Читать книгу: «The Christmas Present», страница 3

Chapter 3

‘Gran?’

She might have only been hospital visiting for a couple of weeks, but Lucy had already perfected the hospital stage whisper. It was an essential skill. Loud enough to rouse Gran, but not so loud that any of the other five occupants of the room might feel the need to butt in. It was obviously incredibly boring to be stuck in hospital unless you had a condition like Gran that meant maximum sleep, but on the first morning, after being subjected to an hour-long complaint about her ungrateful non-visiting kids by the lady in the corner, Lucy had quickly learned to keep her eyes on the patient who belonged to her.

Gran’s eyes fluttered open, and there was no telling how long that would last, so Lucy stormed madly ahead with the chatter.

‘So I bought you a Hello magazine,’ she said brightly, holding it up above the bed. ‘What have we got? The standard fare on the royals, some soap actress banging on about her brand new figure, and wait for it …’ she flipped through and whipped the pages open ‘… GEORGE CLOONEY!’

Gran’s lip twitched. Disappointment tightened Lucy’s throat. George could normally be counted on for a broad grin at the very least. Would she ever come back, that Gran who loved gossip; Coronation Street addict; baker of cakes; charity shop enthusiast? Holding up one side of a conversation was actually quite draining, and Lucy launched into reading Clooney’s exploits aloud, glad of the conversation filler and hating herself for being glad of it. Closing the magazine, she looked down at the bag by her feet.

‘Gran, I’ve been having a bit of a sort-out at the house.’

Understatement of the year, but she was carefully hedging around the house sale because despite all the plans she and Rod had discussed, they had yet to get Gran properly onside with the idea of moving out.

‘You’re going to come and stay with me and Rod for a bit. As soon as you’re well enough, I’m taking you home.’

She squeezed Gran’s hand gently, waiting in vain for a squeeze back. Nothing. How frail she was. Just skin and bone really. Taking a breath, she let go of her hand and reached instead for her bag.

‘So, I was just getting things straight, and look what I found in the attic.’

She placed the box gently in Gran’s lap. Propped up on pillows, Gran looked down at it, and the effect was instant. Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open. With obvious effort she lifted her hand and ran it over the box, tracing the carving gently with her fingertip. It was the first time in days that she’d found the strength to do much. Her mouth worked.

Lucy leaned in.

‘Gran, it’s okay. I’ve seen the decorations, they’re so beautiful. And the letter and the notes.’ She unpacked one as she spoke and placed a tiny carved ballerina in Gran’s fingers. ‘This one is for Nine ladies dancing. That’s right, isn’t it? Jack and I worked out they’re based on the Christmas song.’

Gran was staring at the little figure in wonder.

‘Were they presents from Grandpa?’ Lucy prompted gently.

Her gran shook her head slowly. Not from Grandpa, then. It hadn’t seemed the kind of gesture he would make.

‘I can see from the date that you were sent them during the war. Gran, why didn’t you tell me you were a Land Girl? It’s such an amazing thing, and you never once mentioned it.’

Gran was trying to speak now, trying to heave herself up on the pillow, and obviously struggling. Her face was the colour of putty. Lucy patted her hand in alarm.

‘It’s okay. You mustn’t overdo it. You can tell me all about them when you’re better.’

‘Horston Green,’ Gran managed at last. She lay back on the pillows, clearly tired.

What exactly did that mean? Was it a person? A place? Lucy stroked Gran’s hair and gently took the ballerina figurine from her fingers. It was obvious that there was no way she could pester Gran for information about this, it was all far too stressful, and she needed complete rest. She would have to come up with another way to investigate.

She turned her phone back on as she ran down the hospital steps towards her car and it kicked in instantly with a rush of noisy alerts. A text from Rod reminding her to go to Gran’s house and take delivery of a skip, just bloody great. As if she needed another reminder of how little clearing out she’d actually done, now she would have an empty skip sitting smugly on the driveway every time she went outside.

