CHAPTER 13
I hear Seth coming in before I see him. The limousine always makes a heck of a racket pulling up, and as if that wasn’t enough, all the grunting and scraping noises would have attracted our attention anyway. When I go for a peek out of the window, I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing.
Seth is dragging a tree up the garden path. Not just any tree, but the hugest tree I’ve ever seen that wasn’t standing in a forest. The tree dwarfs him. The tree dwarfs the limo. I have no idea how he ever got it in the car to bring home. “Oh good,” he says when Mum opens the door. “I could do with a bit of help.”
“You got us a tree?” She asks, sounding way too happy about it.
“Of course I did, sweetheart,” he says. “It’s the least I can do.”
“It’s a big ‘un, isn’t it?” Mum asks him. “I do hope it’ll fit in the living room.”
“It is rather on the large side,” says Seth. “But it’s Christmas, we’ve got to have a tree.”
“We don’t need a tree,” I say abruptly. I’m standing with my arms crossed inside the door. “We already have a tree, so you can take it back.”
“Kaity, don’t be so silly,” Mum says. “This is a much nicer tree than the one we have. It’ll just fit in the living room window nicely. I always like a big tree.”
That is such a lie. Mum never likes a big tree, or any tree at all for that matter. She doesn’t even like Christmas. She says it’s a load of commercialism and does nothing but add to her stress levels. The whole reason that Dad bought us a tree this year is because she wouldn’t have bothered. But I figure the way to make Mum mad at me and possibly not let Dad come over for Christmas day is by calling her a liar in front of Seth and Pippa so I keep my mouth shut.
Mum stands aside as Seth wrestles the tree through the front door. “You could help him, Kaity,” she says pointedly.
“So could you,” I say to her. “Besides, it’s pointless,” I continue. “It’s not going to fit in the living room, so you may as well save yourself the trouble and leave it outside.”
“Oh, it’ll fit,” Seth says, and his tone of voice is not the nice hoping it will fit kind, but telling me it will fit kind. I don’t like him, and I don’t like his stupid tree. It’s probably seven feet tall. Who needs a tree that big? The one Dad got us is like four feet and that’s perfectly fine.
“What’s wrong with Dad’s tree?” I ask when I realise that they aren’t going to stop getting this massive tree into the house.
“Have you looked at it, Kaity?” Mum asks. “It’s half-dead already. And it’s tiny. Be a dear and go and take it out of the bucket will you, then we can get this lovely one up before dinner.”
Seth grins at her and she smiles sickeningly back at him.
“No,” I say suddenly. “Dad bought that tree. Just this afternoon in case you’ve forgotten. We’re not getting rid of it.”
“Bossy little thing, aren’t you?” Seth says condescendingly.
“Kait, I don’t want that horrible thing in my living room, dropping its pine needles everywhere as it dies long before Christmas. Seth has gone to a lot of trouble to get this lovely healthy-looking giant for us, and me and Pippa appreciate it even if you don’t, don’t we Pips?”
Pippa looks up from where she’s sitting on the sofa and shrugs. “I prefer Daddy’s tree.” Once again, I want to hug her right there and then. I couldn’t have coached her better.
Mum mutters something under her breath and I can tell she’s getting angry now. “Girls, please. Kait, can you go and get your father’s tree out of the bucket right this second, please.”
“No,” I say.
“Fine,” she growls. “I’ll do it my bloody self then, shall I?”
“No, don’t,” I say, feeling suddenly close to tears and trying to will my body not to betray me and cry in front of them over a stupid Christmas tree.
“Look, Kaity, you can be as awkward about this as you want. You can turn the waterworks on as much as you want. You’re the one who loves Christmas so much and wants it to be a happy time so stop making it so difficult. This tree is going in the living room whether you like it or not.”
My eyes are watering and I can see the smug grin on Seth’s face as he stands in the open doorway with his perfect tree.
“Wait, what are you going to do with Dad’s tree?” I ask quietly.
“Oh, I could think of a few things,” Mum mutters mostly to herself. “I don’t care, Kaity,” she says eventually. “Put it in the garden if you want.”
I perk up a bit at that suggestion.
“The back garden,” Mum adds.
“But Mum...”
“No. No ‘but Mum-ing’ me. I’ve had just about enough of this. If your dad had bought us a decent tree then we could keep it. As he bought us a mostly dead, no doubt on clearance sale tree, it can go. If you want to get upset at anyone then get upset at your dad for being as useless at Christmas tree buying as he is at everything else.”
“I like Daddy’s tree,” Pippa says.
“Well, you bloody have it then!” Mum yells at her. “Enough, the pair of you. It’s barely December and I never want to hear about Christmas again. Here.” She picks up Dad’s tree, bucket and all, and shoves it at me. It’s small enough for me to carry by myself. “The pair of you can take this damn thing into the back garden and put it somewhere out of sight. If I see it, I shall pick it up and chuck it in the skip on the way to work, so if you want it, take it. And the pair of you can get out of my sight until you can learn how to treat your mother. And say thank you to Seth for getting us such a nice tree for Christmas.”
Pippa walks over to stand next to me. Seth is grinning at us from the doorway.
“There’s a fairy for the top in the car. I’ll go and get it in a minute and save it for you. You can have the honour of crowning the tree.”
