New Year’s Eve 2021
Chrissy
Marianne was as dressed up as Alice that night. From behind the bar, Chrissy looked over at the pair of them, sitting near the jukebox, laughing and pouring from a bottle of wine that anybody and everybody seemed to be sharing. Marianne normally dressed as if she’d just come from the office, even though she worked from home, designing websites, but tonight she wore a fitted black dress with a shimmer of gold jewellery and high-heeled, rose-gold boots. Peter kept touching her leg, smiling dotingly at her, and some of the other men were sneaking admiring glances at her too, and at Alice, everyone’s skin a little flushed from the booze.
Chrissy felt a pang of envy as she mopped beer off the bar, splashing yet more drops down her T-shirt. Not just because she was stuck here, distanced from the fun, but because of the flirtatious energy that seemed to swirl so naturally around the others, skimming them with the lightest touch. If she so much as winked at a punter, she’d still hear Ethan’s voice in her head calling her a slut and a prick-tease. If she ever felt a stirring of desire, even for a guy on the TV with nice eyes or sexy tattoos, she’d tell herself, no, that’s not for you, not after everything.
She sighed and looked around the rest of the pub, doing her usual checks that everything was okay. There were more flushed faces, bright eyes, loud voices, tides of laughter. Ellen sitting on Dave’s knee while he jiggled her up and down and she spilled her sherry and shrieked at him to pack it in. Poppy and Jack playing darts dangerously close to where Sara and her wife were dancing and trying to turn up the volume on the jukebox, even though that wasn’t possible. Rowena buzzing around selling tickets to an amateur production of Jesus Christ Superstar. And everyone reminiscing, it seemed, with the wistfulness that New Year’s Eves often brought, exchanging old pub stories and becoming misty-eyed and reflective.
Chrissy’s heart sank when she saw Leo sitting on his own in the darkest corner, flicking a beer mat into the air and trying to catch it between finger and thumb. It was a game he and Robbie usually played together, but there was no sign of Robbie, and Leo looked joyless, even when he pulled off what they’d normally dub an ‘epic catch’. The repetitive motion, the cartwheel of the mat in the air, the mechanical flick of his wrist. She couldn’t help thinking of the coping rituals Leo had retreated into after Ethan’s death. Throwing that wretched tennis ball at his bedroom wall again and again. The constant, maddening thud. It was Alice who’d talked to him eventually, persuaded him to stop; Chrissy had just accepted it as part of their new life, part of the haunted claustrophobia Ethan had left behind.
They should’ve talked more, after it happened. She should’ve been a better mum. But she couldn’t, she just couldn’t.
Now her gaze flitted back to Alice’s group and she was startled to find Marianne staring over at her. Chrissy blinked, and Marianne looked away without smiling. Weird, Chrissy thought, reaching for her glass and taking a glug of IPA. Feeling eyes on her again, she glanced up, but Marianne was talking to Peter now, whispering into his ear. It was Peter’s eye that Chrissy caught this time. Paranoia bloomed and she tried to stamp it down before it could grow; tried to tell herself, as she had before, that it was all in her mind. Nobody knew her secrets. Nobody knew the truth.
Except for one person. She saw Alice fiddling with her locket and touched hers under her T-shirt too.
To match mine, Alice had said when she’d first pressed it into Chrissy’s palm, making a heart-shaped dimple in her skin. A reminder that I’ll always be here for you. That we’ll always have each other. And nobody will ever hurt you again.
Robbie emerged from the garden and Alice looked up, as did Leo from his table across the room. Alice motioned for Robbie to join – or perhaps rejoin – her group, and Chrissy felt a flicker of anger: why had she left Leo to drink alone? She knew, really, that Alice would have tried to coax him over, that it was probably Leo who had chosen to isolate himself, but her earlier irritation clung on. Alice’s pushiness about the flat. And what Leo had said, upstairs: Robbie keeps bringing up my dad – or dads in general, at least – and I wish he’d fucking stop with it.
To her surprise, though, she saw Robbie hesitating, looking between his mum’s lively crowd and Leo’s solitary table, as if torn. Where had he been sitting before he’d gone outside? Chrissy wasn’t sure; she’d had a rush on at the bar. Peter shuffled to make a space for Robbie next to him, which Chrissy thought would be the clincher: Robbie loved nothing more than having a pint with his uncle. But his mouth turned down, ever so slightly, and he went to sit with Leo.
It should’ve made Chrissy happy. Robbie started doing the beer-mat-flicking thing alongside Leo, almost like a reflex, but they didn’t cheer and heckle each other like usual. It was like two tennis balls thumping wretchedly against a wall. Robbie kept glancing over at his mum and Marianne and Peter, as if he regretted his choice. Or as if, perhaps, his choice had been less about wanting to sit with Leo and more about not wanting to sit with them. Peter looked confused, a little crestfallen, and Alice glanced Chrissy’s way.
‘What is going on tonight?’ Chrissy murmured under her breath, then masked it with a smile as Ellen came up to the bar asking for another sherry.
She checked the clock as she poured it. Less than an hour to go. Chrissy fought an urge to hide under the bar, raise her head only when everyone had gone and it felt safe to look the new year in the eye, ask it what it had in store.