It’s the first hour of Christmas Day and cold enough to see my breath so I’m very glad of the hat and scarf and Dad’s jacket. I won’t stay long because my fingers are already numb and no doubt Dot will be up at the crack of dawn to see if Santa’s been, but I wanted you to know I’m thinking of you, hoping you’re sleeping soundly in your cell like baby Jesus, except with a scar and a shaved head and no visitors bringing you gold, frankincense, or myrrh. Don’t worry, you’re not missing out on much, because I found out in Religious Education that myrrh is a sort of sticky tree resin. If you ask me, Wise Man Number Three was a bit mean to give oak goo to the Savior of the World. He would have been better off riding across the desert on his camel with something more traditional, e.g., chocolates in the shape of reindeer, which, by the way, you’ll find in the bottom of your envelope.
Dot was hyper last night, cantering up and down the living room, her hands by her head in the manner of antlers. Her excitement made me ache. Maybe you ache, too, Stuart. Maybe you ache for the days you and your brother put a mince pie and a glass of sherry on the mantelpiece for Santa, because now you’re in a cell and he’s somewhere else far away, probably with a picture of your wife on his wall next to a bare Christmas tree that he hasn’t the energy to decorate.
Anyway, I’m wasting time so I should make a start before Dot gets out of bed. Seeing as it’s Christmas, I thought I’d tell you about last December so imagine the ground’s frosty—the atmosphere in the study, too, because Dad had finally left his job and was filling in an application with Mum hovering over his shoulder.
“No apostrophe in its.”
Dad tapped his fingers on the desk. “Yes, there is.”
“Only when you mean it is. You don’t need an apostrophe to show possession.”
Dad pressed the DELETE button. “Why don’t you apply for the job rather than correcting my application? It’s your area of law.”
Mum leaned forward to type. “We’ve talked about this. I’m not going through it all again.” She picked up three used mugs and marched out of the room.
The house was cleaner than ever before, the taps gleaming in the bathroom and the furniture smelling of polish. Bedtimes were stricter and homework was checked more thoroughly and Mum made me redo a History essay to include all the facts I’d cut out about the Cold War, which was quite a lot because from what I can gather nothing much happened between Russia and America, like imagine a boxing match where two fighters just sit at opposite sides of the ring and flex their muscles without engaging in combat.
She made Dot practice her lip-reading, too, practically every day after school until Dad told her to give it a rest.
“How can I give it a rest when you won’t give me any alternative?”
“Dot’s exhausted,” Dad said, and sure enough my sister had flopped over the side of the leather armchair, her arms dangling over her head. “Come on, Jane. That’s enough for today.”
“She’s messing about,” Mum said, yanking Dot back up to sitting.
“You’ve been at it for over an hour.”
“One hour and twenty-two minutes,” Soph muttered from the piano, crashing the keys in a minor chord and sounding so miserable that I grabbed her hand and pulled her upstairs into Mum and Dad’s closet.
Mum’s dresses swung from hangers as we scrambled among the shoes to get comfortable. I opened my pencil case and gave Soph my favorite fountain pen for a treat.
“What’s up?” I asked in the darkness. It was a Friday night without much moon so the closet was that thick sort of black. I grabbed a crayon and inhaled deeply as Soph chewed on her lip. “Right, here’s the deal. You tell me what’s going on with you and I’ll tell you what’s going on with me.”
She contemplated this for a second then blurted out, “They keep calling me names.”
“Who do?”
“All the girls in my class. All of them. And tonight there’s a sleepover with a Ouija board, and Portia’s going to ask the ghost to reveal my secrets.”
“Have you told a teacher?” She looked at me as if I was mental so I grabbed her hands, abandoning the crayon in Dad’s shoe. “You have to tell someone.” Soph screwed up her face. “You have to,” I said more firmly. “Mum or Dad, if you don’t want to say anything at school.”
“Okay,” she whispered, nodding slightly. “If it gets worse. Maybe Mum.”
It was my turn to talk so I told her about Max.
“He keeps asking to meet by the lockers after school.”
“Do you go?”
