Four Weddings And A White Christmas

Chapter Three

For Hannah, Christmas Day passed in a rainy haze of food, presents, stress and sewing. Her five-year-old daughter, Jemima, was up at four and then six and by seven she was dragging her stocking behind her and clambering onto Hannah’s bed, jabbing her forehead to wake her up.

Hannah, her sister, Robyn, her brother, her brother’s boyfriend and her parents had all gone to bed at one in the morning – each having been working on a job concerning either the dress or Christmas Day.

If Hannah had the time and breathing space to have taken a step back from the proceedings she would have realised how lovely it was – all of them dotted about her parents’ kitchen either sewing or chopping or reading the cooking instructions for the turkey. Her dad walking round making sure everyone’s glasses were topped up, her mum, Clarice, reminiscing about bygone Christmases while her sister challenged the memories and her brother, Dylan, asked Hannah annoying questions:

‘So you think it was Harry Fontaine or you know it was Harry Fontaine? I mean, did he just look like him or was it him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hannah said, pins in her mouth, kneeling in front of the dressmaker’s dummy hemming the silk skirt of Annie’s wedding dress.

‘Well why didn’t you ask him?’ Her brother made a face.

‘Because he wasn’t very friendly – just watching my panic, all smug.’

Her brother paused his flicking through the recipe book. Always the one to look busy but not actually do anything. ‘We ate at his restaurant once when we were in New York – The Bonfire – do you remember?’ he said, glancing over to where his partner Tony was helping Hannah’s sister ice the Christmas cake. Tony nodded without looking up.

Her brother went on, ‘He came out the kitchen and asked a table to leave because they were all on their mobile phones. Can you imagine? Just clapped his hands and pointed to the door. They were so embarrassed. You could see the whole restaurant sliding their phones from their tables and into their pockets.’

‘He looked a bit of a pain,’ Hannah said.

Tony glanced up from the cake that was being edged with tiny gingerbread houses like a wraparound street scene and said, ‘Very good-looking though.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘I didn’t notice.’

She saw her mum look up sharply from her beadwork, smile and then look back down again.

‘What?’ Hannah asked.

‘I met your father at a wedding,’ she said, standing up to grab another strip of beaded net from the table that needed finishing.

‘That’s nice,’ Hannah said, one brow raised as she carried on pinning the hem.

‘I’m just saying!’ Her mum laughed and went back to her chair to start on the new piece of fabric.

Now, as Hannah lay in bed and Jemima prodded her and she felt her back click into place as she turned over, the aching from the hours of sewing taking its toll, she thought, not for the first time, of couples who shared this role fifty-fifty. And she considered what a luxury that must be. To have someone else in the bed who would let her sleep for maybe another half an hour and take Jemima to look at the Christmas tree, or go with her to make Hannah a cup of tea. Wow, a cup of tea in bed. That would be a treat. She had a sudden image of the good-looking guy, Harry, in the cafe holding the sleeping, vomiting baby in his arms but dismissed it just as quickly – he was not the type to make someone a cup of tea in the morning.

‘Wake up, Mummy. Wake up!’

There was always Jemima. How old did someone have to be before they could be put to use to make tea?

‘I’m here, I’m here! I’m awake. OK.’

She was so tired she felt sick, but as Jemima snuggled up next to her Hannah leant down and smelled her hair. All soft and warm and sleepy like when she was a baby. Her warm little pyjama-clad body pressed up close to Hannah, the grin splitting her face in two as she pulled chocolates and light-up pens and crayons out of her stocking made Hannah remember the last five Christmases that had gone by. And think how different each one had been. The early years when Jemima just shook the Christmas tree and all the decorations fell off, while Hannah was still in the shocked new parent daze, to now when she stood and stared wide-eyed at the Christmas lights in the street, cried at Santa in John Lewis, petted reindeer at the farm, and sang loud and out of tune as an octopus in the bizarre nursery nativity, making Hannah shed a little tear and Dylan stand up and clap while other parents ssh’d him. They were a little unit now. The epicentre. The two of them tightly bound with her relatives added on like pompoms.