I pointedly ignore him as Pippa and I walk to the back door and get out coats and wellies on.
“How come Mum is so mean?” Pippa asks as we stomp up the back garden path.
“I...” Honestly have no idea how to answer that. “She’s not mean,” I say eventually. “She’s just a bit stressed out I guess. Don’t worry about it too much.”
“But I liked Daddy’s tree better,” Pippa says. “Why couldn’t we have put that big thing in the garden instead of Dad’s?”
“Well, Mum just wants to make Christmas nice for us,” I say. “She thinks the bigger tree is better, even though we know it’s not. We’ll just have to make this one look pretty out here and then we can appreciate it and it’ll be our little secret. It’ll be like our own little tree just for us.”
“Can we leave presents under it?”
“I don’t think we should because they’ll get wet when it rains or snows. We’ll have to put the presents under Seth’s tree, but you and I will still know that our own tree is out here. How does that sound?”
She shrugs.
“And don’t forget that Daddy will be here on Christmas day. It will be like a proper family Christmas again and everything will be great. We won’t even be thinking about the tree then. Besides, maybe Seth will leave before Christmas and then he’ll take the tree with him and we can bring ours back in.”
“You think Seth will be leaving before Christmas?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that to a five-year-old. “Um, I don’t know,” I tell her.
“I wish he would,” she says. “I don’t like him.”
“I know, sweetie,” I say. “I don’t like him either, but Mum likes him and I guess we just have to put up with that for a while. But you just keep remembering that it’s only for a little while and he’ll be gone soon enough and by next Christmas maybe we won’t even remember that he was ever here.” And maybe we can all pretend that this entire horrible year never happened, I think to myself.
“Make sure it doesn’t die before you’ve even got it up properly,” Seth says, making me jump out of my ski
n from where he has appeared on the path that runs alongside our garden.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Just getting the fairy from the car and stretching my legs,” he says. “It’s a lovely place to go for a walk.”
I ignore him until he heads back towards the house.
Ugh. Stretching his legs, yeah right. There’s nowhere to go for a walk around here, just overgrown old fields and a ramshackle allotment. Clearly he had come out to spy on us.
Pippa and I set the tree in its bucket next to the fence. We can’t decorate it until everyone else decorates theirs at the weekend, after the big town Light Up, but I promise her we’ll come out with tinsel and garden lights then.
“And a big star for the top,” she says. “I don’t like that angel that Seth brought.”
“I think it’s a fairy,” I say. “I didn’t even think fairies were supposed to be on Christmas trees.”
Pippa shrugs.
“It’s cold and dark. We should go back inside,” I tell her.
“I like Daddy’s tree,” she says again.
“I know, sweetie. Me too,” I say. “But we’re just going to have to be brave and put up with Seth’s for a while, okay?”
When we get back inside, Mum and Seth are standing in the living room admiring the tree that has taken the place of Dad’s one. Even I have to admit it’s a pretty impressive sight. It’s huge, and fills up the living room window completely. To be honest, it’s the kind of tree I’ve seen in other people’s houses and wished ours looked like that. Well, now it does, even though it was Seth who brought it and it makes my heart hurt because Dad went to all that trouble to get a tree for us, and he probably couldn’t afford it, but he did it anyway. So maybe it wasn’t the best tree in the world, but it’s always the thought that counts, especially at this time of year. It’s like when grandma buys us a present we don’t like; it doesn’t matter that we don’t like the actual thing, what matters is that she was thinking of us and that she went to the trouble to get us anything at all. Like when she always sends the tin of biscuits that Dad is allergic to, and every year Mum tells her that Dad is allergic to them, and every year she forgets and sends them again. Okay, Dad would probably die if he ate one, but the fact that she goes to the effort to go out to the shop and buy them, wrap them and post them off to us is important. That’s what Christmas is all about, not material things like gifts or the size of trees, but the thoughts and feelings behind it.
“Here,” Seth says, springing me back from my thoughts as he thrusts the new fairy in my face. “You can put this on if you want.”
“I don’t want,” I snap. “It’s supposed to be an angel anyway, not a fairy.”
“Who cares, it’s a doll in a dress either way you look at it.”
I roll my eyes. “Christmas isn’t about dolls.”
“I bet you won’t be saying that when you get one on Christmas morning.”
“I’m a little too old for dolls, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know, seems to me you act younger than Pippa when you don’t get what you want. Hey Pips, you want to put the fairy,” he glares at me. “Sorry, I mean the angel, on the top of the tree?”
“I can’t reach,” she says.
“That’s why I’ll lift you up,” he says smiling at her.
She glances at me, as if for confirmation that it’s okay and I nod minutely so Mum or Seth don’t see.
“Okay then,” Pippa says and Seth puts his arms around her waist and hoists her onto his shoulders. She takes the fairy and even on Seth’s shoulders she has to stretch up to sit it on the top branch which is bending over where it touches the ceiling anyway.
I can’t believe Mum just replaced the tree Dad bought with this tree. This tree doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a stupid tree. Usually we all go and get the tree together, and even though we didn’t this year, it still meant something that Dad got us one. Not this stupid man who I don’t want in my house. Him or his perfect giant tree.
The thought makes tears threaten my eyes again and I mutter something about needing the bathroom but I run up to my room instead and throw myself face down on the bed and let the tears come. People underestimate the value of a good cry.