‘Sadly, yes. Mum wouldn’t have selected me by choice. Anyway. I must get on and make some Christmas decorations. Curfew at the parents’ house is at ten p.m. sharp, and it’s almost six now.’
Six
‘Where’s your car?’ Dad asked me the following morning at breakfast.
‘Hopefully, where I left it,’ I said, having slept far better than I’d expected and feeling decidedly more upbeat and light-hearted today. That might have had something to do with a certain man.
‘Which is?’ One brow was raised as Dad’s knife hovered over his slice of toast.
‘At home.’
‘What’s it doing there?’ Mum queried, as if I’d said it was on Mars.
‘Again hopefully, nothing it shouldn’t be. I expressly told it not to have a party while I was gone.’
Two pairs of eyes stared at me blankly.
‘That was a joke,’ I said.
‘Was it?’ said Mum, translated to mean, no it wasn’t.
‘I left it there because … I met Berry and Paul for a drink yesterday afternoon, and you know how hot the police areon drink-driving at this time of year. No point in taking any chances.’
‘You went for a drink in a pub on a Sunday afternoon?’ Mum looked horrified. Dad quirked a brow.
I might as well have committed a human sacrifice, or killed all of Santa’s reindeer. Not that Mum would’ve cared about the reindeer. Or the human sacrifice, probably. But drinking on a Sunday – and in a public bar of all places was beyond the pale.
‘I did. Then they came and helped me put up the rest of my Christmas decorations. And I must say, I think the cottage is even more festive than last year.’
Mum gasped. ‘You’ve … you’ve done thatagain?’
Sometimes I wonder if my mum knows me at all.
I know for certain that I wasn’t adopted, because as I told Madi, Mum wouldn’t have chosen me, she’d have chosen a boy, but the older I became the more I sometimes wondered if there was a chance I had been switched at birth, and Mum had got me by mistake.
Except, I looked a little like my dad, and also a lot like Gran had when she was my age. I’d seen many photos of Gran in her thirties and the resemblance was uncanny. The plain truth was, I was more like Gran than Mum.
And oddly enough, Gran occasionally said that Mum was nothing like her.
Perhaps it was Mum who was switched at birth.
I’d never say that though. Not even as a joke. Mum didn’t have a sense of humour.
‘I have,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping to get Adele and Marcus to decorate their cottages this year too. Won’t that be wonderful? You’ll be able to stand on your doorstep, look up at Midwinter Ridge and say to everyone in this street, ‘My daughter lives there and she persuaded her neighbours to make their homes look as cheerful and as festive as hers.’ Wouldn’t that make you feel proud?’
Mum blinked several times and I knew she must be in shock because honey was dripping from her toast onto the tablecloth, and dropping food on the tablecloth was as heinous a crime as drinking in a pub on a Sunday afternoon.
‘Don’t tease your mother,’ Dad said. ‘Shall I give you a lift home?’
‘That would be great, Dad. Thanks.’
‘Any chance you could get that plumber to come sooner?’ Dad asked as we headed out of the house.
‘If only,’ I said. ‘But ’tis the season, so you never know. Miracles do happen, they say.’
It was so nice to feel so loved and wanted.
They tried their best, I knew that, and so did I, but sometimes, people just clashed. We’d never had blazing rows, or shouting matches, or huge fall-outs, or anything like that but we were very different people. We all loved each other in our own ways, but we had never understood one another.
