I stick my head around Tanvi’s bedroom door.
‘You off?’ she asks. She’s sitting on the floor painting her nails Father Christmas red.
‘Yep,’ I reply.
‘How you feeling?’
‘Weird.’
‘Ring me if you need me.’
‘I won’t, but thank you.’
She grins and salutes. I salute back and leave her to it.
Downstairs, I yell goodbye to her parents and head out into the fading December daylight.
After all those Saturday mornings leafleting here, I’m still getting my head around the fact Hopewood Gardens is my temporary home. I’ve been living with the Shahs for nearly six weeks now and it’s been pretty great. Despite my monthly visits to Dad’s over the years, I’d forgotten what it was like to feel like part of a family. I relish every bit of it, from the chaotic breakfasts and noisy dinners, to the squabbles over whose turn it is to wash up and what to watch on TV.
There’s a bus due, but I decide to head on foot into town instead. As I walk, I murmur ‘O Holy Night’ under my breath. I’m singing it in the school concert next week, and even though I know it inside out I’m not taking any chances, practising any chance I can get.
By the time I reach the high street, it’s almost dark and the Christmas lights are on.
I pause outside the café where Bonnie and I have arranged to meet and peer through the snow-sprayed window. She’s sitting at the table in the corner of the café, stirring her tea. She looks nervous.
It’s been six whole weeks since I last saw her. She’s been staying with Danielle, a singer friend of hers over one hundred miles away. We’ve texted and talked on the phone, but this is our first face-to-face meeting.
I take a deep breath and push open the door.
Noticing me, she stands up, her mouth twisting into a timid smile. She holds out her arms, but I can’t quite bring myself to step into them. She realizes, swallowing and dropping them to her sides.
‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi,’ I murmur.
‘It’s nice to see you.’
‘You too.’
There’s a pause. Kylie’s version of ‘Santa Baby’ is playing in the background.
‘Er, would you like something to drink?’ she asks.
I glance up at the chalkboard menu on the wall. ‘Hot chocolate please.’
She nods and heads up to the counter, returning a few minutes later with my drink plus a slice of Yule log on a small china plate.
‘I thought we could share,’ she says, slicing it in half, transferring the smaller half onto a napkin and pushing the rest across the table towards me.
‘You got a gig tonight?’ I ask, nodding at Bonnie’s battered hot-pink suitcase, the one she takes to gigs, at the side of her chair. One corner of it is shrivelled from where the plastic casing melted in the heat of the fire.
‘Yes. Corporate jobbie at that big hotel on the ring road.’
‘Nice.’ A pause. ‘How’s life at Danielle’s?’ I ask, blowing on my hot chocolate.
‘Oh, you know. All right,’ Bonnie says, wrapping her hands around her mug of tea. ‘Bit cramped, and in the middle of bloody nowhere, but it could be worse.’
I wonder how Bonnie’s coping there, with only a suitcase of belongings for company, or whether she’s already started rebuilding her hoard within the four walls of Danielle’s spare room, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. My stomach turns over at the thought.
‘I’d prefer not to be there for Christmas, but what can you do?’ Bonnie adds. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘Any news on the house?’ I ask.
‘They’re saying after Christmas now. I keep pushing for earlier but I’m not holding out hope …’
‘How about you?’ Bonnie asks. ‘How are you getting on at Tanvi’s?’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘The Shahs have been really nice to me.’
Understatement of the year. They’ve been incredible.
‘Remind me to add them to my Christmas card list,’ Bonnie says.
I smile faintly.
‘I saw Yvette again yesterday,’ she adds.
It was Social Services who put Bonnie in touch with Yvette, a psychologist with specialist experience in treating people with compulsive hoarding disorder.
‘And?’ I say.
‘It was hard work,’ Bonnie says.
I frown.
‘No, no, that’s a good thing,’ she insists. ‘Apparently it means I’m putting in the work.’ She smiles a smile that manages to be look both proud and sad at the same time. ‘And I am,’ she says. ‘Working hard, I mean. I want you to know that, Ro, that I’m taking it seriously.’
I nod, unsure what to say. I want to believe Bonnie but there’s still a glimmer of fear (more than a glimmer) that all the progress could unravel at any moment and we’ll end up back at square one.
‘She suggested I share some of the stuff I’ve been talking about with you,’ Bonnie continues tentatively. ‘Yvette, I mean. If that’s OK with you, of course.’
‘OK,’ I say slowly.
‘OK, super.’
Bonnie looks down at her hands then back up again. ‘You’ve probably already worked out that I don’t get on all that well with my parents,’ she says.
‘The fact I’ve never met them is kind of a giveaway.’
She smiles tightly.
‘How come?’ I ask. ‘Did you fall out?’
‘It’s not quite as straightforward as that.’
‘What were they like?’
She thinks for a moment. ‘Cold,’ she says. ‘You’ve heard the saying “children should be seen and not heard”?’
I nod.
‘Well, that was my parents to a tee.’
As I listen to Bonnie telling the story of her lonely childhood rattling around a big empty house, for perhaps the very first time I feel like there might actually be a day when the massive join-the-dots puzzle that is my mother stops being a collection of random dots with no numbers and starts to form some sort of picture.