‘Wakey wakey!’ Her brother barged in holding a tray with four cups of tea and a packet of chocolate digestives.

Tony followed behind, looking a bit sheepish in his satin smoking-jacket dressing gown. ‘Hello, Hannah,’ he said, clearly embarrassed to be in her bedroom.

‘Move over, squirt, make room for us all.’ Dylan shovelled Jemima over, making her giggle, and plonked himself down on the bed. Tony took the armchair in the corner, crossing his legs out in front of him and resting them on the corner of the bed. Robyn came in a couple of minutes later, her hair all askew, her glasses on wonky, complaining about how early it was. ‘Any why don’t we have stockings any more? It seems really unfair,’ she said, curling up at the end of the bed.

‘Because we’re forty,’ Dylan said, incredulous.

‘Yeah but I like a stocking and it’s Christmas. There shouldn’t be an age limit on a stocking.’

Jemima looked up from where she was unwrapping the foil off a chocolate Santa and said a little warily, as if she didn’t quite mean it, ‘You can share my stocking, Aunty Robyn.’

Robyn tipped her head and smiled. ‘Thank you, Jem, that’s very kind. But that’s all yours and you should enjoy it. I will have a chocolate coin though.’

Hannah sat back against her big white cushion and took a sip of the piping hot tea her brother had made.

As she looked at the mug, almost surprised that her cup-of-tea wish had been so easily granted, she realised that the actual idea of someone else coming into this set-up was unthinkable. Who could they be that she would allow them to sit here as part of this precious Christmas morning?

The door bashed open again as her parents appeared. ‘What a lovely scene. All my family together.’ Clarice put her hand up to her chest and smiled. ‘This is the reason I had you all.’

‘Except for Hannah, because she was a mistake.’ Dylan laughed around his chocolate digestive.

‘She was not a mistake,’ Clarice said with a scowl. ‘She was the perfect surprise.’

Hannah rolled her eyes. Ten years younger than her twin siblings, there was no doubting she had been quite a massive mistake – surprise – whatever they wanted to call it. But actually it was her parents’ decision to keep her, even though she had so clearly been a mistake, that had been the main deciding factor in her decision to keep Jemima. That if they had decided to get rid of their mistake, then she wouldn’t have been born.

Hannah had been so close to not having Jemima – to not have to sit with all her family and say, I’m pregnant and the father is some gorgeous bloke I met on holiday who seems to have lied about his phone number and I never knew his surname.

But she did have her. And she had sat with all her family, at the kitchen table of their big, old crumbling Victorian family house, and said exactly that. But she had ended with, I think I’m going to keep the baby and I’m going to need loads of help.

Hence why she now lived in a newly converted flat on the top floor of their house that used to be a junk storeroom, and had absolutely no idea how she would live a day without them all.

‘So,’ said Clarice, settling herself down on the sofa to the right of Hannah’s bed. ‘Here are your stockings,’ she said, pointing to Frank who revealed them from behind his back like a magician.

‘No way!’ Dylan was aghast.

Robyn looked delightedly smug as Frank handed them each a red felt stocking.

Jemima narrowed her little eyes and said, ‘Does that mean I’ll get my chocolate coin back?’

As Robyn tipped her stocking upside down and chucked Jemima a chocolate coin from the contents, Hannah reached her hand into her little red stocking, feeling the same childish excitement that she used to as a kid. Inside was an assortment of small packages all wrapped up with ribbon and a handful of chocolate coins in the toe. She got to the bottom expecting the usual tangerine, but found instead that this year it was apple and held it up with a bemused frown.

‘Dylan ate all the satsumas,’ her mum said with a shrug.

‘Doesn’t Santa bring his own satsumas?’ Jemima asked and they all paused, looking panicked to one another for an answer.

It was Clarice who leant forward and said, ‘Yes he does, darling, but because this lot are really far too old for stockings and he’s making an exception giving them to them in the first place, he asks us to supply our own fruit.’

Jemima nodded, her mouth full of chocolate Santa. ‘That’s understandable,’ she said.

