Swell (9 page)

I had been responsible for shopping for the Christmas dinner, paying for the Christmas dinner and cooking it. Having flown back in to Heathrow the morning before Christmas Eve, I was still painfully jetlagged as I fought stressed out supermarket shoppers for the turkey and trimmings that were apparently turning to gold dust before our eyes. When a woman dressed head to toe in bronze velour threatened to fight me for the last remaining cauliflower I lost my rag.

‘It’s not a Willy Wonka golden ticket, it’s a fucking root vegetable.’

I threw the cauliflower across the vegetable department, at which point my heavily veloured opponent launched herself after it like a desperate single woman trying to catch the wedding bouquet. Bewildered, I left the supermarket vegetable-less, stepping over warring shoppers fighting over everything from cranberry sauce to crap Christmas crackers. When I passed two women playing tug of war with the last copy of the latest reality TV star’s memoirs, I hissed, - ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves’ – and purposefully knocked over the book display.

‘They did it,’ I said to the distressed shelf stacker boy as I made a hasty exit.

I was not, as Chuck would say, in a good place. I had come down to earth with such a bump I felt bruised. Waking up in my flat on a donkey grey Christmas morning with the realisation that I had ruined my chances of writing a bestselling book pounding in my head, my jetlag intensified. I missed the sunshine. I missed the ocean and I missed my new friends. I also missed the buzz of knowing my life was heading in an exciting new direction. Jason may have chosen not to live with regret but I was feeling enough for both of us.

I still reddened when I recalled the car journey home from Olas restaurant, which had been a silent penance. None of us had spoken until we were inside the beach house with the door closed, at which point Chuck sadly retired to his room to leave us to sort the matter out between us. Used to living under the scrutiny of the public eye, Jason was always careful not to create scenes that would attract attention. I knew it had taken every ounce of willpower he had not to wipe the smug grin off Cain’s face in the restaurant. I
had, therefore, expected Jason to shout and scream when we were back home but the cold disappointment I was in fact faced with was one hundred times worse.

‘In your own words, Bailey, I trusted you,’ he said sadly.

His eyes had lost their unique sparkle.

‘And I made the biggest mistake of my life, Jason. I was weak and I let the thrill of being here and feeling part of the scene cloud my judgement. I thought he was genuine.’

Jason smiled weakly.

‘Genuine? There is nothing genuine about that guy. I thought a girl like you would see through it.’

‘I guess I got carried away but I can assure you it will never happen again. I am off professional surfers for life, I promise you. Romantically speaking. Sexually. You know what I mean.’

Jason lowered his eyes and sighed.

‘No, it won’t happen again, Bailey, because you’re leaving. It’s over. I’m sorry.’

I did not want to give up my dream because of one mistake. I was all too aware of how mistakes could destroy people and I could not let that happen. I had to go down fighting.

‘Cain used me to get at you,’ I said.

‘And you let him.’

‘And you are going to let him win. Yet again.’

There was a flicker of confusion on Jason’s face but then the shutters came down and my fate was sealed.

‘I made a mistake, Jason,’ I said softly, ‘and I am truly sorry I hurt you, but you had gone way with Portia and I was alone on a tropical island. I am not a bad person. I won’t be made to feel ashamed. We all make mistakes, even you and from those mistakes we learn life’s lessons. We all have to fail sometimes to recognise success, I thought you would understand that.’

He tilted his head and said nothing.

‘Punish me if you want,’ I carried on, ‘but believe me I am the best person you will find to write this book. I am passionate about this and I would have risen to the challenge because I am determined, just as I believed you were. But all I have seen is that you are ready to give up on things at the first opportunity. You could win the thirteenth title and we could write the best possible book. We could beat Cain and both win in the end. I thought you were a winner but obviously I was wrong.’

I left the room, shaking internally from the effort of trying to stand up for myself. They were the last words I said to Jason before I left Hawaii on the morning flight.

I stared out of the window at the identical grey houses in the street standing in a row like sad little orphans waiting to be chosen by new parents and have some colour introduced to their lives. The sheet rain seemed to wash everything dirty rather than clean. I heard a loud sigh in the room and looked around only to realise it was my own.

I checked on the turkey that had been shivering in my mother’s ancient oven for more time than it would have taken to cook it over a candle flame.