As if that wasn’t enough, her phone pinged into action again to inform her that Rod had amended their joint social calendar by adding two more guests to the drinks party they were throwing on Saturday night for his bosses, and for which she had not so much as bought a bag of peanuts thus far. She stared down at the phone with gritted teeth for a moment. Her life was spiralling out of control. Then she glanced back at the hospital, and none of these Christmas logistics seemed important at all.

Gran’s face when she’d reached out and touched the ballerina decoration … Right now Rod and Lucy’s bloody joint Christmas social schedule could go screw itself. It was the most animated and positive Gran had been since the fall, and Lucy had every intention of finding a way to make that happen again.

What she really needed was some ways to save time.

‘I need a solution to a drinks and nibbles party that will make me look like Nigella Lawson with zero actual culinary input, on a minuscule budget, by Saturday,’ Lucy said.

‘Just a small favour, then?’

Amy leaned back in her chair in the corner of the café and ate a spoonful of whipped cream from the top of her hot chocolate. She ran the café, along with her own catering business, which had a zero-tolerance policy on calorie counting and a client list who were completely seduced by her indulgent menus that required minimal last-minute heating up and offered maximum taking of credit. She was the ideal person to have in your corner when you had to impress your boyfriend’s work colleagues with effortless perfect finger food in a time frame that would have Gordon Ramsay in despair. She was also undoubtedly booked to the limits over the Christmas season, but fifteen years of friendship through thick and thin must carry a bit of weight because she hadn’t dismissed the possibility out of hand.

‘I know it’s a big ask,’ Lucy said.

‘How come you need my help?’ Amy said. ‘You’re Miss Domesticity these days, with your new-build terrace and your nights in, and your two holidays a year.’

Fair point, Lucy had to admit. She and Rod had settled into a comfortable routine in the last year or so. She had her days out and about with work, and she was more than happy returning home to a cuppa on the sofa and a box set. With Rod, there were never any nasty surprises. Nights out, dinner parties and the like were planned well in advance. Flying towards Christmas by the seat of her social pants was not something she’d anticipated or that she was relishing. But then she hadn’t anticipated Gran’s accident, had she? Or the associated time-suck of having the sorting of the house added to her four-week Christmas break from work. She deliberately ignored the fact that she would have been much further ahead of the game had she taken Rod’s recommended approach of lob everything that wasn’t nailed down into a skip unless it might be worth selling on eBay.

‘I got a bit side-tracked with the house clearing,’ she said. She pulled the box of decorations out of her bag and put it on the table between them. Just looking at them again fired up her curiosity. ‘I fell through the attic floor trying to grab these. Jack had to pull me out.’ She unwrapped one to show Amy, and held up a glass ball with three hens painted on it, pecking in a farmyard. ‘Three French Hens,’ she said. ‘They all relate to that partridge-in-a-pear-tree Christmas song. Turns out they’re really old. Someone sent them to Gran during the war. Aren’t they gorgeous?’

‘Very pretty.’ Amy flapped a dismissive hand at the box. ‘Never mind them. Who the hell’s Jack?’ She sat forward and planted both elbows on the table, in full-on gossip posture.

‘Gran’s maintenance guy; he does the garden, and he’s there touching the house up so we can put it on the market.’ She pointed at Amy with her coffee spoon. ‘You’d like him. He doesn’t do proper relationships either.’ Amy was too absorbed in her business to maintain any relationship that had something as tiresome as strings attached. ‘He’s into extreme sports, and travels the world jumping off cliffs and stuff. Plus, he looks like Tom Hardy,’ she added, drinking the last of her coffee. ‘Always a bonus.’

‘Blimey, he sounds absolutely perfect,’ Amy said.

Did he? Lucy frowned as she picked her bag up from the floor. Was she the only person in the universe who could see the appeal of sleeping with someone who stayed the night instead of necking off before breakfast?

‘Pull off the drinks party for me, and I’ll introduce you,’ she said. Her massive Christmas to-do list fluttered out of her bag as she put the decorations back into it and fell to the floor beneath the table.

