The morning sped past in a blizzard of presents and wrapping paper, chocolates and glasses of Buck’s Fizz, and Juliet was glad to escape into the kitchen for most of it, her nerves steadied by her countdown list and every single one of her mother’s pans.
The Frankenstein poultry aside, it wasn’t the most complicated meal she’d catered – a roast for five adults, a toddler and three dogs – but it was the most satisfying to dish up, even if the potatoes were a bit over-crisp and the carrots wouldn’t have passed Kim’s al dente test.
‘That is the best. Christmas. Dinner. Ever,’ said Peter, pushing his chair away from the table after the final helping of trifle. He patted his flat stomach appreciatively.
‘To the chef,’ said Louise, raising her glass.
‘And absent friends,’ added Diane quickly, and Juliet raised her glass too. She was drinking apple juice. She didn’t really want to get weepy today, and having to drive the van back was a convenient excuse.
‘Time for a nap, I think,’ said Eric, putting his napkin on the table.
‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ said Diane. ‘We’ve got to call Ian! In Australia!’
‘So we have,’ Eric heavily. ‘In that case, I’ll just go next door and start tidying the living room.’ As he squeezed past Juliet, he gave her a friendly wink, which she pretended not to see, in return for him not drawing attention to the roast potato she was feeding Minton under the table.
While Juliet and Diane had been clearing the remains of the meal, and Louise coaxed Toby to have a nap in his travel cot, Peter had brought Diane’s laptop down from her study (previously the spare room) upstairs and had set it up on the television, for the full-screen effect. It had taken him a suspiciously long time – nearly the entire time that Diane, Louise and Juliet had been locked in a tedious discussion of various relatives – but now the laptop was ready for the ceremonial Christmas message from Ian.
Juliet heard the Skype tone ringing first, because she’d been standing shivering in the garden, supervising a three-dog loo break, and was in the process of sneaking into the sitting room for a rifle through the Quality Street.
‘Mum! Louise!’ she yelled. ‘Ian’s ringing!’
She clicked on the green pick-up button and Ian’s face appeared on the television. He was even more tanned, and had lost some more hair since last time, but his polo shirt was virtually bulging with Antipodean good health. Juliet couldn’t help noticing that he’d set up the Skype so there was a magnificent view of the beach in the background. Was it too late to turn their camera away from their lopsided Christmas tree? she wondered.
‘Hey, Juliet! How’s it going?’ he asked, in a ridiculous Aussie twang.
‘Give over, Ian, you’re not in Neighbours,’ she said cheerfully.
‘And a merry Christmas to you too,’ he replied, more Englishly. ‘Hey, Louise! How’re you doing?’
‘Good, thanks,’ said Louise, bouncing an emphatically not-sleepy Toby in her arms. ‘Look, Toby, it’s Uncle Ian! Look at his lovely plasma-screen television!’
Juliet shot her a sideways look. The trouble with Skype was that you couldn’t roll your eyes while you talked, and a bit of eye-rolling was mandatory with most family conversations.
‘Is that Dad?’ Ian asked, as Eric tried unsuccessfully to sidle past the camera. ‘Hey, Dad! How’s it going?’
Juliet pulled Louise to one side and put Toby’s high chair firmly in front of the camera.
‘Isn’t he looking like Dad?’ Louise muttered under her breath to Juliet as she installed her son in it.
‘Does that mean we’ve started looking like Mum?’ Juliet muttered back.
‘No,’ said Louise. ‘Mum! Stop washing up! Ian’s on.’
‘What? You didn’t tell me!’ There was the sound of a baking tray clattering onto the unit, and Diane appeared at the door, pulling off her Marigolds and fluffing up her hair. One year, Juliet decided, Mum would actually engage a hair and make-up artist for this Christmas Day broadcast.
‘Dad, come on.’ Louise marshalled everyone in front of the computer, and they stood awkwardly around behind Toby, who wriggled vainly in search of escape.
‘Hello, Ian!’ Eric yelled, as if the satellite was voice-activated. ‘Can you hear us?’
‘Yeah! Totally! Hi!’ he said, and the image pixellated as he waved. ‘Vanda! Vanda, come on, get the girls . . .’