‘Yes. Except then Dylan ate it,’ Clarice continued, with a glare Dylan’s way. But Dylan was paying no attention whatsoever and was happily ripping through the paper on his stocking presents.

Hannah, on the other hand, had laid all hers out in front of her and, as she listened to her mum and Jemima’s exchange, was deliberating on which present to pick first. Eventually she went for the square one – the heaviest – and instantly smiled as she unwrapped it.

In her hands was a simple wooden picture frame and in it the picture of her degree show dress that had featured in the style supplement of a national newspaper.

The press photographers had only been at the end of year show because one of the other graduates had a film star dad who called in favours from his A-list actress buddies to model his daughter’s clothes. But nestled in among those shots was Hannah’s graduation show-stopper. The dress that had launched all of this. That had been seen by Annie and inspired the phone call that had taken Hannah back to Cherry Pie Island and led to the wedding dress commission. It still made Hannah catch her breath to see it, her dream, all those brutally gruelling years later, fully realised.

‘You’re not crying, are you?’ her mum said, looking worried.

Hannah shook her head.

‘She is,’ Jemima whispered.

‘I’m not, I promise,’ Hannah said, wiping her eyes with the duvet cover. ‘I’m just tired.’

‘Tired and emotional.’ Her brother sighed.

Hannah got out of bed and gave her mum a hug. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered in her ear. ‘Thank you for helping me get this far. I owe you everything.’

Her mum pushed her back and held her by the shoulders. ‘It’s been our pleasure, Hannah. You owe us nothing. It’s your life now. You’re there. You’re on your way.’

Hannah nodded, wiped her eyes again. ‘It’s scary though.’

‘It’s exciting.’ Her mum smiled.

‘It’s snowing!’ her brother shouted.

‘Really?’ Robyn and Jemima jumped up.

‘No, just kidding.’ Dylan laughed. ‘Just wanted to lighten the tone.’

Chapter Four

Christmas Day, it was a nightmare.

Not only was it pouring with rain, but Harry had to cycle forty minutes with a slow puncture to get to his parents’ house.

‘Harry!’ His mum stood in the doorway wearing her apron, her black hair falling from its bun, her slippers on and her earrings shaped like Christmas wreaths, flashing green and red lights. He remembered her wearing them to his school play she’d had them so long.

‘Hey, Mum.’ Harry slicked his soaking hair back from his face. ‘Happy Christmas.’

‘It’s such a surprise. I didn’t even know you were here. Why didn’t you tell us you were here? Your sister had to find it on Twitter. You twittered it and you didn’t even tell us?’

‘I didn’t twitter it, Mum. Tweet it – it’s called tweeting. I didn’t tweet it, the restaurant tweeted it. If I’d known they were going to tweet it, I promise, I would have told you.’ Harry rested his bike against the porch wall.

His mum frowned. ‘But that still means that you weren’t going to tell us you were back. You’re never back, Harry. We miss you.’

Harry scratched his head. ‘Can I just come in?’

His mum stood to one side and let him pass, trying to help him with his soaked leather jacket as he did and Harry batted away the fuss.

‘Let me put it on the radiator, here, give it to me.’

‘Mum, it’s fine.’

‘No, I’ll put it on the radiator.’

In the end it was easier for him to hand her the jacket. Two of his nephews careered down the stairs as he edged his way into the living room, the whole house shaking as they swung from the banister.

‘Hello, Son.’ His dad looked up from over his reading glasses and put his paper down. He was wearing a paper hat and the sight of it – too small for his head – made Harry cringe.

His sister was in the kitchen cutting vegetables and peeling potatoes. There were dancing Santas and flickering Christmas lights. Someone had opened the sherry. His grandmother was snoozing already in the corner, wearing her holey slippers and her polyester housecoat. His uncle was shaking all the presents with one of the nephews, deciding what was in what and there was Now That’s What I Call Christmas blasting out the tape deck on the stereo.

Harry couldn’t bear Christmas. He couldn’t bear being trapped again in the confines of his house. The desperate need to breathe overtook him as the walls seemed to close in.