“It’s Max Morgan, isn’t it? You don’t say no.”
“What happens when you get there?”
I rolled my eyes. “What do you think, Soph?”
“So are you his girlfriend or what?” she asked, sucking on the end of the fountain pen.
“Or what. He hasn’t asked me out or anything.”
“So you just kiss and talk and—”
“We don’t even talk. Just kiss. Not every day. When he feels like it. I think he fancies me, though.”
“What about you? Do you fancy him?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said, thinking of his dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and the lopsided smile that made the other girls jealous when it was directed straight at me.
“So why don’t you ask him out?” she suggested, and I muttered something about Mum, but Stuart that wasn’t the reason I was keeping my options open, and you know it.
Aaron had been to the library three times since the moment by the window. He’d write essays and I’d stack shelves, but as our bodies pretended to work, our eyes would do this secret dance. They’d flick together, then away. Together, then away. Together, hold, blink blink blinnnnnk… and then we’d smile shyly, and the whole thing would start all over again. We’d talk, too, about everything and nothing, whispering between bookshelves and at his desk and once in the foyer when I was pinning up a poster about a reading group. I didn’t ask about his girlfriend and Aaron didn’t mention her. Honest truth, I had no idea where I stood, so I decided to let the situation play out for a while. To see what happened. No harm in that, I told myself. If nothing physical happened with Aaron and I didn’t agree to anything exclusive with Max, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
My last shift before Christmas was on December 19. It had snowed heavily, fifteen centimeters in total, clean and white and fluffy, the sort of snow you’d make out of cotton wool on a card if you were trying to capture the perfect Christmas. Every time the revolving door spun, I looked up, smiling, but Aaron didn’t walk in at 9 AM or 10 AM or 11 AM, and when he wasn’t there at 12 PM, I slumped behind the computer, my Santa hat drooping as I typed numbers into a spreadsheet about borrowing figures.
“You can go,” Mrs. Simpson said when the clock hit one.
“It’s okay,” I said, pretending to study the spreadsheet. “I’ll just put a few more numbers in.”
“I can finish that.”
“No, really, I don’t mind,” I said, and if the mouse had been real, then Stuart, it would’ve squeaked because I was gripping it so hard. Mrs. Simpson put down her coffee then shooed me away.
“Go. Your dad will be waiting. Oh, and Zoe?” With a rare smile, she pressed the badge pinned neatly to her cardigan. It flashed Ho Ho Ho as she waved.
The library was in the center of the city and the streets were crammed with Christmas shoppers and tourists. Sighing heavily, I wandered down to the pavement, annoyed Dad was late.
“Zoe?” came a voice from my right. “Zoe!”
Aaron was waving, standing in the middle of the library garden in a coat and mismatched gloves.
“You’re here! I thought you weren’t… Hi!” I exclaimed, unable to hide my delight.
Aaron beckoned me over. “Nice hat.”
I nudged it so it flopped to the side at a jaunty angle, the pom-pom dangling by my chin. “Thanks.”
“And it’s appropriate attire for your surprise… Happy Christmas!” he said, pointing at something at his feet.
“Thanks,” I said uncertainly, not sure what I was supposed to make of the snowball that came up to his waist.
“It was supposed to be bigger. And I couldn’t find a flat cap or a pipe.” He stared at me desperately. “It’s Fred! Your French snowman, Fred.” Aaron grabbed a croissant out of a plastic bag and stuck it in the middle of the snowball. “Voilà!”
I started to giggle. “But where’s the head? And eyes? And nose?”
“I ran out of time,” Aaron mumbled. The croissant fell off the snow and landed by our feet. “Oh God, it’s pathetic, isn’t it?”
“A little bit,” I said, laughing, and then I stopped because Aaron was gazing at me, shaking his head.
“God, you have a sexy laugh.” My face was cold and my toes were frozen, but inside I was warm warm warm warm warm. “Your giggle… right up there with my dad’s sneeze and the squeak of green beans as my all-time favorite sounds.”
