The Little Christmas Kitchen (23 page)

‘Well it’s lucky I’m not isn’t it?’ Maddy said tartly, eyes narrowed.

‘Don’t start, Madeline. Don’t be defensive. Last time I see you, you have pigtails in your hair and you are shouting to him to choose between us. That is the behaviour of a spoilt child. I don’t want you in his life because you have made it unbearable. It was unbearable for him to choose. Imagine–’ She rested her chin on the palm of her hand. Maddy watched as the five or six gold bracelets she wore fell with the movement to rest midway down her arm, her skin tanned the colour of caramel. ‘You imagine now what he lived with?’

‘Well he bloody chose you didn’t he.’ Maddy curled her lip and slumped back, arms crossed in front of her.

‘No you stupid girl. He made the choice not to let you dictate his life. Who should have to live by the rules of a nine year old? You were just too stubborn to see it. Like your mother.’

Maddy gasped. ‘Don’t you dare bring my mother into it.’

‘Oh,’ Veronica waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Such melodrama. Always with you.’ She glanced over her shoulder to see Maddy’s dad coming back to the table holding a tray of coffees, beaming at them. ‘This is your chance, Madeline, to show whether you are still a spoiled child or finally a grown woman.’ Veronica unclipped her purse and pulled out a mother-of-pearl cigarette case. ‘I wonder which one you will choose.’

‘Coffees. All round. I’ve never done this before.’ her dad said, holding up the tray. ‘Quite novel, really. Darling, there’s no granola so I got you avocado on toast. Maddy, there was a choice of jams, I chose apricot, you like that don’t you?’

Maddy nodded. Internally reeling from Veronica’s little pep talk.

‘I am going outside for a cigarette. Don’t wait for me if the food comes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘
Absolutement
.’ Veronica pushed back her chair and sauntered out, people pausing their conversations as she passed.

‘You ok, Mads?’ her dad asked, pouring milk into his Americano.

‘Yes, fine.’ She nodded. Still stunned. ‘I’m fine. Can you hold on a minute?’ Maddy mumbled as she stood up. ‘I just have to nip to the loo.’ Then she scarpered in the direction of the toilets.

Once inside she put her hands on the marble sink and took a couple of calming breaths. Then she looked up at her reflection, saw the dark circles under her eyes, and whispered, ‘He’s not the victim. I’m the victim. I was the victim. Shit.’ She ran her hand over her forehead. It had never really occurred to her that he’d missed her. He had Ella. He had given Ella every opportunity that Maddy hadn’t had. He had let Maddy go. Yes perhaps making him choose between her and Veronica had been stupid but she’d only been little. All she saw Veronica as was a woman who drove a nail further into the possibility of him coming back. He had left them and she had kept him away.

Locking herself in a cubicle Maddy shut her eyes and saw him standing at the back of the crowd at her aunt’s funeral. The sharp breeze making the ends of his scarf flutter and his overcoat flap open. She remembered the look of surprise on her mum’s face when she saw him. Felt the jolt herself that he had come. All dressed in black, but still with his briefcase, straight from work.

The afternoon was freezing, not a cloud in the sky just a pale icy blue sheet above them that stopped the frost in the graveyard from melting. The trees were painted white, the ground crunched underfoot. Up until the point she’d seen her dad, Maddy had been consumed by the fact she’d forgotten there was a hole in the bottom of her left shoe and her toes were frozen. She had avoided looking at anyone’s faces just to block out the sadness. But as the crowd walked away from the grave, Maddy heard her mum sob so loud it made her cry herself. And her dad was there in a second, his arm around her mum holding her up, stopping her from falling. And to Maddy the moment had been magical, like a movie. The moment that would change everything. When he realised that he still loved their mum and would support her forever. He’d walked her back to his car as Maddy and Ella had trailed behind. Maddy hopping with pins and needles, her left foot completely numb, but not caring because she had watched, seen her dad’s fingers press into the thick faux-fur of her mum’s coat, and thought that this would be the moment he realised that he was wrong.

‘Sorry.’ Maddy said as she got back to the table, ‘I just felt a bit queasy.’

‘Are you ok? Do you want me to get you anything? A soda water? That’s good for stomachs?’ her dad asked, poised to jump up from his seat.

‘No, no I don’t need anything.’