‘Mother, did I not send you money for a new oven in September?’ I shouted, feeling my blood boiling.

Something was rising above room temperature but it was definitely not the food.

‘What? Oh I don’t think so. I would have remembered that.’

‘Maybe not after four-hundred pounds worth of alcohol,’ I seethed, stabbing at a solid parsnip bobbing defiantly in a pan of tepid water.

‘Only us, Mother,’ Joanna called out, bursting through the front door with bags full of wrapped gifts.

‘Merry Christmas, Mother,’ I heard Gerry’s plummy voice say.

‘Mother,’ I tutted under my breath while my head was in the fridge, ‘you’re practically the same age you fat bastard.’

‘You said bastard,’ gasped a voice behind me.

I banged my head on the freezer door handle and emerged to see my adorable nephew Zac beaming up at me with eyes as clear and blue as Hawaiian rock pools.

He was wearing a brand new football kit several years too big, complete with shin pads and boots.

‘Hello, Zac, or is it Ronaldo?’ I bent down and kissed him on his soft, pink cheek.

He grinned back at me proudly.

‘Merry Christmas, Auntie Bailey. Did you lose your job?’

If adults got to the point as directly as children, political summits would be over in half the time.

‘I did lose my job yes, Zac, but it’s OK I’ll just write something else.’

‘Have you thought of anything yet?’

‘No I haven’t but inspiration may be just around the corner.’

I glanced out at the sky and immediately doubted it.

‘Will you still be a famous author?’

‘Auntie Bailey is not famous, Zachary,’ Gerry bellowed from the doorway to the accompaniment of my mother’s cackling laughter, ‘and maybe now Auntie Bailey will get a proper job or at least get herself a man with a proper job who can pay for her pipe dreams.’

I bit my tongue and ignored the jibes for Zac’s benefit who was too young to know, and perhaps would never know, what a complete tosser his father was.

Gerry lolled at the kitchen door with a glass of port in one hand and a yellow paper hat perched on the apex of his shiny head. His stomach arrived several seconds before the rest of him.

‘Hello, Gerald’ – I said his name as if I were saying ‘raw sewage’ – ‘diet not working then?’

‘I’m not on a diet,’ he said before stopping to think.

I raised one eyebrow pointedly and, with a winning smile, turned to remove the turkey from the oven.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My heart leapt when I thought I heard the roast potatoes crackle but it was just Zac opening a packet of crisps.

‘Don’t spoil your appetite, Zac,’ said Joanna.

She squeezed past Gerry to give me a tight little hug.

‘Don’t worry about appetites, this turkey won’t be ready until Easter at this rate,’ I said, hugging her back.

My sister was always well dressed and an obviously wealthy woman but she chose clothes far too mature for her years. Every time we met, her inner light had dimmed a little more. Her mousey hair was pulled tightly into a bun and had become distinctly salt and pepper coloured at the temples. The expression of sad resignation set deep in the lines on Joanna’s face had appeared on the day of my father’s funeral and had gradually become a permanent mask over the years.

All of us had lost part of ourselves when my father committed suicide. He was the mortar that held the bricks of our family together. Christmas had always been fun with him around. The last Christmas before my father died, every girl in the in-crowd was praying for the special edition puffer jacket as worn by Bros, the boyband of the moment. On Christmas Day, I had awoken at a suitably teenage hour of midday to find not only
the
jacket but a pair of jeans hand-ripped by my father and a shiny new pair of black DM shoes to the laces of which he had attached a pair of beer bottle tops, just like the ones the boys in the band and their fans ‘the Brosettes’ all wore. He simply understood how much it meant to a teenager to fit in and be liked.

‘Any more customising that requires I drink two bottles of beer before noon, I’m your man,’ he grinned when his Brosette daughter threw her arms around him and cried – ‘I love you, Dad.’

Less than two months later he used the same beer to wash down a fatal cocktail of pills, which definitely took the shine off my new shoes. I was the one who found him. Having to be liked, it seemed, was also my father’s downfall. Bob Brown did not believe anyone could like a man who had lost everything his family owned on a lame horse.

