‘Did you eat the chilli, Marth? It was meant to be for dinner?—’
‘That wasn’t me,’ she snaps.
‘Okay,’ Shelley starts. ‘I only asked?—’
‘I didn’t touch it!’ Martha slams the fridge door shut and immediately stabs at her phone, perhaps to alert her lawyer over the wrongful accusal. Then she swans out of the kitchen and a few moments later Fin mooches in, making straight for the enamel bread bin.
‘Hi, honey.’ Shelley smiles.
‘Hey, Mum.’ At fifteen, Fin is less outwardly hostile than his sister but tends to keep himself to himself. He is also ravenous every second of the day, as if harbouring a tapeworm. He yanks the lid off the bread bin and glares into it.
‘There’s no bread.’
‘No, I forgot to pick some up,’ Shelley says mildly. ‘Did you eat that chilli, Fin?’
‘What chilli?’
‘The chilli that was there in the fridge, for…’ She starts to tell the back of his head as he leaves the room. ‘Fin!’ she calls after him. ‘You will remember to tidy your room, won’t you? Remember Gran and Granddad will be staying in Marth’s room on Christmas night. So there’ll need to be space in yours forthe airbed—’ She breaks off, realising that she may as well be shouting into outer space.
She stands alone in the middle of the kitchen of their terraced house, wondering what to make for dinner now.
I know, she decides. I know what I’ll make.
Shelley opens the fridge and takes out the chilli bowl that no longer contains chilli and dumps it on top of the dirty plates and mugs and glasses that have accumulated in the sink while she’s been out at work. Then she returns to the fridge and lifts out the unopened bottle of sauvignon.
‘I know what we’ll have for dinner,’ Shelley announces out loud. She reaches for a wine glass from the cupboard, fills it to the brim and takes a fortifying gulp.
‘That you back, Shell?’ Joel calls out from upstairs. ‘I was gonna say. The tree’s still wonky. Looks drunk!’ He guffaws, and as Shelley tips more wine down her throat, she wonders how this has happened to her.
How she’s become the one in charge of Christmas – indeed of everything here – when no one else in her family seems to care that it’s happening. As if she is in factMotherChristmas, insisting on putting up decorations and fairy lights and having a tree, when clearly, her husband and offspring couldn’t give a stuff.
Is she silly for trying to make it jolly and fun? For buying chocolate tree decorations even though the kids are nearly grown up? And for rushing out for mince pies for Joel’s mates,andmaking mulled wine, which he refused to do, saying he didn’t know how? ‘You just throw spices in and heat it in a pan, Joel. An infant could do it.’Aw, couldn’t you do it, babe? I’m juggling so much stuff right now…What, precisely, was he ‘juggling’? Phone poking and enjoying languid baths?
Maybe it was also silly of her to ‘drag’ Joel around the shops, as he put it, when it would have been so much easier to ordereverything online. And perhaps, instead of pulling out all the stops to produce her usual all-the-trimmings Christmas dinner, with the home-made cranberry sauce her mother-in-law guzzles by the spoonful, she should just bang a ready-roasted chicken on the table and be done with it?
Rubbing at her tired eyes, Shelley installs herself at the kitchen table. It’s cluttered with papers and the kids’ school stuff, and jars of peanut butter and Branston Pickle with the lids left off. She glares at it all, then goes onto the group chat.
Several new messages have appeared since this morning.
Lena
Tommy’s parents are saying they always have beef as well as turkey. Keep telling T we can’t fit all that into my little oven but he says we’ll manage somehow. Why does he agree to everything they say?
Pearl
He’s just trying to keep the peace.
Lena
It feels like a terrible test they’ve set us to prove he’s marrying the wrong woman. You know they’d love him to get back with Catherine?
Pearl
Ignore them and stuff the beef! No pun intended…
Lena
I’ve never dreaded Christmas before. I want to run away.