‘What on earth is that?’

Amy snatched the paper up before Lucy could get to it.

‘Order gardening vouchers for Rod’s grandparents,’ she read aloud. ‘Buy dress for Christmas ball. Rod’s DJ dry-cleaning. Clear attic and cupboards at Gran’s. Christmas decorations up. Place cards/seating plan for lunch. Get spare rooms ready for Rod’s family. Cook ahead for Christmas week, portion up and freeze. Christmas potpourri. Are you allowing yourself any time to sleep in the run-up to Christmas?’

‘Yeah, well,’ Lucy said, whipping the list out of Amy’s hands with a flourish. ‘Now you know why corner cutting is my new thing when it comes to Christmas cooking. I’ve got a lot on, what with Rod’s perfect family descending on us for Christmas lunch, Gran being ill, and everything else. Rod’s in line for a promotion at work ahead of time. We’ve got the partners coming over for these pre-Christmas drinks and food. There’re a load of other seasonal things we have to go to. But, then again, I wouldn’t expect you to understand, with your spend-your-Christmas-downtime-at-the-pub attitude. You can just rock up at your mum’s for turkey with all the trimmings, like you always do, and bugger off back to your flat when you get bored.’

‘I spend all year cooking. Christmas is my day off. I won’t be so much as picking up a wooden spoon.’

‘Gran used to cook when we had Christmas day at her house.’ She thought back to previous years, the house full of decorations, friends dropping in, cooking with Gran in the kitchen. Her throat tightened a little. How different it would be this year. ‘Whereas this year, Christmas is entirely down to me.’

And it had to be perfect. It had to be. It might be Gran’s last. She pushed that hideous thought away before it could take hold.

‘So, can you help me out or what? No pressure.’

Amy grinned.

‘With the corner cutting? Hell yeah, I’ll throw something together. That doesn’t exactly help with the rest of the stuff on that list though, does it? When exactly are you supposed to fit having a good time into this? Christmas is meant to be about having fun, not driving yourself into the ground. Rod needs to lighten up a bit, honey. I mean, is it any surprise you’ve ended up looking to hot gardeners and old tat for diversion?’

‘I am not looking at the hot gardener,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I am perfectly happy with Rod. I’m not some downtrodden girlfriend, you know. In actual fact, he’s been dropping hints about making it official. I actually like the life I have, the prospects, the plans. Just because you’re happy to cruise rudderless through life doesn’t mean we all have to.’

Unfortunately her phone pinged into life on the table between them at the moment, and Rod’s text asking if she’d remembered the dry-cleaning was perfectly readable upside down.

Amy patted her hand, grinning.

‘I’ll take rudderless, honey,’ she said, nodding at the phone sympathetically.

Gravel crunched under Lucy’s feet as she stood in Gran’s driveway in the mid-afternoon gloom and watched a truck manoeuvre its way back to deposit an empty skip as close to the house as it could get. Even bundled up in her parka with the hood up, the cold bit sharply against her cheeks and nose. The sky was white, with the heavy stillness that sometimes comes in the winter, as if it was full of snow waiting to fall. After a run of wet, rainy Christmases, the TV forecasters were falling over themselves with excitement at the prospect of the first white Christmas in years. She turned at the sound of the side door slamming shut, and watched Jack trudge across the gravel in a shirt and jeans. He didn’t so much as shiver as he came to stand next to her.

‘Do you not feel the cold?’ she said, stamping her feet to try to stop her toes going numb.

‘You forget, I’m superhuman,’ he said. ‘And I finished the ceiling. So if you need to get the estate agent in there’s no danger of them disappearing through the floor when they measure up the attic.’

‘Very funny.’

He looked at her watching the truck driver disconnect the chains from the skip. There was something that felt very wrong about putting an attic full of history into one of those things without a moment’s thought.

‘You’re going ahead then, are you?’ he said. ‘With the clearance?’

She wrapped her arms tightly across her body and held her elbows with her gloved hands.

