I’m in the respite care bungalow for my traditional Christmas Eve stopover. It’s a family detox, if you will, needed by all parties before the main event. The radio is on in the kitchen and it’s so loud that I can hear it clearly from my room. I imagine that Lutsi, one of the agency care workers, is dancing to it, her skinny frame bobbing back and forth between dishwasher and cupboards as she clears up after dinner and puts everything out ready for our breakfast tomorrow. They’ve bought deluxe Christmas crackers to pull at breakfast, I think. I saw them when we were having dinner. None of us have hands that can hold them hard enough to pull them, so they’ll put their hands over ours and try to simulate the action instead. I’m not really sure what the point of that is.
The local commercial station, Star, is playing wall-to-wall festive tunes. We’ve just been treated to ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ (the M40 isn’t too clever right now, we’re told by the DJ in a blithe tone which speaks volumes about his planned route home – it’s definitely not a motorway) and now I can hear the opening bars of ‘Fairytale of New York’ by The Pogues.
It’s my favourite of all of the Christmas classics. I love the contrast of its hopeful opening bars with the crushing defeat and anger of its lyrics. I’ve never been to New York, but would love to go. Hard squeezing me into a seat on a plane these days, though, sadly. My bum is quite big, and bendy I am not. You can do it, though, apparently. Rosie, one of the other visitors to the home, went with her parents to Disney World last year. They apparently pretty much got the red-carpet treatment, from check-in onwards. I’d love to try that, but Mum and Dad don’t have the money and I don’t need telling that dreams don’t always come true.
Anyway, why go to Disney when you can have the five-star treatment right here in Morton Lodge, Oxfordshire’s premiere care facility? They’ve gone all out on the Christmas deccies, for a start. I heard yesterday that in the next-door bungalow, which has permanent residents, they’ve stretched to a real tree; meanwhile in here, someone has draped some partially-bald neon-pink tinsel over the rails beside my bed.
Well, I say my bed. It’s only mine this evening. I share it with a whole host of others, each allotted a few days here every month, to give our carers a break. Accordingly, the decor in here is completely anonymous and neutral, neither feminine nor masculine. They’ve chosen purple for the walls – or perhaps you’d call it lilac? And I’m lying under a blue duvet, which was just plumped up by Magda, before she said goodnight. She’s left the light on for me, but not the wall-mounted TV, unfortunately, because I’m not actually that tired and I’d like to have watched something before bed. I’m not eight, after all. I’m a thirty-year-old woman, damn it, and I’d really like to be able to watch something dramatic, funny or even, frankly, something totally crap, before going to sleep.
And I really wanted Jimmy to be on shift tonight. I’ve stayed here twice a month since meeting him, and we’ve hardly coincided. I hear whisperings about him, though. He’s obviously got them all pretty excited. He should be good for staff turnover, anyway; not many care homes have eye candy as tasty as him on their books.
I wonder if he’s gay? Lots of gorgeous blokes are gay. He might be, mightn’t he? It doesn’t make much difference to me either way, of course, as I’m only looking.
And I wonder where he’s spending Christmas? If he’s gay, then most likely with a handsome blond Adonis who works as a gym instructor, or as a pilot. If not gay, probably with some awesome nuclear scientist, with boobs like jelly moulds. I bet he never once thinks about this awesome blonde, with boobs like… What are my boobs like? Last time I had a look, I’d say they were shaped more like balloons. Huge, saggy balloons that have been inflated for weeks and are dimpled and losing their shape. And can you get hairy balloons, I wonder?
What’s that? Crikey, it sounds like someone trying the door that opens directly into the car park from my room. It might be one of those kids who lives down the road. They come into our cul-de-sac sometimes and lark around, getting as close as they can to the weird-looking folk, probably for a bet. As if we are vampires or monsters, and to be feared.
There’s that noise again, louder this time. And now there’s shouting.
‘Argh! Why the fuck do they lock this?’
Bloody hell, it’s Eliza. I hear her swear several more times and then stomp around to the front door. The doorbell rings, not just once, but several times, until Lutsi goes running to the door. I hear their conversation. Eliza is currently trying to explain why she’s appeared at the home at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
‘Look, I’m so sorry, I was just passing and I wanted to – to check Patience was OK. She is here, isn’t she?’
‘I seeeee,’ says Lutsi, her Estonian accent making her sound particularly doubtful. ‘Yas, she ees here. Weell OK – shee’s in bed, burt you might bee in lurck. Sometimes shee doesn’t go off immeediately. Are you OK, Eliza? Are you eel?’
‘I’m fine, thank you. Just tired, you know. I’ll just go through, shall I?’
‘Yas.’
Eliza almost runs into my room and shuts the door right behind her. It’s just a matter of seconds before she flings herself onto the bed next to me, throws her arms around me and starts to cry.