The waiter had brought the breakfasts. In front of Maddy was a huge fluffy croissant and a little bowl of golden jam. Her napkin was green with The Ivy embroidered in white. If she hadn’t been with her dad she knew she would have slipped it into her bag as a memento.

‘God it’s so nice to see you.’ her dad said, just staring at her as she unfolded her napkin and laid it in her lap.

The best Maddy could do was a half-smile as she started spreading jam on her croissant.

At the wake Maddy had piled her plate high with mini sausage rolls and was popping them one by one into her mouth as she sat on a footstool in front of the fish tank. Ella was nibbling at a ham sandwich when she suggested they go in search of their parents.

It was their grandmother’s house and while all the rooms were familiar, they felt like strangers as they watched people in black nodding and laughing softly as they ate off paper plates.

The door to the library at the far end of the corridor was ajar. Maddy recognised her mum’s voice. Neither of them suggested they tiptoe but it seemed appropriate, and when they got to the door they stood silently, watching as their mum ran her hand down their dad’s cheek, bit her lip and half-smiled, thanked him for coming and reading the tilt of his head as a lean in for a kiss, opened her mouth, closed her eyes and waited.

Maddy waited.

Ella put her hands over her eyes.

But he didn’t lean in, instead her dad gently lifted his hands and put them on her mum’s shoulders and holding her where she was – Maddy expecting a crushing
Gone with the Wind-
style embrace – took a step back and muttered, ‘Sophie, don’t.’

‘Really?’ Her mum’s eyes had snapped open. ‘I need you.’

‘And I’m here.’

‘Exactly!’ her mum had said, her hands going up to her head, pressing into her temples. ‘I thought that was…’ She glanced to the door, seemed to see the kids but not see them. ‘Ella said?’ she paused. ‘Oh god. I can’t believe this is happening when my sister’s just died.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m so stupid. It was just when Ella said you missed me–’

‘Ella said what?’ Her dad frowned.

‘Nothing.’ Her mum shook her head. ‘Ella didn’t say anything. It’s nothing. It was me, I just thought, this woman’s French for god’s sake. You can’t even speak French.’

Next to Maddy, Ella had started to cry.

‘What have you done?’ Maddy hissed.

Ella had cried more.

Maddy had run away and half the wake had been spent with her dad and mum trying to coax her down from their granny’s apple tree.

When her dad had had to leave Maddy had refused to kiss him goodbye. She had said that she would never see him while he was with Veronica and her dad had taken a deep breath and said,
I can’t do that, Maddy
.

And while her parents had a hushed argument at the front gate, Maddy had run to Ella, who for the first time wouldn’t tell her that everything would be ok, who instead glared at her and said,
Why did you have to tell her about Veronica? Why couldn’t you have just shut up. This is your fault. It’s all your fault
.

And Maddy had narrowed her eyes and hissed,
It’s not my fault, it’s yours. You said something and now they hate you. We all hate you
.

After that, Maddy cringed to think about it now, she had squeezed her way between her mum and her cousin Rachel who was just sitting bleakly on the sofa seemingly trying not to break down about the loss of her mum. Maddy had pushed her way onto her mum’s lap, separating her from Rachel, wanting her all to herself, wanting her to protect her from reality and as she was shutting her eyes to block out the world she had just seen Ella standing in the kitchen doorway, watching pale-faced and alone.

None of them had ever talked about that day again.

Now as Maddy spread jam on her croissant and her dad tried to make small talk, she thought about her mum wanting her to stay in Greece. Wanting to hold everything just as it was. And Maddy so desperate to be set free.

It wasn’t the same, she knew. But perhaps, she realised, there were no victims. Just people. And what if it was no one person’s fault, but everyone’s?

CHAPTER 29

ELLA

‘I thought you blamed me because I told you that he didn’t love Veronica.’ Ella toyed with the top of a mince pie that her mum had put a huge plate of on the table. They were her aunt’s speciality – bite-sized with pastry stars on the top. Sophie would always make them on her own, really pedantic about every aspect, like a Christmas ritual of remembrance.

Ella picked the star off and put it back on again. ‘I’ve thought that for ages but it’s only as I’m saying it now out loud that it seems ridiculous. You knew, didn’t you?’ Ella thought about Max and Amanda, and about all the times she’d wondered if he was seeing someone else, kidding herself that she was enough but knowing that it was just a matter of time. ‘You knew he loved her right from the beginning.’

