A Proper Family Christmas (6 page)

Jessica rolled her eyes at Izzy.

‘Excellent idea,’ said Annabel. ‘You’d better get used to camping, Izzy.’

Leander, the Buchanan family’s twenty-month-old Labrador (Izzy’s fifteenth birthday present), was keen to go along too. He tried to jump into the back of the Range Rover but was bounced straight back out again when he landed on a foam mattress.

‘Come on, Leander,’ said Richard. ‘Not this time.’

At last, Richard and Annabel stood on the step of the Great House to wave their daughter off. Annabel did her best to plaster on a happy smile but she couldn’t help sniffing a little. Her daughter going to a festival! It was hardly a rite of passage on a par with starting school but Annabel suddenly felt almost as tearful as she had done that momentous day. Must be hormones, she thought.

‘At some point,’ said Richard, ‘we have to accept that Izzy’s growing up. She’s making her own way in the world. It’s a good thing. Besides Jessica, Gina and Chloe are all very sensible girls. They’ll look after each other.’

‘Who are you trying to convince,’ Annabel asked. ‘Me or yourself?’

Richard laughed. ‘Mostly me, I think. But let’s make the most of it,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the house to ourselves.’

Richard took Annabel by the hand and gave her what could only be described as ‘the eye’. It was a ridiculous expression, which seemed to belong to someone much older. Annabel swatted him with her hand.

‘Shall I open the wine?’ he asked.

Actually, Annabel found she wasn’t really in the mood for wine that afternoon. Richard pulled a bottle of her favourite Provençal rosé out of the fridge. Ordinarily, just one sniff of it would transport Annabel back to the south of France and the villa they loved so much they’d rented it three years in a row. They would have gone back again that year but some other lucky family beat them to it.

That day, however, Annabel wasn’t in a Provençal sort of mood. In fact, she recoiled from the liquid in the glass.

‘Is this off?’ she asked Richard.

‘It’s perfect,’ he said, taking another sniff to be sure.

‘Really? It smells musty to me.’

Richard picked up his glass and stuck his nose deep inside. He inhaled deeply. Then he took a sip and swished it around his mouth. ‘It tastes just fine but I am willing to bow to your greater powers of smell. You’re always telling me that a woman’s sense of smell is even better than a dog’s. Isn’t that right, Leander?’

Leander wagged his tail. He agreed with anything Richard said.

Annabel picked up her glass and gamely took another sip but it still tasted horrible. If anything it was worse than she’d first thought. She asked Richard to open a bottle of white instead. He picked a Chardonnay. That too tasted slightly weird but Annabel metaphorically held her nose and drank it. She thought briefly about an article she’d read that said that a woman’s sense of smell changes dramatically at the menopause. She’d been a bit anxious about getting older lately but she was still only forty-three, for heaven’s sake. It couldn’t be the menopause. She knocked back the glass to prove it to herself.

‘Mmmm,’ she said. ‘Delicious.’

Annabel and Richard took the bottle of Chardonnay into the garden. It was a beautiful afternoon. Against all the odds, the weather was set to be good for the whole weekend, so at least they wouldn’t have to worry about Izzy sitting around in wet clothes and coming home with pneumonia.

At five o’clock, Izzy texted to confirm that the girls had arrived at the venue and found a place to pitch the tent. At half past seven, she called Richard and had him talk her and Jessica through how to put the tent up. At eight o’clock, they reported that the ‘nice Radley guys’ in the tent next door had helped them and they now had a roof for the night.

‘See,’ said Richard to Annabel. ‘Radley boys.’ He knew Izzy was referring to Radley the public school. ‘You get a much better class of layabout at SummerBox.’

‘When I was at university,’ said Annabel, ‘Radley boys had a reputation for fighting.’

Richard frowned. ‘Well, as long as they’re defending Izzy’s honour.’

He picked up the bottle for a top-up but discovered it was empty. ‘I’ll get another,’ he said.

‘Are you sure you should?’ Annabel asked him.

Richard had recently started taking medication for high blood pressure and was supposed to be making ‘lifestyle’ changes too, including losing weight and cutting back on the booze. Annabel was supposed to be helping him but Richard mostly perceived her efforts as nagging so that evening, she let it slide and Richard fetched another bottle from the kitchen. They were being naughty but this was a one-off. They had the house to themselves without their eye-rolling, deep-sighing teen. Bliss.