“Your dad’s sneeze?” I repeated, because I couldn’t for the life of me think what else to say. He pretended to do it, loud on the AAAAA but ridiculously quiet and high on the chooooooo, and then held out his hands. I nodded in complete agreement. “That is a great noise.”
“I heard it every night for years. We had this cat, you see. Ugly thing.”
“Don’t be mean!”
“You didn’t see her! She was fat, really fat, and too furry, with a squashed-up face. I was devoted to her, though. So was my dad. I mean, he’s allergic to cats, but he let her sit on his lap anyway, and he’d sneeze all evening. Mum would get on at him, calling him stupid and telling him to put the cat in the kitchen, but Dad said he loved the cat and the cat loved him, so he didn’t mind. ‘True love’s about sacrifice.’ That’s what Dad said.”
“Jesus, too.”
“Yeah. But Jesus didn’t bang the next-door neighbor, making anything he said about love totally irrelevant.”
“He might have done,” I muttered, surprised by the sudden bitterness in Aaron’s tone. “I always get the feeling the Bible left out the juicy bits. Jesus was a man, wasn’t he? He went to the bathroom. Burped.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “Scratched himself down there when no one was looking. Maybe he had an affair.”
“You,” Aaron said, stepping over the croissant so he was standing directly in front of me, “are completely unique.” I shook my head quickly. “You are, Zoe. A belching son of God? A blue furry creature called Bizzle?” he said, earning himself massive brownie points for remembering the name. “Who else imagines that stuff?”
“I dunno, but I reckon Jesus’s burp would make my list of all-time favorite sounds.”
Aaron laughed, his breath warm on my face. “What else would?”
I crinkled up my nose as I thought. “The noise of birds’ wings when they take off. That’s a cool sound.”
“The sound of freedom.”
“Precisely,” I replied, amazed that he understood without me having to explain. “Oh, and you know what else?” I asked, but I never got the chance to describe the tap of Skull’s claws on the kitchen tiles, because Aaron’s phone had started to ring, a noise I didn’t like one bit. We both stared down at the name on the screen.
ANNA
“I should go,” I said suddenly.
“No. It’s okay.” His phone fell silent as he put it back in his pocket. “She can wait. But my mum can’t,” he said, sounding disappointed as he gazed over my shoulder. I turned to see a plump woman with black hair and mahogany highlights hurrying toward the library, studying us closely. “I said I’d give her a lift back home.”
“No worries. My dad will be here in a minute, anyway.”
He bent down to pick up the croissant and stuck it back on the snowman, where it stayed in place. “S’long, Bird Girl.”
“S’long,” I said, grinning as he ran off to meet his mum, his words ringing in my ears. She can wait.
Well, after that, of course I couldn’t resist sending him a message, though I managed to hold off until the evening so as not to look too keen.
Thanks again for my surprise. Fred was without doubt the best non-snowman the world has ever seen.
I don’t know about that, he replied straightaway. Have you seen The Snowman? The little boy waking up to the pile of snow at the end? Surely that’s the best non-snowman.
No way! He was all drippy and dead. A pile of slush. Fred is better.
Fred appreciates your kind words, but he knows he can’t compete with a snowman that FLEW TO THE SOUTH POLE.
You mean the North Pole?!
Whatever. Wherever. HE FLEW. IN THE SKY.
The conversation was still going on when I stumbled outside in my wellies to fill up the bird feeder, ready for the morning. My phone vibrated against my thigh as I poured seeds into the wire mesh tube. Smiling, I pulled it out of my pocket.
Missing ur kisses ha x
My face fell. Max. I jumped as the phone beeped again.
It counts for a lot, I’ll give you that. Sweet dreams, Bird Girl. p.s. Fred says bonne nuit out of the corner of his croissant x
I laughed. I couldn’t help it, even though my mind was conjuring up a picture of two brothers, side by side in the same room with their phones, no idea they were texting the same girl. The bird feeder swung from the branch as I gazed up at the stars. Aaron liked me. And I liked him. Girlfriend or no girlfriend, I wasn’t being fair to Max. I decided to cool things off with him over the next few days and put a stop to it after Christmas.
Surprise surprise, Mum and Dad spent the whole of it arguing.