Vanda, Ian’s wife, and Bethan and Taya, their little girls, appeared in front of the screen. Bethan and Taya were thirteen months and four respectively; they were miniature versions of Vanda, with blond mops of hair and brilliant smiles.
‘Hi!’ they chorused, waving at the screen. They were all wearing reindeer antlers.
‘Hi!’ everyone chorused back.
‘So, what’s been happening?’ Ian asked.
Louise took that as her cue to start reeling off Toby’s latest achievements at nursery, interspersed with some proud nods towards Peter, and Juliet started to zone out a bit. She didn’t mind not talking about herself; it was nice not to be the centre of attention for once. Ian could see her, could see that she was fine; she didn’t really want to discuss her ongoing struggle with widowhood on Christmas Day.
She glanced down at her feet, where Minton was lurking, never far from her side. He looked ready to escape for his walk; his internal walk timer seemed to know there weren’t many hours of daylight left.
‘Not long now, mate,’ she mouthed at him. That was the joy of dogs: you never needed an exit strategy when you had a poo bag.
Her dad nudged her in the ribs. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t manage three dogs on your own. And, er, there’s something your mother and I need to tell you . . .’
Juliet was about to point out that she managed at least three, if not more, every day when her attention was dragged back to the laptop by Vanda’s excited voice, chipping in over Ian.
‘So, we can’t wait to see you here!’ said Vanda.
The trouble with these group Internet conversations was that you were never quite sure who was talking to whom, thought Juliet. Vanda seemed to be staring right at her, and it would be rude to pretend otherwise.
‘Who? Me?’ Juliet pointed to herself. ‘Vanda, I’m not coming. We didn’t book the tickets in the end.’
‘No, not you, Jools. Your mum and dad!’ Vanda’s friendly face nearly split in half with her dazzling smile. She had lovely teeth, almost as lovely as her butterscotch tan. ‘We’ve got the taxi already to get you, Diane – neat way of missing out on the New Year’s Day hangover, eh?’
Juliet wished there was an option to look at the screen Ian and Vanda were seeing, because she had a strong sense that it was a classic. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Louise had keeled over backwards like a felled tree.
Behind her, Diane was making spluttering noises, then snapped, ‘Eric!’ presumably to stop her dad slinking off.
‘Mum!’ Louise, again, behind her, managed to sound outraged and hurt simultaneously. ‘You’re going to Australia? Since when?’
‘Since they decided to come out on holiday . . . then offered to stay for when daughter number three arrives!’ Ian looked ecstatic. ‘Oh wow! Quick, Vanda, do a screen capture! Quick! Ah, fantastic, that’s one for the wall, all right!’
‘Congratulations,’ said Juliet, since nobody else was saying anything. Nothing properly audible anyway.
‘We’re so thrilled your mum and dad‘ll be here,’ said Vanda, and this time Juliet knew she was being directly addressed, since Diane, Louise, Peter and Eric were locked in a babbling competition with each other, slightly to the side of the laptop. ‘It’s just so much for me to cope with, two little ones and the business and everything. I’ve had a few complications, and with my own mum and dad not being around any more, God bless them, I was really at my wit’s end.’
‘So how long are they staying?’ Juliet tried to do some maths in her head, but she had no idea how pregnant Vanda could be. She was a personal trainer; sh
e’d power-walked herself to the labour unit last time.
‘Well, for a few months after the baby comes, but your dad’s booked open-ended tickets, so we’ll see, won’t we, hon?’ said Vanda, blithely unaware of the fresh round of gasps this set off behind Juliet. ‘It’s not like we’ll be on top of each other now the granny flat’s finished in the garden.’
Juliet heard Louise repeat, ‘Granny flat,’ and didn’t want to look round to see what expression accompanied it.
‘As soon as they ring off, let’s take the dogs out,’ muttered Eric, and Juliet fixed her grin and nodded.
Longhampton’s main streets were already grimy with slush where Christmas-morning family pilgrimages to Granny’s had churned up the fresh snow, but the municipal gardens were relatively untrodden. When Eric pushed the gates open for Juliet to let Minton, Coco and Hector in, it looked like a winter wonderland.
