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Walking back to the Mindthetable Table, she lifted the art and architecture books from the glass and placed them on the floor. Next she took the set of sweet little enamel boxes with mother of pearl inlay and placed them on top of the books.
Bracing herself, she bent her knees and lifted the monstrosity.
‘Gawd,’ she wheezed, almost buckling under the weight.
Tottering like Sofie once had around the table, she inched her way out of the room, and then down the hall and out the front door.
The stairs were precarious but she managed to get it out and down onto the street by the force of sheer hatred for the thing.
‘Goodbye,’ she sneered at the table.
‘Excuse me, are you throwing that out?’ said a voice behind her, and she turned to see a cooler, younger version of Jamie.
‘I am indeed,’ she said firmly.
‘Is it real or a replica?’ he asked carefully.
‘Real,’ she said with a smile, and he glanced at her home, and her lovely camel coat, and nodded.
‘Would you mind if I took it off your hands?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Not at all,’ she said with a smile. ‘In fact, there’s a chair you might like as well.’
Fifteen minutes later, the chair and the table were gone and Rebecca felt extraordinarily happy with her decision, just as Jamie probably felt the same about his. If he didn’t want to live here, then he wouldn’t miss his stupid furniture, she thought, knowing she was being petulant but unable to stop herself.
The voice of Rose-Marie rang in her head: ‘If there is anything in your life you don’t like, then change it. It’s simple. Nothing changes, if nothing changes.’
She walked through the house. The dining room had a thin film of dust on the table, and one of the sideboard cupboards was ajar.
Moving to close it, she felt a familiar trepidation that she hadn’t experienced for the past two months.
Herein lies my problem, she thought as she opened it.
It was empty.
She was grateful to Jamie for at least having the foresight to clear it out before she came home, but shame filled her body and her cheeks burned with memories.
This is what you get when you leave rehab, she reminded herself. A wreathless, alcohol-free, deserted family home.
The tears threatened to fall again and she blinked them away.
There was one thing she could change on that list, she thought, and shrugging off her coat, forgetting her jet lag and suitcases waiting to be unpacked, she climbed the three flights of stairs to the attic.
The box of Christmas decorations was light compared to the table she had just disposed of, she thought, as she carried it downstairs to the living room.
The wreath was on top, wrapped in tissue paper to deter dust and moths, and as she carefully unwrapped it, she gently wiped off some imaginary specks of last Christmas.
‘Hello,’ she said to the wreath.
Taking it by the red velvet ribbon, she opened the front door, and found the nail near the top.
She hung it as though it were a priceless painting, straightening, fussing until she was sure it was sitting beautifully.
She stepped back and smiled.
‘Merry Christmas,’ she said to the wreath and, most of all, to herself.
She might be alone but she wouldn’t let that stop her from having her own special Christmas. She might even make some shortbread or even some strong coloured popcorn because she’d always wanted to do that and never had the time.
This was the start of the new Rebecca Swanson: recovering alcoholic, mother, wife – perhaps soon to be an ex-wife, she thought – CEO and, above everything else, a Christmas addict.
Jamie
‘Where is it, Sofie?’ Jamie demanded, trying to keep the anger from his voice.
His temper was part of the problem, Rose-Marie had said during one of their Skype therapy sessions.
‘You fly off the handle so easily, it’s exhausting to live with,’ Rebecca had remarked.
‘So that’s why you drink? Because of me?’ he had said in return, even though he knew it was unfair, and that he was really just deflecting the attention away from himself.
He was stressed, and worried about everything. The last year had felt like life was creeping up on him, about to give him a terrible surprise.
And then Rebecca fell down the stairs.
She lay for two hours until the children and their nanny found her and called an ambulance, and that’s when they finally accepted that her drinking was not just a sometime thing.
‘Come on Sof,’ Jamie coaxed. ‘You were the last to have my phone. I need to check if Mummy has called.’
The mention of Mummy swayed her enough to spill her secret and she looked down at her pink-socked feet. ‘I dropped it,’ she said in a half whisper.
‘Dropped it where, darling?’ asked Jamie in a quiet voice.
‘Rain, not thunder, helps the flowers grow,’ Rose-Marie’s voice rang in his head.
Bloody Rose-Marie and her bumper-sticker sayings, he thought. They resounded in his head like old school songs.
Oscar came rushing inside, a gale of freezing wind making the fire in the grate shudder in protest.
‘I think it’s going to snow,’ he announced.
‘I hope not,’ said Jamie. ‘We have to go back tomorrow.’
He returned his attention to his daughter, who at seven looked like an angel but had the wiles of a teenager.
‘Where did you drop it, Sofie?’ He was a little sterner now.
Sofie looked up and widened her eyes, a tactic she had learned from Rebecca, and he felt himself fill with love for both the females in his life.
‘In the bath,’ she said, her voice quivering as she spoke.
‘In the bath?’ he repeated, as though trying to make sense of the words. ‘In the water?’
She nodded.
‘Why did you have my phone in the bath?’
‘I was watching Taylor Swift videos,’ she said with a slight eye-roll, as though he knew nothing about anything.
‘And you dropped it in the water, and then didn’t tell me for the past day, even though you have seen me frantically looking?’ He felt his temper rising.
Rain, rain, less thunder, he reminded himself.
‘Go and get it,’ he instructed.
Oscar, who was twelve and so considered himself wise beyond his height, was lying on the sofa, flicking through a gaming magazine.
‘It’s screwed now,’ he offered.
‘Don’t say screwed,’ said Jamie crossly.
‘Buggered then,’ Oscar said.
Jamie left it alone. At twelve Oscar knew too much about life, electronics, and the truth about his mother.
Sofie was back, holding out the phone to Jamie.
He turned it on and off but nothing happened.
‘You could put it in a bag of rice; that might soak up some of the water, but I doubt it, since it’s been left wet for so long,’ Oscar offered.
Jamie went to the cupboard of the farmhouse he’d rented to try and get to know his children for a few weeks while Bec was in treatment.
Two weeks had felt like a long time when he booked it; now it felt like an eternity.
‘We don’t have any rice,’ he said, as he peered through the staple items. ‘Can I do flour?’
‘No,’ said Oscar, not looking up from his magazine.
‘Pasta?’
‘No,’ came the same answer.
Jamie stood facing the pantry with its jars of mixed herbs and lack of rice and felt himself wanting to cry.
How ridiculous was he? he asked himself.
He missed Bec so much it hurt. He wanted to go and tell her every single thing 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.
