyland?’

Megan stopped and held out her hand to Skye. ‘Deal.’ They shook on it.

As Megan waved goodbye to Skye’s retreating back at the school gates, and watched as the other mothers eyed her, as if she’d suddenly sprout horns and do a sexy tribal dance around their husbands, she wondered whether this was the right idea. There was going to be shouting this Christmas. No doubt. Maybe they’d fight their way through it, come out the other end. But probably not. Megan had images of her mother’s mouth turning down in derision, in that way that it did, and her father shrugging sadly, never a word to defend her. She’d flounce out, drag Skye along, and then it was all done.

Was she going to have to call her mother to confirm she was coming? No, if she wanted them there, she could call. Or even better, Anna could call. Or send an invitation in the mail. Or an email. Or a carrier pigeon. Whatever, as long as she didn’t have to talk to her before Christmas day.

Anna walked up the road from St Joseph’s school, and around the corner to a little annexe building, technically still a part of the school.

She buzzed herself in, striding down the hall to her office. Well, the office she shared with Dezi, Molly and Simon. And ‘office’ was a bit of a stretch. A large dingy room with a few desks and computers, papers and files piled high in every direction, toys and charts and all manner of props chucked in the corners. Systematically, every term, they reorganised everything, but it always seemed to end up in this state of chaos around November time.

‘Morning!’ Megan announced herself, pausing to tap Molly on the shoulder, and sign out her greeting, mouthing the words. Molly was an excellent lip reader, and didn’t really need Megan’s average signing skills, but she wanted to keep practising.

‘Morning,’ Molly replied with a smile. ‘Want to do some training over lunch?’

Her hands moved so quickly that Megan always needed a second to catch up, and felt she must be making that face she made when trying to do complicated maths questions.

Megan nodded. ‘Meet you at one.’

She walked over to Dezi, who was slumped face down on her desk. ‘Heavy night?’

‘I’m going to die alone,’ a voice mumbled.

‘Because you’re too busy getting painfully drunk to actually interact with people?’ Megan offered, putting her lunch in the flickering mini fridge they had in the poor excuse for a kitchen corner, and clicking the kettle on.

‘As opposed to using your child as an emotional shield so no- one can ever get close?’ Dezi glared.

‘I’m too old to date. It probably involves some new-fangled technology and I don’t need anyone. I’m happy on my own.’ Megan had said this to Dezi so many times it was starting to sound fake. But it wasn’t her fault if her colleague couldn’t comprehend the idea.

‘Well, someone’s getting a vibrator for Christmas,’ Dezi said seriously, and even wrote it down on a post-it note.

‘Megan! Good morning!’ Simon strode over, files in hand, his blond hair flopping over as he walked. He grinned at her, handing her some papers. ‘You’re working with Amrita this morning, right? I just had a few notes.’ He gestured to a table.

‘I bet he does,’ Dezi mumbled, lifting her head up briefly enough to roll her eyes at Megan.

Simon always had notes. Great, long notes written out in his chicken-scratch handwriting, that he would make them wait around for him to decipher. It also didn’t help that he’d decided being an academic meant dressing like a granddad. His elbow patches were not ironic. Megan was pretty sure he’d painstakingly searched for an original tweed jacket, as he wore it with such pride, unaware that the youth of today could find the same thing in Primark.

‘Some notes would be great, Simon,’ Megan smiled, then gestured towards the kettle. ‘Shall I make us both a cuppa and we can have a chat about them?’

Simon seemed to light up at the prospect, becoming all awkward and rattling, the same way he was anytime Megan showed him some kindness. It was accepted in the office by this point that Simon had a little ‘thing’ for her. Dezi insisted it was all-out love, Molly thought it was a crush. She thought…well, she just kind of wished he’d find someone else to focus on and let her get on with her work. It was uncharitable of her, she realised, and promised herself she’d get Simon a really nice gift for Christmas. Nothing too nice, obviously, just in case he took it as a sign.