Thick snow lay over the low hedges and flowerbeds like plump pillows, with the ornate bandstand, frost sparkling on its wrought-iron finials, rising up in the middle of the park like a musical box that might open up to reveal a sugarplum ballerina, spinning on its roof. One or two brave robins hopped on the bare branches of the snow-heavy trees, and the sun glittered over the whole magical scene. It just needed a giant Santa on a sledge parked across the bowling green, thought Juliet, and it would be like one of Mum’s Christmas cakes.
She paused for a moment to let the picture-postcard view sink into her memory, taking its place alongside her older memories of the town. You couldn’t take a photo of this, thought Juliet. You couldn’t capture the tang of the chilly air, or the stillness, or the intense whiteness of the snow, but when I look at the bandstand now, I’ll think of this. Because I was here, in this second now.
‘Would you look at that,’ said Eric, with affectionate surprise. ‘Who’d have thought this scruffy old town could look so magnificent?’
Juliet smiled. Her dad thought Longhampton was so ‘scruffy’ he’d lived there his whole adult life, brought up his family and never moved away from its modest charms.
‘I’ve been here every day for nearly six months now, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it looking so gorgeous,’ she said, then added, ‘Ben’d go mad if he could hear me saying that. I mean, look – no plants! No trees!’
‘He’d love to hear that you’d been here every day for six months,’ said Eric. Juliet loved the way her dad could put his finger on things, without any of the hushed mawkishness that crept over some of her mother’s observations about Ben. She felt closer to Ben in this park than she did in their house sometimes.
‘Shall we . . . ?’ she said, not wanting to bring the mood down, and felt better immediately as they set off again.
Out of habit, she and Minton turned clockwise, working their way around to where the coffee stand usually sat at the foot of the hill. A few brave souls had been out already, and Juliet noted the selection of big and small Wellington-boot prints, as well as the variety of paws pressed into the snow.
‘How long have you and Mum been thinking about this trip, then?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you say? Why leave it until a few days before you left?’
‘Because we hadn’t actually made up our minds. We wanted to see how you were this Christmas.’ His shoulders hunched; big emotional conversations weren’t really his field. ‘The books said some widows have a relapse around now, and we didn’t want to leave if you were in a low way. And all this business with Louise . . .’
Juliet shot him a sideways look. ‘What business?’
‘Oh, I know all about it. I’m not daft. Or deaf. We didn’t want to go away with her and Peter not speaking.’
‘But that seems OK now.’
‘It does. Thank God.’ He eyed her cautiously. ‘And are you . . . ?’
‘Fine. I’m fine,’ said Juliet. ‘But how long have you been planning it? You can’t just head off to Australia for six months on a whim.’
‘We’ve been talking about going away for quite a while now.’ Eric looked rather shame-faced. ‘When Ian came back for the funeral, he was saying how much he and Vanda hoped we’d go over and spend some time with his girls. We’re getting on a bit now, and he doesn’t want them to miss out on the chance to get to know us. And for us to get to know them, of course. And,’ his eyes twinkled under his hat, ‘don’t take this the wrong way, but it’d be nice for your mother to have a bit of a holiday too. She needs a break, what with all she’s had to cope with this year.’
‘So you’re having a second honeymoon.’
‘Well, it’s our first. We only got a couple of nights in the New Forest, first time round.’ Eric sighed nostalgically and offered her some fudge from his pocket. ‘Have some of this excellent handmade fudge. It’s very exclusive.’
‘Thanks, I will,’ said Juliet. ‘None for you, Coco,’ she added, as she looked up at the rustle of the packet. ‘That’s why you had to have your teeth scraped. Dad.’
He stuffed the bag within easy reach and carried on. ‘To be honest with you, love, your mother’s been wanting to go since Bethan was born,’ he said. ‘But then Ben died, and you needed her, and when you started to rally Louise wanted to go back to work and then Toby needed her.’
‘You’re making me feel awful,’ said Juliet. ‘Like we’ve been stopping you from doing what you want.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘It’s what parents are for, looking after their young ’uns.’
