Foursome (30 page)

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It’s Christmas Eve, the traditional gathering round at Isabel and Alex’s except that, this year, of course, there is no Alex. Isabel has told him he can see the girls in the morning so long as he comes with his parents, who always visit their granddaughters on Christmas Day, and leaves when they do. Alex, apparently defeated, agreed without a fight. She knows that he won’t cause a fuss with his mum and dad around. Even Alex has boundaries, it seems.

Tonight, I know, was always going to be hard for Izz, however much of a brave face she’s been trying to put on, so I volunteer to spend the afternoon helping her get everything ready and we manage to laugh, get angry and even cry at different points in the afternoon as we talk about everything that has gone on these past few months. It’s like a Stanislavsky master class.

At one point Isabel says to me, ‘I don’t know how I would have got through it all without you,’ and we have a big mushy moment, my best friend and me, which is thankfully broken by the twins running in and telling us that William is refusing to be dressed up as a Christmas fairy and what are we going to do about it? Wonders will never cease.

Now we’re all sitting round the table. Isabel and Dan, Kay and Lorna and the four kids. I look around. It’s like the Walton family only a bit less nuclear. Lorna and Kay have turned into some kind of a double act with Kay telling her to ‘for the love of God shut up’ whenever she rambles on without letting any one else join in, and to ‘eat something for Christ’s sake’ when she spends too long pushing her food round her plate. Lorna just laughs and says, ‘Oh sorry,’ and either stops talking or takes a big mouthful, and I realize maybe that’s how I should have handled her all along. In turn she has taken to saying, ‘Really, Kay, I didn’t realize you had children,’ whenever Kay launches into another long and rather pointless story about one of her sons.

Is Lorna ever going to become my new best friend? No, of course not. No one could replace Isabel or even come close. I’m sure Lorna will still get on my nerves sometimes and me on hers. But I know how to deal with her now and, most surprisingly of all, I actually like her. I do.

I can’t wait to go back to work in January and launch my glittering career. I can’t wait to spend tomorrow, just my lovely husband, my imperfect but adorable kids and me, celebrating Christmas, just our little family. I even can’t wait for New Year’s Eve, the most overrated night of the year, when the five of us adults have agreed to meet up again to enjoy hating the whole thing together. We might invite Rose and Simon along, we might not. I’m easy.

Rebecca and Daniel and Isabel. Sometimes Kay and Lorna. Sometimes Rose and Simon. It might just work.