A Merry Little Christmas (6 page)

Marianne came home from work after another depressingly difficult day, feeling shattered and miserable. But her step lightened as she walked into the house and heard the babies gurgling in the kitchen. However crap her day had been, no one could take away the pleasure the twins brought her. She went to open the door, and then she heard voices. Steven was talking to Gabe’s mum.

‘I really liked Middleminster, Granny,’ he said. ‘But Dad doesn’t want me to go.’

‘Of course he does,’ said Jean. ‘But if you do go there, he’s going to miss you.’

‘I don’t think I’m going to get in anyway,’ said Steven gloomily. ‘I’ve been practising with Marianne, and the tests are really difficult.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do fine,’ said Jean, ‘and if you don’t get in, it’s not the end of the world. You can go to Hope Sadler School with your friends.’

‘But I don’t
want
to go to school with them,’ Steven burst out miserably. ‘Apart from George, they all take the mickey out of my singing. And it’s what I want to do more than
anything
.’

Steven sounded so miserable, Marianne’s heart contracted. Poor poor thing. She and Gabe had been so caught up in their worries about losing him they hadn’t stopped to consider properly how Steven felt.

Feeling she’d eavesdropped enough, Marianne called out, ‘Hi, I’m home,’ and entered the kitchen. She really wanted to go and give Steven a hug, but thinking it would be hard to explain without giving away the fact that she’d been listening, just grinned at him instead, and said, ‘Good day?’

‘It was okay,’ he grunted.

‘And how have the twins been?’

‘Fine,’ said Jean, ‘no trouble at all. You know how much I love looking after my grandchildren.’

The twins sat in their highchairs smiling at her, their faces covered in dinner.

‘You sure about that?’ laughed Marianne and went to give each of them a sticky cuddle. It was difficult with two not to feel guilty that she might be favouring one above the other, so cuddles were on a strict rotation. Sometimes she thought she was being a bit bonkers. After all would sixteen-month-olds even notice? But she wanted to be fair.

‘Here, let me clean up,’ said Marianne, starting to load the twins’ dinner plates in the dishwasher. She was glad that when they’d revamped their kitchen she’d persuaded Gabriel to buy both a new dishwasher and washing machine. Both had had their work cut out since the babies had been born.

‘Have a cup of tea, first,’ said Jean pulling up a kitchen chair. ‘I insist. It’s a long day that you work.’

‘And I couldn’t do it without you,’ said Marianne, immensely grateful that her mother-in-law provided her with the support to allow her some of her old life at least. She loved the twins dearly, but she also loved her job. She’d thought at first she was lucky to be able to have both, but Mrs Garratt was certainly making it harder to feel like that. Marianne was getting fed up with the snide little comments about pulling her weight. More often than not, she was one of the last to leave work, just to prove a point. Often she wondered if it were worth it.

Ten minutes later, while Marianne and Jean were sitting at the table having a cup of tea, each with a baby on their laps, Gabe walked in cuddling something in his arms. It was a newborn lamb.

‘The mother died,’ he said. ‘Found this little chap in the fields, baaing away. He’s nearly frozen to death. Steven, do you want to keep him?’

Steven, who had been assiduously working on one of the test papers, looked at his dad in disdain. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said, ‘I think pet lambs are babyish.’

‘Steven–’ said Jean, but he’d got up and walked out.

Marianne looked at Gabe, wishing she could take the hurt away from his face.

‘He’ll get over it,’ she said. ‘He’s just trying to find his way at the moment.’

Gabriel didn’t say anything, but set about making a home in a cardboard box by the fire for the lamb, while Marianne cleared the rest of the dinner away, and Jean sorted the twins out.

The evening wore away, and by the time Jean had gone home, the twins were settled in bed, the washing-up done, and the lamb comfy in his new home, it was gone eight-thirty and there had been no sign of Steven.

‘He’s being picked on at school, you know,’ said Marianne carefully. Gabriel was so sensitive about the whole choir school thing, she had learnt to tread warily when discussing it, lest he fly off the handle.

‘Is he? About what?’

‘His singing,’ said Marianne. ‘I overheard him telling your mum. I can’t say I’m surprised really. There are some tough little cookies in Year 6, and Steven’s so sensitive. I’m surprised no one’s mentioned it to me. That’s one of the problems being part time, I’m out of the loop.’

