with Luka. Julie stood in the doorway and looked at them, this little family who’d been so close to disaster.
Disaster was always so close...
Get over it, she told herself harshly. Move on. She needed work to distract herself. She needed legal problems to solve, paperwork to do—stuff that had to be done yesterday.
Rob was out playing fireman but there was no need for the two of them to be there. So what was she supposed to do? Go to bed? She wasn’t tired or if she was her body wasn’t admitting it. She felt weird, exposed, trapped. Standing in her children’s bedroom watching others sleep in their beds... Knowing a man who was no longer her husband was out protecting the property...
What to do? What to do?
Christmas.
The answer came as she headed back down the hall. There in the sitting room was her Christmas tree. Was it only last night that she’d decorated it? Why?
And the answer came clear, obvious now as it hadn’t been last night. Because Danny needed it. Because they all needed it?
‘Will Santa know to come here?’ Danny had asked and Rob had reassured him.
‘Santa knows where everyone is.’
That had been a promise and it had to be kept. She wouldn’t mind betting Danny would be the first awake in the morning. Right now there was a Christmas tree and nothing else.
Santa had no doubt kept a stash of gifts over at Amina’s house, but there was nothing left there now except cinders. Amina had been too exhausted to think past tonight.
‘So I’m Santa.’ She said it out loud.
‘Can I share?’
And Rob was in the doorway, looking at the tree. ‘I thought of it while I mopped,’ he told her. ‘We need to play Father Christmas.’
They could. There was a stash from long ago...
If she could bear it.
Of course she could bear it. Did she make her decision based on emotional back story or the real, tomorrow needs of one small boy? What was the choice? There wasn’t one. She glanced at Rob and saw he’d come to the same conclusion she had.
Without a word she headed into their bedroom. Rob followed.
She tugged the bottom drawer out from under the wardrobe, ready to climb—even as toddlers the twins had been expert in finding stuff they didn’t want them to find. She put a foot on the first drawer and Rob took her by the waist, lifted her and set her aside.
‘Climbing’s men’s work,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’ Unbidden, came another memory. Their town house in the city. Their elderly neighbour knocking on the door one night.
‘Please, my kitten’s climbed up the elm outside. He can’t get down. Will you help?’
The elm was vast, reaching out over the pavement to the street beyond. The kitten was maybe halfway up, mewing pitifully.
‘Right,’ Rob had said manfully, though Julie had known him well and heard the qualms behind the bravado.
‘Let me call the fire brigade,’ she’d said and he’d cast her a look of manly scorn.
‘Stand aside, woman.’
Which meant twenty minutes later the kitten was safely back in her owner’s arms—having decided she didn’t like Rob reaching for her, so she’d headed down under her own steam. And Julie had finally called the fire department to help her husband down.
So now she choked, and Rob glowered, but he was laughing under his glower. ‘You’re supposed to have forgotten that,’ he told her. ‘Stupid cat.’
‘It’s worth remembering.’
‘Isn’t everything?’ he asked obliquely and headed up his drawer-cum-staircase.
And then they really had to remember.
The Christmas-that-never-was was up there. Silently, Rob handed it down. There were glove puppets, a wooden railway set, Batman pyjamas. Colouring books and a blow-up paddling pool. A pile of Christmas wrapping and ties they’d been too busy to use until the last moment. The detritus of a family Christmas that had never made it.
Rob put one of the puppets on his too-big hand. It was a wombat. Its two front paws were his thumb and little finger. Its head had the other fingers stuffed into its insides.
The little head wobbled. ‘What do you say, Mrs McDowell?’ the little wombat demanded in a voice that sounded like a strangled Rob. ‘You reckon we can give me to a little guy who needs me?’
‘Yes.’ But her voice was strained.
‘I’m not real,’ the little wombat said—via Rob. ‘I’m just a bit of fake fur and some neat stitchery.’
‘Of course.’
‘But I represent the past.’
‘Don’t push it, Rob.’ Why was the past threatening to rise up and choke her?
‘I’m not pushing. I’m facing stuff myself. I’ve been facing stuff alone for so long...’ Rob put down his wombat and picked up the Batman pyjamas. ‘It hurts. Would it hurt more together than it does separately? That’s a decision we need to make. Meanwhile, we bought these too big for the twins and Danny’s tiny. These’ll make him happy.’
She could hardly breathe. What was he suggesting? That he wanted to try again? ‘I...I know that,’ she managed but she was suddenly feeling as if she was in the bunker again, cowering, the outside threats closing in.
Dumb. Rob wasn’t threatening. He was holding Batman pyjamas—and smiling at her as if he understood exactly how she felt.
I’ve been facing stuff alone for so long... She hadn’t allowed herself to think about that. She hadn’t been able to face his hurt as well as hers.
Guilty...and did she need to add coward to her list of failings as well?
‘Would it have been easier if it all burned?’ Rob asked gently and she flinched.
‘Maybe. Maybe it would.’
‘So why did you come?’
‘You know why.’
‘Because it’s not over? Because they’re still with us?’ His voice was kind. ‘Because we can’t escape it; we’re still a family?’
‘We’re not.’
‘They’re still with me,’ he said, just as gently. ‘Every waking moment, and often in my sleep as well, they’re with me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘They’re not in this stuff. They’re in our hearts.’