‘Oh, Patience, it’s all such a bloody mess!’ she wails into my pyjama top. ‘I am such a disaster.’ Obviously, I remain silent, because that’s all I can do. She’s used to this, and I know she’ll tell me more when she’s ready. I wait, listening to the radio, which is now playing Mariah Carey’s version of ‘O Holy Night’.
‘So, two major problems,’ she continues, still talking to my chest. ‘Number one, Ed and I have broken up, and I haven’t told Mum and Dad yet.’
Oh sweet Jesus, that’s a relief! I couldn’t stand Ed. He never looked at me properly, in the eye, in all those years, not once. He’s a shifty bugger.
‘Second major problem – and wait for it, this is worse – I’m pregnant, and it’s his. Ed’s.’
Now this is justification indeed for her crazy drive to see me here.
‘I’ll have to tell Mum and Dad, won’t I? I mean, about the wedding. I think I’ll be able to keep schtum about the pregnancy and deal with that myself. But the wedding – I’ll have to tell them because there’s so much to unravel. But Patience, you know as well as I do that they will be so disappointed. Mum has been planning this since I was little, and she knows it will be her only chance to do the wedding thing. No offence, lovey.’
I am not offended, of course. We both know that I will never get married or have children, and we also both know that our parents have offloaded all of their dreams for both of us onto her, the poor thing. I don’t envy her, I really don’t. I think she used to resent me a bit when we were both living at home, and I can understand why. My caring needs and stalled development meant that she was simultaneously ignored and overloaded with expectations, and that’s a really, really shitty combination.
‘This is not the perfect life they have always wanted me to have, is it? And I can’t go home tonight anyway, because I’ve told them I’m sick, and I can’t stay in the flat, because the loneliness is glaring at me from the bare walls from where he removed his bloody pictures, and the cupboards from where he took his bloody cups, and I am just so bloody angry. And lost. And scared…’
We lie there for a bit, her stroking my arms gently, while she snuffles. Her breathing becomes a bit calmer. She moves a little further over so that she doesn’t squash me, lifts up the duvet and lies down on her side.
‘So, I’m staying here,’ she announces. ‘With you.’ And just like that, we are children again, and she’s climbed into bed with me to tell me stories. I feel her warm breath on my neck and instantly feel relaxed. And in a tried and tested procedure, honed throughout our intertwined lives, we both fall asleep.
*
‘Good morning, Patience! Rise and shine! Happy Christmas!’
He comes over to pull back my duvet.
‘Oh, Jeeeeesussss. Sorry. I didn’t know you were there.’
Ah, Jimmy. At last!
‘Oh fuck, sorry, I’m not supposed to be here, am I?’
Eliza has sat up in bed. Luckily she’s fully clothed, but her hair now looks lopsided and she has the imprint of one of my buttons on her cheek. Jimmy looks like he has absolutely no idea what to say. But he still looks gorgeous. He always looks gorgeous.
‘I should explain – I’m… I’m… Eliza. Patience’s… sister.’
Crikey, love, I can’t believe it took you so long to remember your own name.
She is shuffling to the end of the bed now, but it’s an effort to get out, because my bed guard is in the way and she doesn’t want to leap over it and worry him even more. She looks red in the face as she tries to swing her leg over it to dismount.
Jimmy looks baffled.
‘I came here late last night, you see. To see Patience, for Christmas, you know, and then I must have just… fallen asleep. They must have forgotten I was here… So sorry. What a mess. I must look a mess, I mean. So sorry.’
She’s gabbling. She doesn’t usually gabble.
Eliza has now managed to get one leg onto the floor and is now lifting her other leg over the guard at an incredibly awkward angle. She looks as though she’s practising an obscure martial art. When she finally gets it on the floor, she brushes herself down and walks over to my sink to check her face in the mirror. She does not like what she sees and, to be honest, I agree with her. It’s not her best look. She tries to wipe the dribble away from around her mouth with my face towel.
‘Anyhow. Thanks for waking me nice and early,’ she says, turning around. ‘I’ll definitely make Mum and Dad’s in time for breakfast if I go now! Great! Nice to meet you, by the way. What’s your name? I’m Eliza. Oh, sorry, I’ve already said that.’
‘I’m Jimmy.’
‘Great! Lovely. OK then, Jimmy. I’ll see you again? So sorry.’ And there she goes, out of the door as quickly as she came in. ‘See you later, Patience,’ she calls, as an afterthought.
When she’s gone, Jimmy exhales deeply before coming over to me once more to begin the morning routine.
‘Blimey, P,’ he says. He calls me P now. I like P. ‘She’s a bit mad, isn’t she? I can see you’re the saner sister.’
I enjoy this statement a lot more than I really should.