‘It’s going to be like this all the time in the not too distant future,’ said Annabel.

‘What? Sunny?’ asked Richard. ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

‘I mean, it’ll be just you and me, when Izzy’s gone off to university. You and me and our beautiful house. Just the two of us. Alone.’

Annabel studied Richard’s face for a reaction. She was mightily relieved to see him smile. He raised his glass in her direction.

‘I for one can’t wait,’ he said. ‘Here’s to an empty nest and a second honeymoon.’

Annabel felt herself melting inside, just as she used to all those years ago whenever she heard Richard’s old Mini pull up outside the flat she shared with two other girls on the Cowley Road. She still loved him every bit as much as she had always done. With Richard, she felt safe and happy. He treated her like a real princess.

They’d met at Oxford. It was Trinity term of Annabel’s first year. She had gone down to the river with some friends to watch the boat races of Eights Week. Richard was visiting a friend in the boat club. He was in his third year at Cambridge, studying law. They hit it off right away. That summer they met again at a house party in London.

For the next two years, Annabel spent her weekends going up to London or having Richard visit her in Oxford. At first her parents warned her that she shouldn’t waste her college years on a long-distance relationship, but Annabel knew it would be no waste and her parents Sarah and Humfrey soon came to agree with her.

They got married very young by today’s standards. Annabel was just twenty-two and Richard was twenty-four. But there was something very lovely about having married her first real boyfriend. Lots of Annabel’s friends had married total randoms out of desperation when they got into their late thirties. Some of them had definitely ‘settled’. It was hard to combine your life with someone else’s when you were both so used to doing your own thing. When you married young, you grew together, like two trees in a topiary display, leaning towards each other gradually to make the perfect arch. That was how it felt for Annabel with Richard.

Annabel wished such a love for her daughter. She wished for her daughter such a lovely, peaceful, charmed life.

While her parents sipped Chardonnay in the beautiful surroundings of their country garden, Izzy was chucking back cider in a tent with a view of the Portaloos. Of course, the four girls’ parents had forbidden them from taking any alcohol with them to the festival. Jessica’s mother Jodie had gone so far as to check the girls’ rucksacks as she was dropping them off at the gate. She proudly reported that fact via text to the parents of the other three girls:
No alcohol on them and the stewards have assured me they won’t be served without ID.

Of course, none of the parents actually believed that meant the girls wouldn’t get their hands on a single drink all weekend, but they all sincerely hoped it would limit the amount they could find and thus lessen the chances of any of them ending up with alcohol poisoning.

But they had not reckoned on their daughters’ resourcefulness. Jessica had been secretly dating a lifeguard from the swimming pool where she trained with the county team every morning before school. The lifeguard was called Saul. He was twenty years old and he too would be attending the festival. Saul was taking a two-man tent, in which Jessica would be joining him. Saul would also be bringing alcohol. And lots of it. Earlier that week, Jessica had the other girls chip in fifty quid a head for supplies. Saul duly arrived with ten bottles of supermarket cider and more than a hundred small bottles of beer picked up in France by his wheeler-dealer brother. He would buy more as they needed it. Of course, he had ID.

They started on the cider.

It wasn’t so bad. Izzy was more used to drinking than her parents imagined. All those social evenings the Buchanans hosted at the Great House had formed part of her training. While Annabel and Richard were getting quietly sozzled with their guests, Izzy would hang out in the kitchen with the village kids Annabel hired as waiting staff, knocking back the dregs of the champagne Annabel always served as an aperitif.

And whenever Izzy visited Jessica, they always found something to drink at her house. Jessica’s parents kept an especially well-stocked booze cabinet. It wasn’t that Jessica’s parents actually let their daughter and her friend have free rein. They still had to steal it. Izzy and Jessica stuck to the clear drinks: vodka and gin, and topped up the bottles with plain water so that Jessica’s parents never noticed the levels going down, though Jessica’s mother often accused Jessica’s father of serving short measures when he made her a G and T.