‘Yvette thinks that’s why I started singing,’ she says. ‘For the attention. You’ve got to admit, it sort of makes sense …’ She pauses and plucks a shard of chocolate off her slice of yule log.
‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘How come you don’t see them any more?’
‘There was no big showdown as such, just the gradual realization I was never going to be the daughter they wanted, and they were never going to be the parents I needed. I moved out the second I was old enough and that was that.
‘What are you thinking?’ Bonnie asks, tilting her head to one side.
‘Just that that sounds really sad,’ I say.
She smiles and shrugs. ‘Oh, I’m sure there are much sadder tales … They just never should have become parents. Then again, you could probably say the same for me …’
Her voice trails off and there’s a moment of almost complete silence before the next song kicks in.
‘Before I forget,’ Bonnie says, producing a red envelope from her handbag and pushing it across the table towards me.
‘Do you want me to open it now?’ I ask.
‘It’s Christmas time, isn’t it?’
I open the envelope. The front of the card features a picture of three penguins, each of them wearing a red Rudolph nose and a pair of antlers. Inside, in her distinctive slanted handwriting, Bonnie has written: To Ro, I found this card when I was going through the house the other day and I don’t know why, but I thought the picture might make you smile. Love, Mum xxx
Not Bonnie.
Mum.
‘Thank you,’ I say, sliding it into my bag. ‘It did.’
‘What?’
‘Make me smile.’
Bonnie’s face melts into a grin.
What time’s your gig?’ I ask.
‘Seven.’ She checks her watch. ‘In fact I should probably get going in a bit if I’m going to fit in a proper sound check.’
I nod.
‘You could, er, come along if you fancied,’ she adds casually as she checks her reflection in her compact mirror.
‘To your gig?’ I ask, blinking in surprise.
Bonnie’s face flushes a little. ‘Yes. You could sit at the back, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.’
I consider her proposition. I haven’t seen Bonnie sing in ages. Years. I’m tempted. But not enough. The bottom line is, I’m not ready to pretend everything is OK between us. Not yet.
‘I don’t think so, Bonnie.’
Her face falls slightly.
‘But ask me again,’ I add.
‘I will,’ she promises.
Bonnie insists on giving me a lift back to Tanvi’s.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ she says, clearing the passenger seat so I can sit down.
‘That’s OK,’ I say, pulling on my seat belt. Although the car looks just as awful as it did when I last saw it, this is the first time Bonnie has acknowledged it or looked even remotely embarrassed. It’s only a small change, but it feels enormous somehow.
‘Anything exciting on this week?’ Bonnie asks we turn into Hopewood Gardens.
‘Nothing special. Just end of term stuff,’ I reply.
This isn’t strictly true. Friday is the Christmas concert.
‘How about you?’ I ask.
‘Back-to-back gigs,’ Bonnie says. ‘’Tis the season and all that.’
‘It’s this one,’ I say, pointing out Tanvi’s house.
All the lights are on, making it look extra warm and welcoming.
‘Nice digs,’ Bonnie says, letting out a low whistle of appreciation as she pulls up outside.
‘Yeah, I kind of lucked out.’
The engine’s purr dies out, plunging into silence.
‘Have you heard from your dad?’ she asks.
‘A few times, yeah.’
‘Everything OK there?’
‘As OK as it can be.’
I’m just sorry it took the house burning down for me to finally accept Dad was never going to step up and be the person I needed him to be.
There’s a pause.
‘I’m going to get better, Ro,’ Bonnie says, her fingers gripping the steering wheel, her eyes fixed on an invisible point beyond the windscreen. ‘I’ve been doing lots of thinking, not just with Yvette but on my own too, and I’m serious about sorting myself out, I really am.’
I bite my lip. I want to believe her. More than anything.
‘I’m going to go in now,’ I say.
‘OK,’ Bonnie whispers.
I plant a dry kiss on her cheek. She smells of hairspray and her favourite perfume. I’m shocked to realize just how much I’ve missed it. How much I’ve missed her.
‘Night, Bonnie,’ I say.
‘Night night,’ she murmurs in reply.
I slam the door behind me and make my way up the driveway. Bonnie waits until I’m inside before driving away.
Tanvi is waiting for me on the stairs. ‘So? How was it?’ she asks as I take off my shoes.
‘It was … OK,’ I say.
‘Good OK or bad OK?’
‘Let’s go with interesting OK.’
‘Wanna talk about it?’
‘Yes. But maybe not right away if that’s all right.’
‘Want some of my mum’s dhal in the meantime?’
‘Definitely.’
That night, as I lie in Anish’s old bed, staring at the ceiling that still looks strange, even though I’ve been sleeping beneath it for over a month now, I’m overcome by a wave of sadness and longing that ties my stomach in a series of impenetrable knots.
Because as much as I’m enjoying living with Tanvi and her impossibly kind family, I’m homesick.
I’m homesick for Arcadia Avenue.
For Bonnie.
For the place, for better or for worse, I call home.