she had done that was amazing, how the mere presence of her lit up the room, and how he didn’t know how to do things as well as her, certainly not Christmas.
He knew he was too focused on having things perfect, even if they cost him comfort or enjoyment. Like that stupid chair he had bought that every interior designer said was a staple for a true aesthete’s home.
Except it felt how he imagined a medieval torture chair would have done in the dark ages.
No support to the back, no give in the leather, just clean lines.
He had wanted to admit to Bec that he’d made a mistake, but they’d fought so hard about having it inside, he didn’t want to admit that she was right.
Why? he wondered now. Bec was often more right than him, so why had he stopped listening?
‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ Sofie’s voice came from behind.
‘I know you didn’t mean to drop my phone in the bath but I wish you’d told me straightaway,’ he said, kneeling to look her straight in the eye.
‘I was scared,’ she said, and he felt his heart jerk because he knew it was true. He could be vile, especially when he was angry.
‘I understand,’ he said and bent down to Sofie’s eye level. ‘You have to tell me things and I will promise not to be scary if I’m upset, okay? Can we make a pact?’
Sofie nodded and he could see the relief in her eyes.
‘Tomorrow we will go into the village and see if I can get a new phone,’ he said, standing up. ‘Oscar, can I borrow your phone?’
‘No, you told me not to bring it,’ he said.
‘I didn’t think you’d actually listen,’ said Jamie, shaking his head.
‘I didn’t want you to yell,’ said Oscar, looking up briefly at his father.
Jamie felt sufficiently told off by both his children, and went upstairs to his bedroom, whacking his head on the beams of the farmhouse.
Stupid beams, he thought as he rubbed his head. Who was the landlord? Miss Tiggywinkle?
He lay on the bed and tried to remember the dates for Bec’s return. He had a whole thing planned for the airport, with a sign, and he would wear a chauffeur’s cap, and there would be flowers, white lilies and holly, he had decided.
It was five days until Christmas, he’d reasoned; he had plenty of time. He was sure she’d said she would be back the week before; he was absolutely positive, wasn’t he?
Number one priority: he had to get a new phone.
Sofie
Sofie lay in bed and thought about the three things she loved the most in the world.
Taylor Swift.
Bubbles, her dog.
And her mother.
And not one of them was with her.
Taylor didn’t even know who she was, even though she had written to her a thousand times. She had liked every video on YouTube, and had even written to Katy Perry to ask her to stop bullying Taylor, because everyone knows bullies are the worst kinds of people.
Bubbles was in a kennel, because Dad had said he was too much for the farmhouse, and that he would chase the sheep, but she doubted that he would. Bubbles had excellent manners.
And her mum was in America. She knew she wasn’t there for work, or the knee replacement or whatever lie she had been told by someone. What grown-ups needed to realise about telling lies is that if you decide on a story, you need to stick to it, not have different versions.
Only Oscar told her the truth. ‘Mum’s gone to a place where they tell her to stop drinking,’ he said.
‘Why doesn’t she stay at home and we can tell her?’ asked Sofie.
Oscar had shook his head. ‘Doesn’t work like that,’ he said wisely.
‘So how does it work?’ she asked.
‘I don’t exactly know, but not like that,’ he said, seeming less wise.
She wished she were at home, where her mum would have put up all the decorations and there was a real tree in the living room and new presents appearing underneath it every afternoon, as though by magic, all wrapped beautifully by her mum.
Her mum loved to wrap presents. She would make a real thing of it, with all sorts of pretty paper and ribbons, and perfect folding. Sometimes Sofie would help her, and even though it was never as good as her mum’s, she would still be praised for her work.
She wondered what Taylor was doing right now. Maybe singing or dancing or having her friends over. And Bubbles? He was probably in a cold kennel, with no friends or even a blanket for comfort.
Her eyes filled with tears, as she lay in the dark, unfamiliar room.
And her mum? She was in a hospital, Oscar said. Was she in bed? In a gown with ties on the back like they show in the movies? Was she even alive? Dad didn’t talk about her much any more. Sometimes she spoke to her in her head, but sometimes she didn’t want to because, if she started to tell her mum how sad she was, she thought she would never stop crying.
She closed her eyes and thought about going home. She would walk up the path with Oscar and there, on the front door, would be the red wreath. This was the first sign that Christmas was coming in their house. Dad hadn’t put up anything Christmassy in the house, saying it was a waste of money and they would do it all when they got home.
But Sofie had other ideas and, turning on the small lamp by her bed, she opened the drawer in the little table the lamp sat on and took out the folded pieces of paper and a pair of scissors. She started her nightly routine of cutting and twisting and turning the paper as she worked.
She had sixteen snowflakes so far. She wanted to make thirty-nine, one for each year of her mummy’s life. She planned to stick them on every window downstairs, so it was a wallpaper of snowflakes in the house. She had a lot of work to do, she thought and sighed simultaneously, and settled in to her task for the night.
Oscar
Oscar lay in bed under the covers, playing with his phone. There was no way he was going to give it to his dad; his dad would never give it back, like the time he loaned him his favourite video game to show someone at work, and forgot to bring it home.
Oscar asked so many times, and Jamie promised so many times, that eventually he just asked his mum to buy him a new one.
His dad was unreliable and a bit hopeless, he had decided last year.
And letting Sofie take the phone into the bath – well, that was just dumb. Even he could have told him that but his dad never listened to him. His dad didn’t listen to anyone.
He was sure his parents would divorce when Mum got out of the place in America. They had had a fight every night for a year. Nothing could survive that, he had decided. He’d watched Divorce