Anyway, Izzy Buchanan could hold her drink. She liked the way it made her feel. Almost as soon as she had her first sip she wasn’t shy any more. She could talk to anyone. When she went to the Portaloo and saw her reflection in the smeary unbreakable plastic-coated mirror, she even liked the way it made her look. That slight flush to her apple cheeks. Her pupils wide and dark. She felt sexy in a rock-chick way like a younger Daisy Lowe. It made her happy.

But Jessica’s boyfriend Saul hadn’t just brought the alcohol. He’d brought along weed as well. Izzy helped him to roll a supply of joints that would last all weekend. She was proud of her ability to roll cigarettes. She had spent plenty of time practising in her bedroom when her mother thought she was revising.

Saul nodded with pleasure when he saw Izzy’s joints lined up like a row of soldiers.

‘Respect,’ he said. ‘You make the best rollies out of anyone I know.’

Izzy glowed with pride until she caught Jessica giving her a slightly disapproving look. Jessica didn’t like anyone impressing Saul except her. Jessica took her long blonde hair out of its clip and shook it so that it cascaded over her shoulders. Izzy couldn’t compete with that. She had inherited her hair from her mother’s side of the family. There was plenty of it but it was fine and dead straight and definitely not blonde.

Jessica held her hand out towards her boyfriend.

‘You going to let me have one of those?’ she asked, nodding towards the joints. ‘That
Izzy-Wizzy
has rolled so nicely.’

Izzy winced at the use of her old nickname.

‘Whatever you want, babe,’ said Saul. Though he was four years older than Jessica, there was no mistaking who was boss.

On that first day, there weren’t any bands the girls desperately wanted to see until The Twilight, who wouldn’t be playing until ten o’clock on the main stage. So as the sun went down, the girls and Saul and a couple of guys Saul knew just lolled around outside the girls’ tent, drinking cider and eating Pringles and smoking half the joints Izzy had rolled.

Izzy lay back on the grass and looked up at the purple sky.

‘I am, like, totally at peace with the world,’ she said. ‘I am at one with the earth. I think I can actually feel it spinning beneath me.’

Jessica lay back alongside her.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You can. You can totally feel the earth moving.’

Saul lay down on top of Jessica.

‘You’re not supposed to feel it moving without me,’ he said.

Izzy glanced across at her friend. Saul was kissing her. Jessica stretched her arms above her head in joyous abandon. Izzy felt a momentary stab of envy. She wanted someone to love her the way Saul loved Jessica. Perhaps she would meet someone that weekend. It wasn’t impossible. Fixing her gaze on the sky again, Izzy had the strangest feeling that something momentous was going to happen.

The following morning, Annabel awoke with the worst hangover of her life. It was a beautiful morning, but the sun just seemed offensive. When Richard opened the bedroom curtains, Annabel wailed in pain as though she were a vampire and he had just opened the lid of her coffin in full daylight.

‘Bit of a headache?’ Richard asked her.

‘Er, duh!’ said Annabel. ‘I feel bloody awful. How much did we have? And how come you’re so full of the joys of spring? How come you’re not in agony too?’

‘I remembered to drink a glass of water before I went to sleep,’ said Richard. ‘I got one for you too.’

The glass, still full, was on Annabel’s bedside table. Richard sat down on the bed beside Annabel and handed it to her now.

‘Want me to get you some Nurofen?’

‘Please,’ she said.

Richard returned with the tablets.

‘If your daughter could have seen you last night. Rolling drunk, making advances.’

Annabel swatted at Richard with her hand. Then she picked up her phone and immediately checked to see if Izzy had texted, as promised. Izzy had sent her last text at one in the morning, claiming that she was going to sleep. That was unlikely to have been true. But as Annabel held the phone in her hand, Izzy texted again, saying that she was up and off in search of a bacon butty. The very words made Annabel salivate. She quickly texted Izzy back:
That’s great, darling, but don’t forget to try to eat some vegetables this weekend if you can find them.

‘Vegetables!’ Richard laughed when he saw what Annabel had written. ‘The only greens she’ll see all weekend is weed.’

‘Don’t say that,’ said Annabel.

Richard made breakfast. A fry-up. Something else, if he listened to his GP, he should be giving up for the sake of his cardiovascular health. But Richard made the best breakfasts in the world and ordinarily when she smelled the bacon, Annabel couldn’t wait to tuck in. She didn’t fancy it that morning, however, even though it had seemed a great idea when Izzy texted about that bacon sarnie.