she softly sat down next to her mother and put an arm around her.
“And I love you too, Mum. Very much.”
It was well into the night on Christmas Eve now, and down in the living room, Dad waved a large festive assortment tin under Mr Stink’s nose. “Would you like a biscuit?” he asked.
Dad had already scoffed quite a few, having been hiding in the room under the stairs again all day with only a couple of slices of dry bread to keep him going. Mr Stink eyed the contents of the tin with disgust.
“Have you any stale ones?” he asked. “Maybe with just a hint of mould?”
“I don’t think so, sorry,” replied Dad.
“No thank you then,” said Mr Stink. He patted the Duchess, who was sitting on his lap, trading evil looks across the coffee table with Elizabeth. The family cat was bundled up in a towel on Annabelle’s lap, still recovering from her ‘swim’.
“Never mind about the biscuits,” said Annabelle. “I want to know what you said to the Prime Minister’s offer?”
“Chloe told him to stick it up his—”
“We told him he wasn’t interested,” interjected Chloe hastily. “So maybe you can still stand to be the local MP, Mum.”
“Oh no, I don’t want to,” said Mum. “Not after I humiliated myself on television.”
“But now you’ve met Mr Stink and seen how other people live their lives you could try to make things better for people,” suggested Chloe.
“Well, perhaps I could try and stand again at the next election,” said Mother. “Though I will have to change my policies. Especially the one about the homeless. I am sorry I got it so wrong.”
“And the one about the unemployed, eh, Dad?” said Chloe.
“What’s this?” said Mother.
“Thank you, Chloe,” said Dad sarcastically. “Well, I didn’t want to tell you, but the car factory looks like it’s going to close soon and it had to let most of us go.”
“So you are…?” asked Mother incredulous.
“Unemployed, yes. Or ‘dole scum’ as you might say. I was too scared to tell you so I’ve been hiding in the room under the stairs for the last month.”
“What do you mean, you were too scared to tell me? I love you, and I always will, whether you’ve got a job at the stupid car factory or not.”
Dad put his arm around her and she nuzzled up her head to meet his lips with hers. Their kiss lingered for a few moments, as Chloe and Annabelle looked on with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. Your parents kissing. Nice but somehow yuck. Them snogging is even worse. Yuckety yuck yuck.
“I would go back to being in a rock band, but you put my guitar on the bonfire!” said Dad with a chuckle.
“Don’t!” said Mum. “I still feel so bad about that. I fell for you like a ton of bricks when I first saw you on stage with the band. That’s why I married you. But when the album didn’t sell I could see how upset you were, and I couldn’t bear it. I thought I was trying to help you move on with your life, but now I realise all I did was crush your dreams. And that’s why I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.”
She got up and started searching in the bottom drawer of the sideboard where she kept her secret stash of Bendicks chocolate mints. “I am so sorry I tore up your story, Chloe.” Mum pulled out the maths exercise book of Chloe’s that she had ripped to pieces. She had painstakingly sellotaped the whole thing back together, and her eyes still shining with tears she handed it back to Chloe. “After Question Time I had a lot of time to think,” she said. “I fished this out of the bin and I read it to the end, Chloe. It’s brilliant.”
Chloe took back the book with a smile. “I promise to try harder in my maths lessons from now on, Mum.”
“Thank you, Chloe. And I have something for you too, my darling,” said Mum to Dad. From under the tree she pulled out a beautifully wrapped present that was exactly the shape of an electric guitar.
“I’ve got some black leather mistletoe this Christmas,
I‘m gonna kiss you and give you a bad shaving rash…”
Dad had plugged his shiny new electric guitar into its amp and was strutting up and down the living room exuberantly singing one of his old band’s songs. He was clearly having the time of his life. It was almost as if his perm had grown back too. Mum, Chloe, Annabelle and Mr Stink sat on the sofa and clapped along. Even Elizabeth and the Duchess were curled up together nodding their heads in time with the music. The heavy rock wasn’t quite to Mr Stink’s taste, and to combat the noise he had discreetly re-inserted his rabbit-dropping earplugs.
“Yeah baby I’m gonna feast on your mince pies,
And give you a real good yuletide surprise…!”
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