rory
Christmas morning at my parents’ house smells the way Christmas is supposed to smell. Not designer candle Christmas. Not showroom Christmas. Not the kind that looks immaculate in photographs and feels like you’re not allowed to sit down in case you crease something expensive. This smells like pine needles shedding onto the carpet and slightly overdone turkey and my mum’s cinnamon candles that she’s been buying from the same garden centre since 2003. It smells like Christmas pudding and wrapping paper and the faint metallic scorch of the old gas fire that Dad insists on lighting every year “for atmosphere,” even though the central heating works perfectly well and none of us have ever once complained about being cold.
Isla is already feral by seven a.m. “Daddy! Daddy! It’s Christmas! Nanna said we could wake you up at seven!”
“Seven is criminal,” I mutter into the pillow, even though I’ve been awake for the better part of an hour. Because I knew what today was and I knew that Freya would be waking up alone.
By the time I drag myself downstairs, Isla is practically vibrating beside the tree, pyjamas twisted around her legs, hair wild, face glowing like she’s plugged directly into the fairy lights.
“Nanna! Pops! He’s up!” she announces as I enter the living room, as though I’ve been dramatically absent for years.
My mum laughs from the armchair. “We were beginning to think we’d have to open them without you.”
Dad snorts from the rug. “Man needs his beauty sleep.”
“Rude,” I reply, dropping down beside Isla and pulling her into my side before she combusts entirely.
The tree is slightly crooked. The baubles don’t match. There’s still the ridiculous handmade angel I made in Year Two perched at the top like some sort of sentimental gargoyle. Tinsel hangs unevenly where Isla has clearly attacked it earlier and then abandoned the mission halfway through. It’s imperfect. It’s loud. It’s alive. And it feels like Christmas.
When I was with Sienna, Christmas was curated. The tree arrived pre-decorated from somewhere in Chelsea that delivered it wrapped in tissue paper like it was fragile art. The baubles were colour-coordinated. Gold and white one year. Silver and blush the next. The presents were stacked in neat pyramids, ribbons perfectly curled, everything arranged as though it might be photographed at any moment. It looked beautiful. It felt like a hotel lobby.
We hosted brunches where everyone was dressed to the nines, champagne flutes lined up like soldiers, conversations about campaigns and contracts and who was flying to where in January. I remember standing there once, staring at the reflection of the tree in the spotless glass doors and thinking that it should feel like something more than this. It never did.
Isla rips open her first present with a gasp so loud it snaps me back into the room.
“Daddy! Look! It’s the unicorn science kit!”
She launches herself at me and I laugh properly, the sound surprising me with how easy it comes.
“Careful, bug. You’ll knock Pops’ tea over.”
Dad grumbles but he’s smiling.
We open presents slowly. We argue about batteries. Mum takes a million photos. Dad pretends not to get emotional and fails spectacularly. At one point Isla climbs into my lap with a new book and presses it against my chest. “Can you read this now, Daddy?”
“It’s so early!” I protest.
“So?”
Mum leans over. “You’re outnumbered, son.”
So I read. And for a while, it’s simple. It’s just laughter and paper scraps and Isla explaining her new board game rules to Pops like he’s deeply underqualified for the role he’s been assigned. But even in the middle of it, even while she’s glowing and chattering and pressing sticky fingers into my jumper, my mind keeps slipping sideways to a dark living room across the road. To Freya. To the way her forehead rested against mine in Rowan’s party room only days ago, warm and steady and devastatingly close, and the way we both exhaled at the same time like we’d run a marathon instead of just leaned into each other. The way my hands had slid to her waist and the way she hadn’t pulled away immediately, and then the handshake, of all things, like two idiots trying to sign a ceasefire while both of us were still burning.
Friends. Brilliant. Genius solution. Absolutely foolproof.
“You’re miles away,” Mum says quietly, settling beside me while Isla negotiates game rules with Dad.
“I’m right here,” I reply automatically.
She gives me that look. The one she’s had since I was fourteen and thought I was subtle about anything.
“Freya,” she says simply.
I exhale slowly. “She’s fine.”
“Is she?” Dad asks from the rug without looking up.
“She’ll be with her film and ice cream,” I say, and the image stings more than it should.
