His eyes popped wide open.
‘Too fucking right you will. Do you have any idea how much that stuff costs? I ought to strike you down where you stand.’
While Joel sulked, Lizzie tore open her own gift, wrapped in last week’s horoscopes.
‘Oh, lovely,’ she said, examining the contents. ‘What is it exactly?’
‘A lip balm,’ I offered. ‘It’s peppermint flavoured.’
‘Technically candy cane flavoured,’ a mournful Desi amended. ‘It’s a limited edition Rhode peptide lip treatment. Sold out. Worldwide. Literally impossible to get your hands on.’
‘Is that right? Thank you, Caroline.’
Lizzy turned it over in her hands then placed it on the arm of the sofa where it promptly rolled off without her even noticing.
‘What about you two?’ she said to me and Callum, sitting side by side on the floor in front of the sofa, thighs, arms, shoulders touching. ‘You’re not exchanging gifts?’
‘I’d say they’ve already exchanged enough,’ Desi commented, kicking me in the back.
‘Caroline doesn’t believe in gifts,’ Callum said quickly when I opened my mouth to tell them about my new brooch. ‘She thinks exchanging material possessions cheapens an emotional bond.’
‘She must not think much to us then,’ Derek commented, mouth already full of filthy English shortbread. ‘Although I’d say that’s obvious enough.’
‘I hope you won’t be offended but I have something for you,’ Lizzie said, fishing the last gift out from behind the tree. ‘If you don’t like Christmas gifts, think of it as a welcome-to-the-family token instead.’
She handed me a small quilted leather box tied with red ribbon, smiling beatifically. Callum’s eyebrows pulled together in a way that made me far too nervous.
‘Is it Elsie’s ear?’ Rory guessed and his dad threw a satsuma at his head.
The box was very light in my hand. It weighed almost nothing but with every second I sat staring at the thing, it became heavier and heavier.
‘For God’s sake open it!’ Joel wailed. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
‘We have though,’ replied a rueful Desi. ‘Literally twenty-four whole hours.’
I glanced up at Callum, whose shoulders pulled upwards in the tiniest shrug, then opened the box. Inside was a beautiful gold locket, sharp lines of intricately engraved flowers on its surface softened with age.
‘It belonged to Callum’s great-great-grandmother,’ Lizzie explained as I stared at the necklace, the rest of the room watching in silence. ‘Derek’s mother gave it to me for Christmas after we got engaged.’
‘But we’re not engaged,’ I said, still staring at the beautiful piece of jewellery.
She removed the locket from the box, a long slender chain cascading out behind it. Unfastening the clasp, she looped it around my neck where it hung low on my chest, dragging me down, down, down.
‘But you are part of the family,’ Lizzie said, looking back to Callum. ‘I know how much you care about our Cal.’
‘Elizabeth, you’ve gone doolally,’ Derek declared. ‘Completely out your tree.’
He leaned over, picked up his new bottle of whisky, opened it, poured a huge glug into his empty teacup and chugged.
Callum hadn’t moved from his spot on the sofa but all the colour was gone from his face. I clutched the locket in my hand. It was heavy, substantial, in a way modern jewellery never was, at least not the jewellery I could afford. An honest-to-God family heirloom. I’d never had one before. My mum didn’t wear jewellery, only her wedding ring, and my dad had kept that. When they’d got engaged, there was no money for a ring and they’d sold the few pieces she inherited from her own mum to help pay the deposit on the house I grew up in. This locket came with generations of love and, no matter what had happened between me and Callum the night before, I couldn’t accept it.
After all, the name on the gift tag was Caroline, not Laura.
‘It’s too much,’ I said, raising my arms to unfasten the necklace. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t keep this.’
‘It is not and you will,’ Lizzie insisted, pulling my hands away from the clasp. ‘What good is it sat in a drawer upstairs? Better you have it now than leave it up there for another year or two.’
Desi and Joel both stared down at their feet while Callum’s eyes flicked down to the necklace then up to my face, back and forth.