‘Oh,’ said Gabriel. ‘Now I feel even worse, thanks.’

‘He just wants you to be happy about his choices,’ said Marianne. ‘Go up and tell him it’s okay. That you’re fine about him trying out for choir school.’

‘Even if I’m not?’ said Gabriel.

‘Even if you’re not,’ said Marianne firmly. ‘It’s not about us, it’s about him. If that’s what Steven wants, we should back him all the way.’

Ten minutes later, Gabriel and Steven were downstairs, both wreathed in identical smiles. Marianne warmed at the sight of them. Her two lovely boys, so alike and yet so different. She hated to see them at odds with each other. They were so close normally.

‘Can I feed the new lamb?’ said Steven.

‘Of course,’ said Marianne, and sent him to fetch a bottle of milk.

‘Well that went well,’ said Marianne. ‘What on earth did you say to him?’ she whispered.

‘I said I didn’t mind if he goes to that school, so long as I can get us a season ticket for Shrewsbury Wanderers, and come and take him to the football once a month.’

‘Bribery will get you everywhere,’ laughed Marianne softly.

‘Well it worked.’ Gabriel nudged her and they watched Steven across the room gently pick the lamb up and give him some milk. Not so grown up after all.

Pippa felt extraordinarily self-conscious. She’d arranged a meeting for all the families in the area affected by the proposed loss of respite services at the Sunshine Trust. She hadn’t been sure whether anyone would come – parents of special needs children were often stretched to the hilt. Who had time to fight the system even further? And while she had been involved in numerous campaigns, from helping set up the communal village shop, to fighting for a safe crossing by the children’s school, this was different. This was her call. She’d started the ball rolling, and she was going to have to deliver.

Pippa looked around at the hugely expectant faces, all waiting to hear what she had to say. They were relying on her, all these people, to help keep the Sunshine Trust respite services open to give them the lifeline they so desperately needed. It felt like an awesome responsibility. She couldn’t bear it if she failed them.

‘Hallo, and thanks so much for coming,’ she said. ‘I know lots of you have come a long way’ – Shropshire being a big county, the majority of people who used the respite centre came from far and wide – ‘We’re here today to set up a campaign to try and protect our services. All of us who use the Sunshine Trust know what a vital resource it is for families to gain much-needed respite. The issue isn’t so much about the centre closing, but the withdrawal of the respite care which is funded by local government. We need to find a way of paying for these services by alternative means. So to start with I’d say beg, borrow and steal from everyone you know. If you have links with local businesses, let’s see if we can’t get them to pledge some help.’

‘What about lottery money?’ someone said.

‘We’re applying for a grant,’ said Pippa.

‘And telethon charities, like Children in Need or Red Nose Day?’ said someone else.

‘Good idea,’ said Pippa, ‘but we want this to be sustainable in the long term, so we need to find somebody prepared to fund it, run by sympathetic professionals who know exactly what is required.

‘We’re also petitioning our local MP, Tom Brooker, but so far we haven’t heard anything back from him. I’d urge you all to write to him yourselves, so he realises the depth of feeling about it. And you’ll all be delighted that Cat Tinsall has kindly volunteered to give us some free PR by writing a series of articles highlighting the excellent work of the centre.’

Soon a barrage of suggestions was coming in: some helpful, some not, but by the end of the meeting Pippa felt she’d at least achieved something. It was a start. She wound up, having agreed to create a steering committee which would look into all the feasible suggestions, with a promise they would report back in six weeks.

‘How did it go?’ Dan hugged her as she came through the door. It felt safe and warm to walk back home into his arms. So long as Dan was there, she felt anything was achievable.

‘Okay, I think,’ said Pippa. ‘Are the boys in bed?’

‘Not yet,’ said Dan. ‘Probably time to winkle them off the Xbox.’

Pippa grinned and went into the lounge to find the boys heavily engrossed in some game that seemed to involve an inordinate amount of shooting. She extricated them from it with difficulty and shooed them up to bed.

