Mistletoe on 34th Street Read online

  The lady of the house – my mother, Gina – is all muumuus and paintbrushes, though it’s part of her character even more than her lifestyle. An artist, she paints constantly and likes to look the part of boho earth goddess, but then shops in Waitrose because she can’t be bothered to grow her own veg. She can’t bear cooking but loves eating, and joins every single human rights march she can make it to.

  I had no idea who Maggie or the Coyhamptons were, but the Gladstones were family friends who only started winter-sunning with a vengeance when my sisters and I stopped going on holidays with our parents. ‘Does Tenerife have black sand?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to create some wonderfully dark abstract paintings.’

  ‘Mum, you’re on holiday, not demonstrating oppression. Give yourself the week off.’

  ‘That’s what your father said. He can’t wait to – and I quote – “not have to see those incompetent knob-jockeys for ten whole days” but what you all don’t understand is that if you have colleagues like mine you don’t want to be apart from them. You love them, like family.’

  ‘Your paintbrushes are not your family, Mum,’ Lucy said from the floor, trying to unpick the squirrel embroidered on the front of one of my jumpers.

  ‘Well at least they want to spend Christmas with me,’ she teased, lightly. ‘Sure you girls don’t want to come along this year? I think there’s space on the plane. There’s certainly space in the beach hut – it has nine bedrooms, plus a snug, plus a grotto pool modelled on the Playboy mansion, apparently.’

  ‘Gross, no thanks,’ said Lucy.

  Mum tinkled with loud laughter, which woke Dad up with a snort, and I cringed, and put a miniskirt back in the wardrobe. ‘What kind of a beach hut has those things?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t beach huts just sheds with pastel paintwork?’

  ‘Come with us.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘We’ll pay.’

  My heart sank a little. ‘It’s not just about the money … ’ It was a lot about the money. I still had a long way to go to build up that house deposit I’d lost. Not lost; that I’d had taken away from me, by my husband-to-be, Kevin. And I wouldn’t get back my New York expenses until the new year. And I’d just spend forty-five quid on a fake bloody Christmas tree (which, now rebuilt, looked really nice again and I’d named it ‘Mary Christmas’, not that I’d told Lucy). But on top of that I just needed to be on my own for a couple of weeks. I needed a break. From everything. From everyone. And from trying to right the world. Maybe I’d finally try that yoga video by Jennifer Aniston’s instructor. Or maybe I wouldn’t, let’s be honest. ‘My New York flight gets back only a day or two before you leave, it’ll just be too much of a rush.’

  ‘We don’t leave until Christmas Eve. If you change your mind, just say the word.’

  I hesitated, holding a black dress up against myself and looking at my reflection.

  ‘Don’t take that,’ Mum said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, surprised. It was hardly risqué – this dress was practically Amish.

  ‘What is it you always say? If you have to think about something it’s not meant to be?’

  I went back to studying my reflection, thinking about how wise I was.

  ‘Come here,’ Mum said. ‘We’ve got you something.’

  ‘Did you get me something?’ Lucy was suddenly alert.

  I lolloped close behind as she walked out of my room. ‘You got me something? Like a Christmas present?’

  ‘Of course like a Christmas present, and no, Lucy, I didn’t get you anything yet because up until all of five minutes ago I wasn’t aware you were even back in the country. Roland, wake up.’ She slapped his legs and he opened his eyes and glared at us and then glared at the Western movie, and then glared at us again. But it was OK, he wasn’t cross with us; some people have resting-bitch face, my dad has resting-glare face.

  ‘I got you something too,’ I said, panicking. My eyes flickering around my flat until they settled on an un-burned candle.

  ‘It’s not “Love” again, is it?’ Mum asked.

  ‘What’s wrong with love? Everyone likes love … OK fine, I’m a bit late with shopping this year, but I was going to pick you out some things in New York and give them to you in January when Anne visits. Sorry. I have a tree.’ I showed them Mary Christmas again.

  ‘The problem with Christmas trees—’ My dad started to launch into one of his long-winded stories but Mum stopped him with a Look.

  ‘Here you go.’ Mum handed me a small box.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked, lifting the lid. Nestled inside the box was a ring with diamonds and emeralds encrusted all the way around. ‘Mum, are you asking me to marry you?’