‘I’m thinking more along the lines of bunging a few things in the skip as I go along with my investigation. I can multitask a perfect family Christmas at home, and do a bit of nosing around on the side.’

‘Investigation?’

‘Into the Christmas decorations we found. I showed them to Gran, and honestly, Jack, you should have seen her. She’s been so weak and frail, it’s all I’ve been able to do to get her to say hello, or say my name. She was so animated when she saw them.’

She was looking up at him now, full of excitement, her eyes shining, her nose and cheeks pink from the cold, He found it hard to look away from her face.

‘Did you ask her about them?’

‘She can’t really talk much at all yet. She did give me a place name, I looked it up. It was a hostel for Land Girls during the war.’

‘The bossing about in the garden definitely makes a lot more sense now I know she was a Land Girl,’ Jack said, nodding at the lorry driver as he approached. ‘She once tried to tell me a better way to mend a fence. I was like, who’s the carpenter in this scenario?’

Lucy smiled sideways at him, and he waited while she signed off the skip paperwork, then walked with her back to the house.

‘Also, whoever sent the decorations, it definitely wasn’t Grandad,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine if I could find out some more about them and be able to tell her about it? It might really help her recovery pick up. What if the person who sent them is still alive? I could track him down.’

‘You’re thinking you could track down and reunite your gran and her wartime friend in three weeks flat, like something off Long Lost Family, while you simultaneously get this house straight, and do all your Christmas stuff?’ he said. ‘You don’t actually think this might actually be a bit of a massive ask?’

‘I can channel Davina McCall if I want to,’ she protested. ‘I do investigate for a living.’ She paused. ‘Well, at least I ask people questions a lot, and attend lots of community events and stuff. It’s not exactly Fleet Street. But I know how to track a story down. And I’m not looking that far ahead, to be honest, I just want to try to find out a bit more, that’s all.’ She closed the side door behind them with a grateful sigh. ‘Wow, standing outside for twenty minutes makes the crappy heating in here seem tropical.’

She pushed the hood down on her parka and unzipped it. Her hair was messed up underneath, and she ran a hand through it, which actually made it worse.

‘I know what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘It just seemed really important to Gran, and whatever I might tell myself, I do know she isn’t going to be around for ever. I feel like I’ve been given a chance to get to know her in a whole new way. I’m not going to pass that up because my back’s against the wall over a few Christmas plans.’

‘Want some help?’

Even as he said the words, he couldn’t quite believe that he was making the offer. What was he thinking? It was the chance thing, of course. The thought of having a chance to find a piece of someone to treasure that you could keep, even after they were gone.

‘I thought you were only around for a day or two? Don’t you have to be sledging down a mountain or something?’ she said.

‘Not for a few more days yet. I’ve got a bit of time on my hands.’

It was true. He did. He couldn’t fathom why heaving tat into a skip held any appeal for him, except that she had looked so grimly determined, standing outside in the freezing cold with her lips almost blue, to run herself into the ground by Christmas all in the interests of hanging on to the past. He could relate to the need to do that better than anyone else.

‘You must have something better to do if you’ve got some time free. I mean, it is Christmas.’

His parents flashed into his mind, the guilt-trip family Christmas visit that he had been telling himself, along with them, he simply couldn’t fit in.

‘I really don’t,’ he said. ‘I can bring stuff down from the attic for you. It will take you for ever on your own, and you’re basically an accident waiting to happen when you’re left to your own devices. I don’t want that on my conscience, and I’m pretty sure Olive would want you to make it out of the house sale alive. Take it or leave it.’

She smiled up at him.

‘Go on, then. I should probably tell you to go and crack on with your Christmas, but I need all the help I can get.’

In the space of a day, the kitchen and hallway ended up looking like the attic. She had succeeded in executing the opposite of house clearance. But there was the odd discovery that was really worth waiting for during the endless trawl through inconsequential receipts and old cracked ornaments, and the buzz of finding even the tiniest thing was becoming a bit addictive.

