‘Oh, you know what he’s like. Says it’s all a load of commercial nonsense.’ Her tone is breezy, accompanied by a shrug. ‘Made such a fuss about shopping on Saturday, and then on Sunday he had his mates round for table football and he was laughing about the tree in front of them all?—’
‘What, your Christmas tree?’ Pearl frowns.
‘Yeah! I wouldn’t have minded but I’d gone out and bought it and dragged it home myself, and stuffed it in a pot, and he reckoned it was wonky—’ She breaks off, feeling unexpectedly emotional at sharing this.
‘Christmas trees aremeantto be wonky,’ Lena says firmly.
‘And he keeps saying why do I make such a fuss about Christmas?’ Shelley continues. ‘And why not get everyone one of those charity presents? A goat or a donkey or a donation to a sewage system?—’
‘Joel wants a sewage system?’ Pearl’s eyes widen.
‘God, no. He wants a guitar amp. A massive black box thing to keep up in his lair?—’
Lena splutters. ‘Maybe he could come over and do a performance for Tommy’s parents on Christmas Day? Distract them from grilling me about where I’m “from”?’
‘I can’t believe they’re coming to you.’ Shelley shakes her head.
‘I know. Rain water’s pouring into the kitchen, apparently. Annabelle can’t possibly cook Christmas dinner in there.’
‘Couldn’t they microwave a couple of jacket potatoes?’ Pearl suggests.
‘And what about their other sons?’ Shelley asks. ‘I thought there was a whole gang?—’
‘Team,’ Lena corrects her. ‘It’s “Team Huntley”, remember? And no, they can’t go to any of the others because they’re alloff to some massive chalet in the French Alps for the whole of Christmas…’
‘Well, couldn’t they join them there?’ Pearl looks confused.
‘Ohno. They wouldn’t want to intrude on the holiday, not when they’ve all worked so hard all year being Chancellor of the Exchequer and boss of the Bank of England and Mayor of bloody Berkshire.’ She is exaggerating, but only slightly; in fact, Lena can never remember what any of them do. Only that they are terribly important and that all they ever seem to talk about is ‘managing wealth’. When magazines started closing, Lena swapped careers from features writing to creating content for several linked charities. She loves her work, and the flexibility of freelancing, but she is definitely not in the managing wealth bracket. On occasion it’s been more like managing the loose change she’s managed to scrabble together from under the sofa cushions.
She pushes her short, choppy dark hair behind her ears. ‘I actually feel like running away,’ she admits.
‘If you’re going, I’m coming too,’ Shelley announces. ‘Joel wouldn’t even get the decorations down from the attic. He said, “Why don’t you just get some new ones?” And I said I wanted my grandma’s baubles like we have every year. I ended up clambering up there myself, with Martha resenting holding the ladder for ten minutes, asking if I was nearly done yet because she was going out…’ She laughs dryly, trying to make light of it. She didn’t plan to pour out her woes on a night that kicked off with cocktails at The Ritz, and which they’d looked forward to for weeks. But still, her heart quickens in anger.Her grandma’s baubles.Why couldn’t Joel understand?
‘You know,’ Pearl says, ‘we could go away. My cousin’s always inviting me up to his place…’
‘Oh, who’s this?’ Lena asks.
‘Michael in the Highlands,’ Pearl replies. ‘I haven’t seen him in years – decades actually. And he’s not even a real cousin. He’s my second cousin, I think – or once removed? Our mums were cousins, or second cousins. I was never quite sure. And he’s quite a bit younger – five or six years or something like that. I used to babysit him occasionally.’
‘You went up to the Highlands to do that?’ Lena asks in surprise.
‘No, they lived in Cheshire, like us, but in a much posher area. Michael went to private school. But he was nice, y’know? A sweet kid. We always got along well.’
‘So what happened?’ Pearl asks. ‘Did you just lose touch?’
‘Yeah, you know how it is. Our lives just veered off in different directions. I moved to London, and from what I heard he met this girl, and they got married and had this dream of living the rural idyll up in Scotland. They found this ramshackle place and did it all up and now it’s a B&B.’
‘Wow,’ Lena murmurs. ‘So did it work out for them?’
‘The B&B has, as far as I know. The website’s still up and running and his address is the same as it always was. But not the marriage, I don’t think. At least, I assume they’ve split because the Christmas cards stopped coming from Michael and Rona. These past few years they’ve just been from Michael.’
The girls order more drinks, filled with excitement now about this new information. ‘A single man, stuck way up there on his own,’ Shelley muses. ‘I’m impressed he gets it together to send Christmas cards at all.’
Pearl chuckles. ‘I thought you were going to delegate this year, Shell? Get Joel to do them?’
She snorts. ‘I gave him the box of the cards and the list of addresses and he wrote one, illegibly?—’
‘And he’s meant to be the typography expert?’