“How do you know where those birds have been kept? They might just write free-range on the packet so mugs like us pay twice as much.”
“If it says free-range, then it’s free-range,” Mum replied, tossing some carrots into the supermarket trolley and wandering forward. “There are laws for these things, as you should know. Didn’t you used to be a lawyer?”
“Didn’t you, too?” Dad replied as I trailed behind, sick to death of it. I looked at Dad’s crossed arms and Mum’s hands gripping the cart, neither of them willing to concede, and Stuart honest truth it felt as if the Cold War was still going on right here in the supermarket by the potatoes in the vegetable aisle.
“Look, there’s no point in spending all that money on a turkey when money’s tight,” Dad said.
“It’s only tight because you can’t get a—” Mum stopped herself at the last moment, picking up a bag of sprouts.
“Go on,” Dad growled. “Say it. I dare you.”
“Do you think there are enough in here?” Mum asked, weighing the bag in her hand.
In the end, Mum got her own way about the turkey, and despite everything it was golden and delicious and smelled beautiful on Christmas morning, cooking in the oven as we exchanged presents. For once, Grandpa had sent us something, cards with money inside them, though they were written in Dad’s handwriting. He beamed as Soph tucked the twenty-pound note into the waistband of her pajama bottoms. Dad asked Mum if it would be okay for us to visit the hospital, maybe the following day, but she just sprayed her new perfume hard, making us all cough.
“Santa’s rubbish,” Dot said when Mum and Dad left the living room to make the stuffing. She was signing more easily because her cast had been removed. “He didn’t even read my list.”
“What did you ask for?”
“An iPod.”
“But you can’t hear music.”
“Or a phone, so I can get an upgrade.” She held up a broken calculator and pressed the buttons sadly.
By the evening she’d cheered up, sprinting into my room with no clothes on to ask if I wanted to smell her new bubble bath. As I picked her up and plunked her in the water, I sniffed the air.
“Oranges?” I signed. “Or peach? Or strawberries and bananas and kiwis all mixed together?” I joked as Soph grimaced.
She was sitting with her back against the radiator, trying to encourage Skull to tackle a jump she’d made out of a bottle of dandruff shampoo and two bars of soap. Sloshing about in the water, Dot told me about a project on the future that she was starting at school, and how her class was going to make a time capsule, putting all sorts of stuff into a box then bury it underground.
“I’m going to put in one thing, and that is a dandelion.”
“A dandelion?”
“To show the aliens in one hundred years what flowers we have now,” Dot explained. Soph grinned, and I did, too, and Dot beamed in the bubbles, but I don’t think she understood what was funny.
“The dandelion will be dead in one hundred years,” Soph said out loud.
“Shhh!” I warned, but Soph just smirked.
“Dot, the dandelion will rot,” she signed clearly. Dot’s brow crumpled.
“Not if you bury it carefully,” I signed, glaring at Soph, who stuck out her tongue. “It will be fine.”
“Do you think the aliens will like it?” Dot asked.
I lifted her out of the water and wrapped her in a towel. “They’ll love it.”
When she was dry, I put her to bed, trying to ignore Mum and Dad bickering downstairs about who was going to do the washing up. Snuggled up under her duvet, I signed a story about a little green man who lived in the traffic lights. When I got to the end, she asked me to sign it again.
“Greedy!” I said, tickling her sides.
“Well, do you want your Christmas present instead?” she asked. Before I could answer, her chubby knees hit the carpet and she grabbed a package wrapped in a plastic bag from underneath her bed.
“A book!”
“That’s not the present,” Dot replied, opening the front cover carefully. “Flowers don’t rot, Zoe. Look.” In between the first two pages was a squashed, dried dandelion. “You said they were your favorite that day in the garden.”
“They are my favorite,” I said, and Stuart it wasn’t a lie, because all of a sudden they were.
“Merry Christmas,” she signed.
“Merry Christmas,” I whispered, and Stuart it’s time for me to go, so a very Merry Christmas to you, too.
Love from,
Zoe x
1 Fiction Road
Bath, UK