‘So you were going to ignore your old mum and dad, were you?’ His father sat up from the sofa, heaving himself to the edge so that he could then push himself to standing. ‘No, don’t explain, it’s fine with me. It’s just your mother I was worried about. Heartbroken. But I understand. Too old to be with us. Too old to come home.’

Harry ran his hand through his hair. ‘It’s not that I’m too old. I just– I’m here for work. It just so happens to be Christmas. Honestly, it just seemed easier not to make a fuss.’

‘Not make a fuss?’ his uncle said, looking up from where he was kneeling by the tree. ‘It’s Christmas. It is fuss!’

‘And your mother’s cooked enough for the bloody army, so…’

‘I haven’t got any presents,’ Harry said, when he saw a package wrapped under the tree with his name on the tag. Why hadn’t he brought any presents? There was nothing like coming home to remind one what a selfish bastard he’d become. But then, he rationalised, he hadn’t intended to be here until yesterday when some idiot at the restaurant had tweeted about him being in the UK.

‘Now here we go.’ His mum came bumbling through with a bottle of prosecco and a glass with holly leaves all over it. ‘Let’s have a toast to Harry.’

His sister was standing in the alcove between the two rooms. ‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘What’s he done to have a toast?’

‘Silvia, ssh,’ hushed his mum. ‘To my lovely Harry, home for Christmas.’

Harry held up his glass a fraction. Saw his dad give him the same look he used to give him as a boy – behave, his eyes said, don’t do anything to upset your mother. Silvia watched him warily from behind the sofa. His nephews came hurtling in and didn’t even pause to shout, ‘Hi, Harry, bye, Harry.’

Then everyone huddled onto the two sofas together, squished close until his mum went and got a couple of dining chairs so they could sit, all of them in the lounge. His aunt appeared in her Christmas jumper and, sitting down next to Harry, made a big show of faux-scolding him about how upset his mum had been that he’d almost bypassed them all. Harry tried to smile.

In the end, when the noise became too suffocating, and his dad had asked him every question there was about the restaurant, his finances, the rent on his apartment, the importance of the property ladder, whether he was making his money work as efficiently as he could, his pension, and his mum had asked him about his love life and his aunt had commented that he was never with anyone then asked if he was gay with a snort, adding that there was a new gay couple in Eastenders, and his nephews had asked if he’d got them presents, Harry had to stand up and say that the best thing he could do was help with the food.

‘Such a wonderful chef,’ his mum mused as he left. ‘Just wonderful. I don’t know where he gets it from. I’m bloody useless, aren’t I, Charlie?’

‘You’re the best cook in the world, Jan.’

Harry closed his eyes as he walked away. His dad’s idea of being the best cook was having his set meals ready and on the table at seven. Same thing every Monday, every Tuesday, every day. When Tesco had started stocking fresh pasta as well as dried and his mum had given it a go, his dad had taken a couple of mouthfuls and said, ‘Not again, Jan. Let’s not have this again.’

Harry remembered watching him from across the table, sipping on his orange squash, thinking, I love you but I never want to be like you. I never want to turn out like you. All those rules and structures and set ways to live. Veer off them in this household and everyone knew they’d done something wrong. Harry would sit in his dad’s chair to watch TV after school, but as soon as the key clicked in the lock his mum would poke her head into the room and say, ‘Out of there now, Harry.’

Now, as he stood in the kitchen – same wallpaper, same cups, same tablecloth – he glanced over at his sister, who looked warily back at him.

‘Just be nice, yeah?’ Silvia said. ‘Just for a couple of hours, just be nice. OK? You’re here. Don’t mess it up.’

Harry made a face. ‘I’m not going to mess it up.’

Silvia just raised her brows and looked away.

‘What can I do?’ Harry asked, bending down to look at the shrivelling turkey in the oven.

‘Nothing, it’s all under control.’

‘Your turkey’s gonna be overdone.’

‘No it’s not.’

‘Yes it is.’

‘It’s not. Jamie said to do it like this.’

Harry looked around. ‘Who the hell is Jamie?’

‘Oliver.’ Silvia stabbed the cookbook with her finger. ‘Jamie Oliver.’