Her mum did the tiniest of nods. ‘Of course I knew.’

Ella pushed the plate with the mince pie on it away and leant back in her chair.

‘Ella, it’s an enormously overused phrase, but no one teaches you how to be a parent. Especially a single parent. Especially when you’re completely floored.’ Sophie crossed her arms on the table, exhaled and seemed to sag down an inch or two. ‘It was the worst time of my life. I just– I will forever regret that I didn’t see my sister and you know, as an aside from this, I just wish you and Maddy would get on again. I know she was the spoilt youngest but you were so good with her, so patient. And of course I knew he was in love with that bloody French woman.’ She laughed but Ella didn’t. ‘You shouldn’t have heard or seen that conversation, I should have talked to you about it, but to be honest I just wanted the whole day to disappear. We got stuck afterwards about Maddy refusing to go and see him and that was just horrendous and I suppose the moment passed to talk to you. I think because you were so strong and clever I thought you were more of an adult than you actually were.’

Ella had to press her fingers into her eyelids and hold them there.

‘That’s what I’m sorry about. I’m sorry that I didn’t see you were a little girl still who held all this inside you. And then you stopped letting me come near you, I couldn’t even give you a hug and you wouldn’t tell me why–’

‘I thought I was fat.’ Ella mumbled, her eyes still closed.

‘Sorry?’

‘It was because I was fat.’

‘You weren’t fat.’

‘I
was
fat.’

‘And that’s why I couldn’t hug you? Are you serious?’

Ella opened her eyes and looked at her hands.

‘Jesus Christ, Ella. You wally.’

‘I’m not a wally.’

‘You are!’

Ella shook her head, sat back, laughed lightly and her mum smiled. Then Ella said quietly, ‘From my side you picked us. You must see that?’

‘I’m sorry Ella, but that wasn’t the way it was. It was much more complicated than that. We were all involved. We all should have done things differently. But you can’t just blame me. Yes I should have talked to you about what happened at the funeral but you should have talked to me. You should have said how you were feeling. And then you go and get all made over by Veronica–’

‘Don’t start that.’ Ella held up a hand to stop her.

Over by the fireplace the wood cracked and bubbled as the flames started to die. Ella pushed her chair back and went to get more logs. She could feel her mum watching her.

‘Ok fine.’ Sophie went on. ‘You became who you wanted, whatever, but that person was a complete stranger to me. You ran off with this boy who had no interest in any of us, then you jetted in and out of here like some film star and acted like we’re all completely beneath you. Ella, I didn’t even recognise you when you first showed up with him, my own daughter.’

As Ella threw the wood onto the fire the cat scarpered at the noise and the flames licked wild and red. She could feel an anger tight in her chest that she just couldn’t let go. Years of lonely rejection sat still burning. Years of isolation. Letters written in faux excitement about what a great time she was having at school. A life in two halves that never crossed; influences, people, that she couldn’t mention. The churning in her stomach every time she thought about the lies she’d told her mum. The pressure. The confusion. The loneliness. Through the window the clouds made the afternoon like night, the rain unceasing on the horizon like ink tipped in water. The leaves of the trees shaking with every drop. The cat was now pressed up against the wall under the dripping awning. The road a river of stepping stones.

‘What are you thinking?’ she heard her mum ask.

Ella bit her lip. Dimitri had said that courage wasn’t in acts of bravery but in facing your fears. Her fear, she realised as she watched the fire, felt her face flush with the heat, was the simple fact that she had thought her mother didn’t want her as she was.

That she had lived her life with a tiny voice right at the back of the cupboard in her mind that said,
just
Ella is not enough. The more you achieve, the more you do, the more you are, she might come and fight for you. Forgive you.

She saw her mum’s reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. Saw her looking the way she wished she had looked at her for years. Realised how all the tiny unresolved things between them, the unspoken thoughts, had piled on top of each other and the wedge had got bigger and bigger until Ella had eventually become Ella-and-Max and a complete stranger to this life. To the smells and the tastes. Even, she thought as she saw the gold star hang too heavy for the branch and the fibre optic angel wings glow, to the Christmas decorations. To the things that she had wanted to be hers but were so out of reach.