She climbed the stairs and checked on Lucy to see if she was asleep, and watched from the doorway as her daughter made her usual alarming snuffly noises in her sleep. Her beautiful daughter. People didn’t always see that, pitying her for having a child with such special needs. But they couldn’t see her uniqueness, or her inner beauty, or the joy she took in life. They couldn’t see how secretly subversive Lucy could be, often sharing jokes with her or Dan via the electronic keyboard they had recently bought for her, which had become her window to the world, or pulling faces when she thought someone was treating her like an idiot. It was hard, so hard sometimes, having a daughter like Lucy – Pippa would be the first to admit that. It was difficult for all families who had special needs children. But what people didn’t realise was that along with the struggle came something exceptional and different. Lucy showed her every day how to accept the simple things in life, and to be grateful for everything she had. But she couldn’t do it without Dan by her side, or without the help she got from the Sunshine Trust. Which was why it was so important to her. Without it, Pippa knew she wouldn’t be able to cope. They had to keep it open at all costs.

Cat woke up feeling lousy. She often did these days. She put it down to middle-aged exhaustion, coupled with being that scourge of the
Daily Mail
, a middle-aged binge drinker. Although of late, she’d been too tired even to manage that.

As Noel was constantly telling her, she did too much, but Cat had never been one to sit still for long, and between the demands of teen and preteen children, her poorly mother, devoted husband and her job, sitting still wasn’t always an option. Oh well, at least it kept her thin. Mind you, that didn’t stop her having a less than flat stomach, which seemed to bulge slightly more as time went by. When she was in London, she’d kept it down by a rigorous gym routine, but somehow that didn’t fit in with a country lifestyle, though regular long walks kept her fit. Now when she looked down at her stomach it seemed to have filled out, sagging more than it used to. If she didn’t know any better, she might have thought she was pregnant. But with her periods having become increasingly sporadic over the last year, it was far more likely that she was heading for the menopause and middle-aged spread. Oh joy.

Besides, she and Noel were so knackered most of the time, sex was rarely on the agenda these days. In fact, rather shamefully, she realised that they’d probably not had any since New Year’s Eve. Must do better, she muttered to herself. Lack of sex had nearly done for them in London, when she and Noel had been so busy they’d ended up leading parallel lives. The move to Hope Christmas had cemented their marriage; she mustn’t let it slip again. Noel meant the world to her. Their relationship had become even stronger since they’d moved up here. Even after all this time, she felt her heart sing when one of them had been away from the other.

Noel was already showered and ready by the time she got down. She kissed him as he went out of the door. Paige was preening herself in the hall mirror.

‘You’re not allowed make-up at school,’ Cat reminded her, before going into the kitchen where James half asleep and yawning, was crouched over his toast and Ruby was chattering away to anyone who would listen (which was nobody) about the excitements of her coming day. Of Mel there was no sign. Great. First row of the day would be getting Mel out of bed. In the past, Cat’s response to Mel’s laziness had been to make her face the consequences of being late and getting a caution. But since the bunking off incident, Cat had been terrified that left to her own devices, Mel just wouldn’t bother going to school. And with the results of her mocks showing them just how much work she needed to do, Cat felt she had to be on her case, however unpopular that made her. But as she had said ruefully to Noel, ‘I’m not here to win any popularity contests.’

‘Mel, are you up?’ Cat gingerly knocked on her daughter’s door.

‘Humph.’ A groan was the only response.

Cat opened the door into a pit. Crikey, it was worse than normal. There was barely a piece of the floor not covered in clothes, clean and dirty, shoes, bags, books and paper.

‘Mel, time to get up,’ she said, ‘NOW!’

‘I’m just getting up,’ said Mel. ‘No need to shout.’

‘I’m not shouting,’ said Cat between gritted teeth. ‘But I will be in a minute. You’ve got twenty minutes until your bus goes. And by the way, when you get home tonight, I expect to see this pigsty cleaned up.’

‘Will you get off my case!’ said Mel belligerently.

‘If you behave yourself, then yes,’ said Cat restraining herself with difficulty. ‘Now get up.’ She resisted the urge to say, ‘or else,’ because she knew the response would be ‘Or else, what?’ The reality was that, short of physical violence, there was very little she could do to make her errant daughter do anything she didn’t want to. And they both knew it.