  ‘This is my engagement ring.’

  ‘WHAT. THE ACTUAL. F—’

  ‘Lucy!’

  Memories flooded back of being a little girl and holding Mum’s hand for what seemed like hours, twisting the ring around over and over again, watching the stones catch the light and glint under the conservatory lights. Mum hadn’t worn this in years. I’d almost forgotten it.

  ‘When I started painting it kept getting so mucky that I decided to put it away and keep it safe, and stick with my sturdy old wedding ring instead,’ Mum explained. ‘It’s been sitting in this box for far too long now. It could do with a clean but I just didn’t have time to take it anywhere.’

  Dad smiled at me, then closed his eyes again.

  ‘It’s yours now,’ Mum continued firmly. ‘To do whatever you like with. It came from Tiffany’s so it might be worth a bit now, if you wanted to sell it—’

  ‘No!’ I jumped in, snapping the box shut and clutching it. ‘No way!’

  ‘Now, I’m just saying, if you decide that you want mon—’

  ‘Nope, nope, nope, I am not selling your engagement ring. I’m going to look after it so much. Thank you.’

  A look of relief washed over Mum’s face. She reached over and reopened the box, which was still in my hand. ‘Good. But if you’re keeping it don’t keep it hidden away in this box for another twenty years. Wear it.’

  ‘On my ring finger?’

  ‘If you want. Your ring finger isn’t the property of some future boyfriend. Wear it on whatever finger you like.’

  In fact, when I tried it on, it was loose on my ring finger, but it looked nice on the middle one next to it. I held it up to the light, watching it twinkle.

  ‘It looks lovely on you,’ said Mum, and Dad let out a grunt of agreement without opening his eyes.

  ‘I’m going to take such good care of it. I won’t take it to New York.’ I started pulling it off my finger.

  ‘Oh, do take it to New York, she’d love to go home.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘A diamond ring should be a she, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s not something I’ve ever thought about, actually.’ I paused, something just occurring to me. ‘Wait, so it’s a Tiffany ring from New York?’

  ‘That’s where we got engaged.’

  I felt awful for having forgotten all of this. I really needed to pay more attention to my parents’ stories – this was their history, my history. ‘Tell me the story again?’ I asked.

  Mum settled onto the arm of the sofa and put a hand on my dad’s shoulder, who reached up and rested his own hand on hers, still half asleep. I remembered how Kevin always used to reach for me in his sleep and I felt fondness at the memory. But, as usual, it was iced with the tang of resentment that I just couldn’t scrape off.

  ‘It was the height of summer and we were on a road trip with the Gladstones,’ Mum began. ‘Well, with Bette Gladstone, who was called Bette Archer at the time and her spotty boyfriend whose name I don’t remember. She’d split up with Bill for the summer to sow some wild oats, but realised a couple of weeks in that this new boyfriend was about as wild as a field of mud and her oats were better off back on Bill’s pastures.’

  Mum paused to shuffle in closer to Dad. ‘I digress. So we’d driven down that morning f
rom Rhode Island to Manhattan and it was such a hairy drive into the city that we all went for a drink at the Rainbow Room as soon as we had checked into the hotel. One drink turned into several Long Island Iced Teas and before we knew it your father had taken me up Fifth Avenue, into Tiffany’s, and proposed right there in the middle of the shop!’

  I laughed. ‘Did you get a round of applause?’

  ‘More than that, we got the VIP treatment – a glass of champers which I refused because I suddenly felt like I needed a really strong coffee.’ Mum reached for my hand and studied the ring on my finger, a smile on her face. ‘I couldn’t take my eyes off that ring. I just kept peeking at it every moment I got. It is lovely, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s beautiful … are you sure you don’t want to wear it again?’

  ‘Oh lord no, it’s been off too long, it won’t fit my big mummy hands now. And it looks lovely on you. You wear it from now on, if you want to, then it will be like we’re spending Christmas together,’ she teased.

  ‘Since when did you get all sentimental about Christmas?’ I asked. ‘I thought we were having Christmas in January, when Anne’s home. Isn’t that still the plan?’