This latest box was full of treasures. Lucy picked up a lace-edged handkerchief and held it up. The faintest whisper of perfume still clung to it.

‘Gran still wears this perfume,’ she said, holding it to her cheek. How soft it was.

Jack put a mug of coffee down on the table in front of her.

‘You’re very close to her, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I mean, there’s plenty of people who just put their ailing relatives in a home. You know, outsource the care and get on with their own lives.’

She put the handkerchief aside, leaned into the box, and rummaged some more.

‘She’s always been there for me,’ she said. ‘My grandad too. My mother wasn’t the stay-at-home type.’

‘You said.’ He pulled a stack of bound photograph albums from another box and added them to the table top next to her. ‘These could be good.’

She felt as if she was really on a roll here.

‘Brilliant, I’ll look at them next.’

‘What about your father, then?’ he said.

‘What father?’

She laughed. The response the thought of him elicited after all this time was just that – a laugh. She sat back in her chair for a moment and picked up her coffee, smiling at Jack’s bemused face. He obviously had lovely normal, reliable parents. Growing up, she had thought everyone did except for her.

‘Sorry. It’s really no biggie. I was a holiday romance baby. Tenerife in the eighties. Neither of them went into it expecting to come out of it with something as permanent as a kid. They weren’t expecting anything more than a piña colada and a one-night stand.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘Riiiight.’

‘He bailed after about six months. My mother’s been trying to do the same thing for the past thirty years.’

She could feel his eyes on her as she sipped her coffee. He thought it bothered her. He thought this was awkward. That’s what came of having well-adjusted parents. Whereas she was a long way past giving a toss except insomuch as her mother’s behaviour affected Gran.

‘To be fair, she was very young and she was really just acting up. But she still managed to get pregnant on a ladettes’ holiday. Steady was an alien concept.’ She thought of her mother, still dressing as if she was in her twenties, still life and soul of the party. ‘Even now, to be perfectly honest. She gave up going out for a while, then she progressed to taking me to parties in a carry-cot, then, when I got bigger, she called on anyone and everyone to babysit. Eventually Gran and Grandad stepped in. I moved in with them, and everything got better overnight.

‘Do you stay in touch?’

She flipped through a stack of official-looking letters with a stab of exasperation. Only a hoarder of serious commitment would surely keep gas bills from 1996. She relegated them to the box that had become the holding place for the skip and which prevented constant trudging in and out to the cold driveway.

‘With my father?’ She pulled more papers from the box and spread them on the table in front of her. ‘I get the odd postcard. I had one a year or so ago with a donkey on the front wearing a sombrero. I think he still thinks of me as a little kid, it’s been that long since he actually saw me. He’s living in Spain, has been for years. Running a bar now in Benidorm. Never married. For him, life is one endless holiday romance I guess.’

‘That really sucks,’ Jack said.

‘Does it?’

She stopped for a moment and considered.

‘I never really thought about it that much, to be fair. It wasn’t like I had a father and lost him. I mean, at least he realised he didn’t have it in him to step up to the plate early on and ducked out instead of messing with my head for thirty years. I had Grandad.’

Jack nodded.

‘I never met Arthur. He died before I started working here. Olive always talked about him a lot though.’

She reached across the table for a pile of photographs, and flicked through them until she found one of her grandfather.

‘This is him,’ she said. She skirted the table to show Jack, leaning in to look at it herself as she held it out for him to see. Grandad somewhere in the late eighties, in a room with garish wallpaper, standing straight-backed as he always did, and holding her beaming toddler self in the crook of one arm. The picture had the orange fuzzy quality of an old Polaroid. Grandad wore a patterned jumper, and had his trademark long moustache. Nostalgia caught a little in her throat. Ten years he’d been gone. Had it really been that long?

‘It’s a great picture,’ Jack said. She was suddenly aware that she was in his personal space, leaning over him, picking up the scent of his aftershave. It was something woody and masculine, perfectly suited to him. She stood up quickly and went back to her seat to grab her coffee.