Without a father, Joanna had become a needy young woman who had signed up to a loveless marriage because she thought Gerry would not leave her penniless and alone as my father had. My mother had found solace in a liquid friend called alcohol and grown bitter towards his memory and the rest of the world. I had tried to reach her but I had always been a daddy’s girl and my mother resented me for it.

Gerry eased his well-upholstered backside onto the edge of the rickety white table that had been known to collapse under the weight of beans on toast. My mother clattered in behind him on fluffy kitten heel slippers that looked as if she had kicked two bunny rabbits up the backside and kept on walking. She wore stained cow print pyjamas that were loose and misshapen but failed to conceal her expanding waistline. Her hair that was naturally as onyx as mine had been singed to a crisp by home peroxide kits and sprang at gravity-defying right angles from her head. My mother’s appearance never failed to shock me even though it rarely changed. Deep down I think I still naively held onto the desperate hope that one day I would be greeted by the smart, intelligent woman I
vaguely remembered from my childhood. Instead I was always met at the door by an angry drunk who could not wait, it seemed, for life to be over.

‘Is the bloody dinner ready yet, Bailey, I’m starving to death in here,’ she grumbled, finishing her sentence with a burp.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ I muttered.

Zac giggled while trying to balance a fresh pineapple on his head. Joanna threw him a scolding glance.

‘I give Bailey one bloody job to do and she can’t even manage that.’

‘Hardly surprising,’ Gerry chortled. ‘She doesn’t have the best track record. Can’t even write a book about a beach bum. What’s the next big thing, Bailey, pop-up books or colouring in?’

I dug the fork into the turkey skin, wishing it was Gerry’s stomach.

‘I said she should find herself a rich man,’ he announced, ‘stop trying to be Little Miss Career Woman.’

‘Quite right, Gerry,’ said my mother while pouring herself a glass of whiskey from her stash in the bread bin.

‘I thought you would be the last person to support that theory, Mother.’

‘Bailey, don’t,’ Joanna mumbled half-heartedly.

Our eyes met and a flash of sorrow past between us.

I turned away and a tear ran down my cheek, turning to ice on the turkey’s back. I missed the life I had dipped into just long enough to tan my toes. Jason and Chuck would not be spending Christmas in a house full of lunatics waiting in vain for a decrepit oven to perform its sole purpose of cooking. They would be sipping champagne, probably with
beautiful people in a spectacular house in between refreshing surfs in an azure ocean. It was hard to imagine that his world of sunshine and beauty existed simultaneously out there in direct contrast to the world I had suddenly returned to. Did wanting it make me superficial? I wondered. Or did it simply make me aware of what the planet had to offer if one went in search of a better life. I missed the startlingly fresh air. I missed the sound of the ocean. I missed Chuck’s vibrancy and colourful presence. I missed the spontaneity. I missed Jason.

I sighed. Here we were like a group of people trying desperately to play a game of Happy Families with a pack of Tarot cards. I felt as if I did not belong.

‘Look at me, Auntie Bailey,’ Zac whooped, thrusting out his arms.

The pineapple balanced for a second before toppling off and landing on my mother’s foot. She shrieked and hopped towards Gerry, who tried in vain to catch her. There was the sound of cheap wood splintering before the table collapsed. Gerry sprawled on the floor like an upturned beetle with my mother remonstrating beside him. Joanna shouted at Zac who burst into tears and clip-clopped from the room in his football boots.

Just when I thought I could take it no longer, the sound of my phone trilling interrupted the sounds of the 1980s Christmas compilation CD. I ran to find it and grabbed the phone as if I was drowning and someone had thrown me a lifebuoy.

‘Hello.’

‘Merry Christmas, Bailey Brown,’ said a voice I instantly recognised as Jason’s.

I closed my eyes and I could almost feel the sun on my back.

‘Hello, Jason. Merry Christmas.’

Now that was a contradiction in terms.

I said no more and willed him to fill the gap.

‘Look I don’t say this very often so I’m just going to say it once. I was wrong and you were right. I am an asshole.’

‘I didn’t call you an arsehole did I?’

‘No but you had every right to. I was too quick to judge you when you had done nothing but support me. I made a mistake. I want the best girl there is to write my book and you are that girl. It may just be the Christmas spirit getting me all giddy but so what? I judged you and I had no right, I don’t own you. I want you to come back. I… we miss you. Will you come to Indonesia in March?’