He touched his hat and Juliet smiled as they passed Wild Dog Café Owner Natalie and her basset hound, Bertie, walking in the other direction. She was arm in arm with a tall, good-looking man – her husband, Juliet presumed; that was a new bit of information to discover for the new year.
‘Anyway,’ her father went on, ‘we’ve saved up a bit since then, and we’ll be able to make a decent holiday of it. Between you and me, I’ve always fancied seeing Australia properly. We’re not going to spend all the time there with Ian. Well, I’m not. We’re going to get a camper van and do some travelling.’
‘So that was why you didn’t sign up for a course this year.’
‘Rumbled.’ He sighed. ‘Nothing gets past you.’
It was all falling into place now, thought Juliet, much like an episode of Murder She Wrote. ‘And why Mum’s had her hair done and got new glasses and generally looks like she’s having a new lease of life, despite looking after Toby in the week.’
‘What did you think she was up to?’
Juliet opened her mouth, then closed it. Her dad didn’t need to know what she’d been thinking; not now there was no need to worry.
‘It’s nice to have a project,’ Eric went on. ‘It’s given us both something to talk about. Something to plan.’ He looked over at his daughter, his nose red with cold beneath the tweed cap. Juliet tried to imagine that nose on Bondi Beach, smeared with zinc cream, and failed. ‘We don’t just spend our days walking the dog and watching television, you know. We have a life.’
‘I walk your dog,’ Juliet pointed out. She tucked her arm into his, to show she didn’t mind. ‘And I suppose Coco be coming to live with me, will she? So you two can go off gallivanting. It’s OK. I understand. It’s like going to boarding school, isn’t it, Coco?’
Eric patted her hand, and they walked on, enjoying the crunch of the snow beneath their boots. When he spoke again, there was the slight catch in his voice that Juliet usually only heard when he’d had an extra glass of whisky at Christmas.
‘You two girls are the most important thing in our lives. And Ian, of course. But we’ve got to the stage where we’re thinking about doing things for the last time. We want to make the most of these years, your mother and me, before we’re too incontinent to get on the plane.’
‘You’re not old,’ Juliet started, but she knew what he meant. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to be old to worry about doing things for the last time, do you? It’s my New Year’s resolution – to do things, and not wait.’
‘Sounds interesting,
’ he said. ‘What are you going to do? See the world? Change jobs?’
‘Well, I haven’t decided yet,’ admitted Juliet. ‘But I’m not going to say no to things. That’s my main resolution. Not saying no.’
‘It’s a good place to start,’ her father agreed. He paused. ‘Although I still say no boys with motorbikes.’
‘OK, Dad,’ said Juliet.
There were one or two other escapees from the Christmas table, using their dogs as an excuse to have a crafty cigarette, in the case of the Man with the Airedale, and sneaky phone conversation, in the case of Teenager with Scottie Dog. Juliet smiled and wished the owners happy Christmas, as Hector, Coco and Minton sniffed around the dogs and let them pass.
‘I’m guessing that dog belongs to his granny,’ Juliet muttered to her dad, as the teen shuffled past, the phone disappearing into his hood and the sooty Scottie nearly disappearing into a drift. ‘He’s called Hamish, and she has a tartan shopping trolley to match his coat – he sometimes rides in it. Minton thinks he’s a bit soft.’
‘Sounds like you and Minton have made some new friends,’ said Eric.
‘I suppose we have,’ said Juliet.
They walked round the perimeter path in easy silence as the sun faded and the dark pallor of winter afternoon began to shade the white banks of snow. When they reached the wrought-iron gates that led back into the main street, the coloured Christmas lights had started to glow against the leaden sky. Red and yellow starbursts, suspended above the road.
Eric stopped, and Juliet knew from the anxious knit of his forehead that he was about to deliver whatever it was he’d actually come out with her to say.
‘Juliet, love, please tell me the truth. If you think you’re going to struggle, we won’t—’ he began, but she stopped him.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want you to go. I want you and Mum to fly out there and travel and stay out for as long as you like. Tears were forming in the back of her throat, thinking about her parents and their well-worn, comfortable love having its final glorious fling under the Australian sun. She could see them holding hands in a camper van, discovering new things together after so many years.