‘He was quite a bit older than Gran. Old school, really. Regimented. He did like his rules. It drove my mother nuts. She still talks about it now, how she had to stick to this ridiculous curfew, and how he never let up on nagging her about school work: she was never allowed a boyfriend, blah, blah. I never minded any of that, I liked feeling looked after.’ It had been exactly the steadying environment needed to counteract the here-one-minute-gone-the-next antics of her mother, while she’d struggled her way through her school years. ‘Why would I need a perpetual holidaymaker when I had everything I needed right here?’

He held up the top one of a stack of plates in a colour that might once have been a cheerful red, but was now faded to a kind of corned beef puce.

‘Keep or chuck?’ he said.

She pulled a face.

‘Chuck. Do you really need to ask? Don’t really fancy eating off something the colour of cat puke.’

He put them into the skip box while she pawed through a new pile of letters in sudden fascination.

‘Jack?’

He looked up.

‘Yup? Change your mind about the cat puke plates? Cos I can fish them right back out and make you a sandwich on one of them.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Never mind about the bloody plates. There’s letters here.’ She scanned the top one quickly, excitement bubbling up in her stomach, moved on to the next. ‘They’re letters home from Gran. From the farm.’ She stared down at the letters. It really had been worth trawling through all the clutter after all. ‘She must have written to her family while she was there. There’s the hostel address for the Land Girl posting. It’s all gossip about what she was doing. Here, have a look.’

She halved the pile and pushed some of the papers across the table at him. He didn’t pick them up.

‘You sure you’re okay with me doing that?’ He looked down at them doubtfully. ‘I mean, these are your gran’s private letters, right?’

She frowned. It hadn’t occurred to her to look at it that way, she was just happy to have someone else she could share this with and bounce ideas off. And there was no denying the extra pair of hands made a huge difference, since she was stealing time from all over the place to go through everything.

‘I’ve got to treat this like I would if it was my job. If I’m going to follow it up enough to be able to cheer Gran up with it, then I’m really strapped for time. You don’t need to read every word, just maybe scan through them. If you’re okay with it, I just need to look for the next clue, maybe a name. Anyone she was there with, anyone I could try to track down now and talk to.’

‘Okay,’ he said, unfolding the top letter. ‘If you’re sure, I’ll get looking. This is the kind of thing you do day-to-day?’

She shrugged, her eyes fixed on scanning through a letter.

‘Sometimes, when I’m lucky. It’s my favourite part of the job. I’m not exactly Middle East correspondent for the broadsheets, you know. I cover local news, and some of it can be really dull stuff, local shows, fetes, that kind of thing. But then there can be the odd story with a real human interest. I love looking into things, finding out about exciting things people are doing, or places they’ve been. Like getting a glimpse into someone else’s life, good or bad, it’s always interesting.’

Her mobile phone suddenly buzzed into life in her back pocket, and she dragged her eyes away with enormous effort from the faded, thin paper in her hand.

‘Hmmmm?’ she said, absentmindedly, as she held it to her ear, reading. How perfect Gran’s slanted handwriting was.

‘It’s gone six o’clock,’ Rod said. His voice had a terse quality to it that she usually only heard when things at work weren’t going his way.

‘Gosh, is it?’ She checked her watch, frowning. ‘I’ve been mad busy with the attic clearance; I must have lost track.

‘Lucy, I’ve got half the office management team showing up in an hour and a half, and there’s not so much as a vol-au-vent in the kitchen that I can see.’

Oh fuck!

How had she managed to forget? Disbelief rose in her stomach and made it churn unpleasantly. Partly panic that she was on the brink of pulling the social rug out from beneath her boyfriend’s feet, but more shock that she, reliable and organised Lucy, could possibly have forgotten something so important as his impress-the-boss drinks and nibbles. Realisation of the extent of the logistic mess she was in kicked in as if she’d had a bucket of cold water thrown over her. There was no way she could make it across town now to pick up the food from Amy, then get back to the house in time to change and be ready to greet the guests.