  ‘It is, my love, I was just kidding.’ Mum stood up and Dad flopped down sideways onto the sofa and woke himself up with a start. ‘If you don’t want to spend December the twenty-fifth getting a bikini wax with Marge Coyhampton and me, that’s your loss, but I don’t really blame you.’

  ‘Anne is going to be so angry I got your ring.’ I smiled. ‘Lucy seems to be over it.’

  Lucy was back in front of my laptop looking at pictures of full moon parties in Thailand. ‘If I wore jewellery like that it would be lost within, like, a day,’ she declared.

  Mum nodded. ‘And Anne has already said that she’s getting, in her own words, “our cold dead corpses to hand over to that Body Worlds exhibition she’s obsessed with”, so the least I can give you is my jewellery before I’m turned into a mannequin. Now, who wants another tea?’

  I squeezed in next to Dad, New York packing forgotten, and nudged him playfully with my shoulder. ‘I love that you bought a Tiffany ring for Mum and proposed on a total whim.’

  He yawned. ‘It wasn’t a whim,’ he said seriously, quietly. ‘It just took a bit of Dutch courage. I would have proposed to your mum anywhere in the world from the day I met her, and I still would.’ And with that he shut his eyes again and went back to sleep.

  Mum beamed, I twisted the ring on my finger, and even Lucy smiled to herself.

  Later that night I was forcing Lucy to watch Miracle on 34th Street with me. I was wondering if I, too, just needed to believe.

  Halfway through, shortly after Lucy had got bored and left to meet up with some friends at the pub, I gasped, stopped the film and called Kim. ‘I am The Worst.’

  ‘Pardon?’ she asked, pots and pans clanging in the background.

  ‘Have you seen Miracle on 34th Street?’

  ‘Of course, I’m not dead inside. Let me guess, you haven’t?’

  ‘I’m watching it now.’

  ‘The old one or the new one?’

  ‘The old one. I think. The one with David Attenborough.’

  ‘Richard Attenborough, and that’s the new one. The old one’s in black and white.’

  ‘Oh. Anyway, I’m watching it and I’m noticing a theme with these Christmas movies: A Christmas Carol, Scrooged, this. There’s always a grumpster who doesn’t like Christmas. Am I the grumpster in our lives over the festive period? Am I the villain? Am I the Alan Rickman?’ I gasped. ‘Am I the secretary?!’

  Kim’s laugh tinkled down the phone then I heard her tell Steve everything I’d just said. ‘She reckons she’s the Grinch,’ she tittered before coming back to me. ‘Firstly, bravo on the Love Actually reference, I was beginning to suspect you’d never seen that all the way through either. Secondly, A Christmas Carol and Scrooged both focus around the same grumpster, and thirdly no, you aren’t a grumpster, you’re just … misunderstood.’

  Hmm. I’m not sure that’s what I was going for.

  ‘Look,’ continued Kim, ‘you are perfect just as you are, you don’t need to celebrate Christmas or even like Christmas, you just need to enjoy it however you can, because if the only thing you’re looking forward to about Christmas is the break from work, you’re basing your life too much around work.’

  I thought about this for so long that I heard her put the phone down on the side and start dishing out dinner.

  ‘So I’m not ruining Christmas for everyone around me?’ I eventually called down the receiver.

  Kim came back on the line. ‘Nope, you haven’t ruined Christmas. Remind me when you fly?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow. Monday. You?’

  ‘Tomorrow, midday.’

  ‘So soon! Call me from the airport?’

  ‘Of course. Night-night, Jack Skellington.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  We hung up and I checked my clock. It was nearly seven thirty in the evening and I still had Kim’s Christmas present here. I was usually so organised but my life felt chaotic at the moment, so I hadn’t taken it over. It was a small, festive travel kit – Santa-patterned flight socks, a tartan sleep mask, a cosy soft grey wrap and some special edition Christmas jelly babies. As a last-minute addition I plucked a small white branch from my Christmas tree, and tucked it under the ribbon.

  Leaving my house I walked straight into the lightest of snowfalls. Tiny, snow-bunny-soft flakes drifted down and floated about in the breeze for a while before settling onto the pavement and melting.