Megan was a speech and language therapist for the kids at St Joseph’s, and a couple of the other neighbouring schools. She found it hilarious that those mothers who judged her at the school gates had no idea that she was qualified and actually helping their children. They’d seen her walk into the centre, but probably thought she was there to seduce one of the male teachers and make him her Baby Daddy. Not that she cared what they thought.

Megan loved her job. She loved the look of surprise when the kids could suddenly make a sound or say a word they’d never been able to say before. Even the smallest success, a ‘bl’ sound for ‘blue’, or being able to blow through a whistle, all these were massive achievements for the kids, and she loved seeing the change in them.

Half the time she worked on helping the partially deaf kids sound out words, hear themselves. The rest of it she was working with Molly, prepping the kids who were going to have cochlear implants so they could hear for the first time, and helping them after as they learned how to use their vocal cords as well as signing.

The day passed quickly enough, and Megan couldn’t help but wonder what her parents would think of her job. She couldn’t even remember what she wanted to be back then. The plan had always been to go to Cambridge, do English, but mostly that was just because she loved reading, and her parents had decided they wanted an Oxbridge graduate. In many ways, that extra couple of years to consider what she wanted to spend her life doing, how she wanted to provide for her daughter, helped her make the right decision. Every decision she’d made since getting pregnant had been the right one. Except, maybe, deciding to go to her parents’ for Christmas.

***

November 2004

London looked beautiful in the run-up to Christmas. She’d been tempted to make a day of it, go to see the lights on Oxford Street, wander around Selfridges. Maybe even go down to Somerset House and see the ice-skating rink. She and Lucas had done that last year. Every year, now she thought about it. He loved stupid stuff like that. Had absolutely no qualms about throwing away his rock ’n’ roll persona and being silly with her. But it was too painful to think about Lucas right now, probably off somewhere with Belinda. Maybe he was doing all that stuff with her. Maybe he’d lent her his leather jacket and held her hand as they slid across the ice, laughing and smiling. The thought was just too much, and for the hundredth time that week, she wanted to vomit. She knew she’d caused all of this.

All she wanted was to do the normal Christmas stuff in town, find little trinkets for her mum, go to Forbidden Planet and pick up something Matty would get overly excited about. But instead she was squatting above a grotty toilet in Euston station with a third pregnancy test.

Three tests. Three positives.

Merry fucking Christmas, Megan McAllister thought.

***

That night, Anna was having one of her soirées. Around this time of year, Megan always got a bit withdrawn, throwing herself into work and present-buying, and ensuring that her daughter had the best Christmas ever. Anna was insistent that it was time for Christmas cheer.

‘It’s not even December until next week,’ Megan moaned, sitting at the kitchen counter, throwing an apple from the fruit bowl over to Skye. ‘And aren’t you having all your old biddies over on Christmas day? Isn’t that why we’re being banished?’

Anna was an imposing figure at the best of times. She’d always been slim and tall, but was starting to verge on spindly these days. Megan kept trying to sneak her extra portions of food, but Anna had the same rules about food now as she’d always had. Little, but luxurious. ‘The French know how to eat, darling,’ she always said. Although that usually meant that she wanted an excuse to open a bottle of champagne with dinner, just because it was a Tuesday.

She raised a perfectly arched, and drawn on, eyebrow, her sharp cut dark bob fitting her face tightly. ‘Biddies? If you mean some of the most prominent and talented people ever to grace the stage, then yes, darling, they are experienced.’

Anna moved to the bar in the far corner of the kitchen, the only part she seemed to use frequently, and started making two gin and tonics. ‘And don’t think of it as banishment. Your mother wants you there, wants you both there.’

Skye jumped up on the stool next to her mother. ‘I’m excited about Christmas.’

‘You are?’ Megan raised an eyebrow.

Skye shrugged. ‘Well yeah, if it’s good then we have a great time. If it sucks, we go to Disneyland. It’s win-win.’