‘Bloody Jamie Oliver.’ Harry shook his head and then went over and closed the book. ‘Let me do it,’ he said, opening the oven and finding some oven gloves so he could rescue the bird.

‘Do what you like, Harry, you always do,’ Silvia said, pushing the chair back and leaving the room.

In the kitchen Harry felt a semblance of himself. Tea towel tucked into the pocket of his jeans, he dealt with the turkey, added spices and seasoning to the carrots, sprinkled the stewing red cabbage with sugar and apple slices, perked up the sprouts with some honey and bacon, and generally added some finesse to the whole package. He would have liked a few more ingredients to play with. A bit of kale maybe or some chestnuts, but he felt he’d done pretty well with what he’d had to work with.

He hadn’t brought any presents, the least he could do was sort out the dinner.

***

‘What the bloody hell’s on these sprouts?’

Everyone at the table turned to look at Harry’s dad, who had pierced a sprout on the end of his fork and was eyeing it with distaste.

Silvia sat forward, resting her chin on the palm of her hand and Harry could feel her watching him.

‘It’s er…’ he swallowed. At the restaurant his dad would be out on his ear by now. Harry never explained what he cooked. ‘Well, there’s a bit of marsala and…’ Harry coughed. Everyone was looking at him. He felt his cheeks begin to flame. ‘Bacon. There’s bacon in it, it er, it should be pancetta but bacon works. It brings out the taste.’

His dad narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t want bacon in my sprouts,’ he said. ‘I want sprouts in my sprouts.’

‘Well maybe give it a try, Charlie.’ His mum wiped her hands on her Christmas napkin and tried to smooth over the tension building in the air. ‘I think they’re very nice. Very different.’

‘Just smother it with gravy and you won’t notice, Dad,’ Silvia said, as she tried to stop her boys from kicking each other under the table.

‘I would, if someone hadn’t messed around with the gravy.’

‘Oh for god’s sake, Dad.’ Harry shook his head. ‘It’s not messed around with, it’s just different. Taste it. It doesn’t all have to taste the same, every day.’

‘It’s not every day, is it? It’s Christmas Day. I like things to taste like they should on Christmas Day.’

‘Urgh. That’s such an annoying thing to say.’ Harry shook his head. He saw Silvia giving him a warning glance across the table. His nephews had stopped kicking each other and were staring, entranced by what was about to ensue.

‘Harry.’ His dad raised his brows at him. ‘You may be some hotshot over there in New York, but here you are still my son and in my house you will respect me, your mother, all of us. You are not too big to be sent to your room.’

‘Yes I am, Dad.’ Harry bunched up his napkin. ‘That’s the thing, yes I am. I knew this was a bad idea.’

‘Harry—’ He felt his mum put her hand on his arm as he was just pushing back his chair. ‘Harry, please.’

Harry shut his eyes for a moment. He saw himself sitting on his bed alone practically every Christmas that he hadn’t been too old to be sent to his room. Banished for some reason or another. Sometimes completely deserving of the punishment, sometimes not, but lonely all the same. His mum would sneak up and give him a bowl of Christmas pudding and brandy butter and her little portable TV that she had in the kitchen. She’d wink and say, ‘Won’t be much longer.’ And he’d wonder why she made him stay there. Why she didn’t just override his dad. Why he got to be the leader.

Now, at the dining table, his unpulled cracker next to his plate, the rain hammering on the window, his dad picking the bits of bacon out of the sprouts, his sister watching warily, his mum’s hand on his arm – wrinklier than he remembered – he used every ounce of willpower that he possessed to force his bum back down on the seat. To focus on his food. To take a bite of beautiful, tender Brussels sprout with the sweet honey flavour of the bacon and try not to wish that his dad might have liked it just because he’d cooked it.

No one said any more about it. Gradually, the atmosphere relaxed. The boys, disappointed that the show was over, went back to their under-table kicking. They pulled their crackers. They wore their hats. Except Harry, who accidentally-on-purpose ripped his trying to get it on, and then they ate Christmas pudding which was faultless, in his dad’s opinion, because Tesco had made it and made it the same every year.