  It was about a twenty-minute walk to Kim and Steve’s house from mine, and as I trudged along, past window after window with Christmas trees glittering behind them, I found myself counting down again. Two more sleeps, then four nights in New York, then back here and I was off until January the fourth. I yawned. I couldn’t wait to get home.

  I reached Kim’s and for a moment thought about peering through their window, watching a happy scene and singing ‘The Christmas Song’ in my head, pretending I was in a Christmas movie, but decided not to be creepy.

  I put the present down on the doorstep and cracked open the letter box. Kim lived in an actual house – not even a flat – like a proper grown-up. She had a letter box; I know, right?

  ‘God rest ye merry gentlemen let something blah blah blaaaaahhh!’ I bellowed towards her living room.

  ‘Bloody hell, what was that?’ I heard Steve yelp.

  ‘That’s my little rehabilitated Grinch!’ said Kim, thundering to the door, which she flung open and we hugged each other as if we were lovers about to be torn apart by war.

  ‘Don’t leave me for Antigua, I’m not rehabilitated yet,’ I grumbled into her dressing gown.

  ‘I don’t want to go to the Caribbean with a stupid boy, I want to go to New York with you and get married at the top of the Empire State Building.’

  ‘Hey … ’ called Steve from inside.

  I pulled back. ‘Don’t you dare get married on a beach in Antigua. Don’t you dare. As maid of honour I forbid it!’

  ‘Are you mad? I would never. Come in, it’s freezing out there and this rain is making my dressing gown soggy.’

  ‘It’s not rain … ’

  ‘Is it snowing? STEVE, GET OUT HERE IT’S SNOWING!’ She padded out in her slippers and looked up. ‘It’s a Christmas miracle.’

  Steve appeared at the door and greeted me bashfully, aware that he was partly responsible for swiping Kim away from me this Christmas.

  ‘You see this, Steve?’ I waved my hand about. ‘Snow. Maybe it’ll stop your flight and you can’t take my beloved away from me.’

  ‘I think even British airports can handle more than this little lot; it’s not even settling. Sorry … ’

  I moved over to hug him. ‘I’m just kidding, Stevey-boy, have a marvellous time, and a very Merry Christmas. And take a lot of care of Kimberley, remember she’s a bit of a scaredy-cat on flight
s.’

  Kim thwacked me with her little fists. ‘Lies! I’m not scared of anything. Anyway, booze is free so I’m just going to go into a Jack Daniel’s coma and wake up on the beach. Are you coming in—’

  ‘Nope, I just wanted to drop this off and leave you to it.’ I handed my gift to Kim and then squashed it between us in another hug. ‘Don’t get eaten by a shark or sliced in half by a jet ski because I love you so much.’

  ‘OK, don’t you fall off the Empire State or burn your tongue on all that diner coffee. Say hi to the Rockefeller tree for me. And I’ll bring you back your Christmas pressie from Antigua – sarongs and rum, as requested. Love you heaps.’

  I left them both on the doorstep, Kim clutching her gift in her dressing gown like a grown-up Orphan Annie.

  It felt nice to give people gifts at Christmas, in the snow, and tell them you love them. There was no denying it. I felt warm and a little bit holly-jolly. Though as I looked up at the sky and those fat snowflakes I couldn’t help that strangely cynical side of me from wondering, if it wasn’t December, if it wasn’t Christmas at all, wouldn’t I still feel exactly the same way?

  13 December

  1 week, 5 days to Christmas

  I woke up and thought: New York tomorrow. Tomorrow! Despite the organising, the hard work, the worries and anxiety and desperation for it all to be over, excitement popped in my chest. I love cities, and (after London) New York took the crown. I couldn’t wait to see it again. I loved the ridiculously tall skyscrapers, the steam that pouffed out from vents on the street, the glittery pretzel carts, the food. One day I’d visit it properly and do all the tourist things, but even just being there – walking to and from the conference centre, using the subway, seeing the skyline – was enough to make me feel part of Manhattan.

  And I wasn’t the only one excited.

  Bundled in PJs, slipper socks, slippers, a sweatshirt and a dressing gown, I wandered across my flat to open the curtains and looked at my phone. A message had come through at six a.m. from Jon.

  Can’t wait to finally see you again tomorrow!