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THIRTY-TWO
28th December
‘For the love of shite, Maggie. I thought you were a bloody tramp or something!’ a voice rings through the living room. The curtains are shut and I roll over to see my parents standing there, Mum with a golf umbrella in hand and Dad holding two pints of skimmed milk aloft, as if the tramp sleeping on their sofa could be lactose intolerant and he could attack them that way. They look around me to see a box of chocolates and rainbow-coloured wrappers lining the floor, dotted around mugs and tissues.
I sit up. ‘I was really good,’ I tell them. ‘I saved Dad the blue ones and Mum the orange ones.’ I reach up and shake the chocolate box at them so maybe they’ll forgive me for eating the rest.
They both stand there slightly dumbfounded. ‘Did you have a party?’ Mum asks me, looking at some of the satay sticks and sandwich crusts lying around. ‘You have your own place for that now, no?’
I do. But the truth is two days ago, I got a train back fromKendal. It was a long and complicated journey that involved two stops, a long wait in Manchester and sitting alongside carriages of people in holiday mode, looking jolly and loved up, carrying huge bags of gifts and holding hands. So by the time I got to London I knew I needed some sort of intervention to fix my emotional devastation. That came in the form of a Tesco Metro who were having a 2–for–1 on party food. I wiped them out of everything. After that, I came here. I couldn’t bear to go back to my place, with my Christmas tree in the corner, all hopeful and decorated, so I came back to the only other place I knew I’d feel safe.
‘I watered your plants,’ I tell them, pointing to my mum’s monstera, tying my hair back from my face, wiping the drool trails from my chin.
They both look at said monstera then back to me. I also came here as I knew Mum and Dad went minimalist on the decorations this year as they knew they were going to be away. It felt better to be somewhere that wasn’t screaming Christmas at me. I roll off the sofa and stand up to hug them in turn.
‘Merry Christmas!’ I say, almost painfully, a blanket still wrapped around my shoulders. I try and rearrange my rubbish so it looks a bit more organised.
‘Mags, are you wearing my clothes?’ my dad asks me. I look down. I had no choice. Mum is four foot eleven and I wanted baggy clothes that would give me a big giant hug.
Dad looks at the open suitcase in the corner piled with a muddy reindeer onesie and my toothbrush on the dining table. He comes and sits down next to me. ‘You alright, Mags?’ he asks me and I shake my head, bursting into tears as he gives me the biggest of hugs.
Our little ex-council house in West London was the first and only house my parents have ever owned. Given theirbackgrounds, having their own bricks and mortar meant the world to them and, despite the neighbourhoods changing, evolving and fancy flats growing up around them, they stayed in their corner of the world and never moved. My earliest memories of this place involve them nesting the shit out of this red-brick terraced house. They surrounded it with flowers and plants, there was always a Welcome mat out the front, and there were photos on every wall. Unfortunately, those photos were usually of me. I stare up now from the sofa and see my university graduation photo, a photo that will haunt me for an eternity as it was the year I thought it would be good to get highlights that made me look like a tiger.
‘Seriously, that’s a lot of party food, love,’ my mum says, coming through from the kitchen with a tray of tea and interesting-looking cookies.
‘You can freeze the prawns,’ I tell her, looking down at the tray. ‘That’s a lot of cookies.’
‘They’re Norwegian. There are seven types, it’s what they do,’ she tells me, offering me one. I take one curled up like a pretzel and stuff it in my mouth, the butter and sugar dissolving on my tongue like magic. Yep, I’ll have another one of them.
Dad puts a gift bag on the table. ‘We also got you this troll that looks like a Viking and a fridge magnet.’
I half hear that as I’m on my third cookie, holding the plate under my chin with both of my parents looking on at me curiously. I offer out the plate to them. ‘Shit, did you want one?’ I ask them.
They shake their heads. I have moved since my parents first came through the door. Mum ordered it as she came in for a hug and said I was starting to smell and that she could fry things off the grease of my hair so we had a tidy and I was told to go have a shower. I sit here with my hair slightly damp, twisted into a bun, wearing a fresh pair of my dad’s flannelette pyjamas. NowI have cookies.
‘When we were at that sauna, we also had a threesome with a couple from Sweden,’ my dad says. ‘His name was Bjorn.’
‘What was that?’ I mutter, staring into space.
They both look at each other and giggle. ‘Nothing. Don’t you like your Viking?’ Dad says pushing it towards me.
I look at his spiky blonde hair, his beard plaited down the front, an axe in his hand. He looks angry which immediately makes me feel sad, everyone is angry with me at the moment, even this little Viking. ‘Does he have a name?’ I ask them.
‘Erling.’
I nod. I think they thought that would illicit more laughter.
‘Are we allowed to ask why you’re here, love?’ my mum asks softly.
My eyes bounce between both of them sadly as I curl my feet into their green velvet sofa, retreating into a ball.
‘Is it to do with Leo?’ she continues. I nod, my eyes welling up, emotion rising in my chest again. Mum comes to sit next to me, putting a hand to my knee. ‘Oh, lovely. He seemed nice. Can we ask what happened?’
‘Was it a Christmas thing?’ Dad asks.
‘A Christmas thing?’ I ask.
‘Well, Christmas is a notorious time for disagreements. Was it a squabble over gifts?’ he continues.
