A Proper Family Christmas (21 page)

Chelsea didn’t tell her since her first counselling session, she had been trying to stop using the ‘f’ word.

‘Just because it isn’t helpful. You were really happy last week. You said the wedding was all going to plan.’

‘Yeah. That was before Mum made me invite her.’

‘By “her” you mean our sister?’

‘Who else? What did you think of her, Chelsea? Really?’

‘You know what I think. I told you on the drive to the station. I think she’s a bit highly strung but she clearly made a huge effort when she had us all over and I’m sure she’ll start to warm up eventually. And she seems interesting. Richard is a nice man too. Look how kind he was to Jack. I’ve never seen an adult fake being interested in
Doctor Who
for so long. There’s no way Richard would have married Annabel if she was a total cow.’

‘Some men like to be pushed around,’ Ronnie observed.

‘That much is true.’

‘Anyway, I suppose if they do come, they’ll have to buy us a wedding present. That could be worth a bit. I looked up both their cars online last night. If they sold the Cayenne and the Aston Martin, they could buy my house. Not that they’d want to. How can my Coventry semi ever compete with the Great House? It’s Downton bloody Abbey. Still, I suppose you’re more used to such luxurious surroundings.’

‘Yep,’ said Chelsea. ‘It is pretty glamorous in Stockwell.’

‘I mean at the magazine. You know what I mean.’

Chelsea knew that most people would consider her job glamorous, but there were moments lately when she wondered whether all magazines like
Society
did was make people miserable as they compared their ordinary lives with the lives of the rich and famous. It was so pervasive. Annabel had a daughter on dialysis, awaiting a kidney transplant, but Ronnie still envied Annabel the car in which she drove to the hospital appointments. What really mattered?

Chelsea had had that very conversation with Adam over the phone just the night before, when he was telling her about his wife Claire, who had died of an aneurysm before she made it to thirty-three, leaving him a widower with sole care of Lily, who was just a tiny baby at the time.

‘No one knows how long they’ve got,’ he said and he was right. Why waste it being envious? The way Chelsea saw it, Ronnie should be enjoying the run-up to her wedding. She was marrying her childhood sweetheart, the father of her two
healthy
children. She wasn’t in some kind of competition with Annabel but even if she was, it seemed like she was winning.

But there was no point telling people to count their blessings. If that worked, thought Chelsea, then the United Kingdom would not rank below El Salvador in the world happiness index.

So, Chelsea let Ronnie carry on making her verbal list of the things Annabel had that she would never be able to afford, while at the same time pointing out the failings they represented.

‘That wine. Forty quid a bottle. Can’t tell the difference between that and a bottle of Jacob’s Creek. It’s all about snobbery.’

Chelsea knew that deep down her sister was far better than this litany of envy. She was glad when Ronnie finally changed the subject.

‘Have you asked Adam if he’s going to come to the wedding yet? Have you told him he can bring Lily?’

‘I’m going to ask him later,’ Chelsea promised. ‘Though it’s early days, Ronnie. You know that. A family wedding might be a bit much.’

‘We’ve known him longer than Annabel and she’s coming,’ Ronnie pointed out.

That evening, Chelsea had another date with Adam, but this time they would not be going out. Instead, Adam had invited Chelsea to his house in south London where he would cook dinner for Chelsea and six-year-old Lily.

Chelsea was slightly nervous about meeting Lily again. On the last day of their holiday in Lanzarote, Lily had been quite sweet, even holding Chelsea’s hand at one point. But prior to that, she had been somewhat difficult. Chelsea might even have said ‘spoilt’. All the same, Chelsea decided that the best way to deal with Lily was with a bribe. On her way to the tube station after leaving the magazine’s central London office, Chelsea popped into Hamleys and came out with a Flitter Fairy doll. The girl on the counter assured her that Flitter Fairies were the way to any six-year-old girl’s heart and with the plastic tat in hand, Chelsea felt a little more confident that the evening would go well.

It was Lily who opened the front door to Adam’s house.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Daddy said I was going to have a
nice
surprise.’

The evening continued in much the same vein. Lily accepted the Flitter Fairy in much the same manner as the Queen might accept her hundredth bouquet on yet another official visit. She pulled it out of the bag and announced, ‘I’ve already got this one.’

‘But isn’t it nice to have another? Say thank you,’ said Adam.

‘Thank you,’ Lily sighed.

Chelsea tried not to let it faze her. Perhaps Lily was just hungry. But the little girl’s mood and manners didn’t seem to improve after supper, which was an incredibly bland pasta dish ‘with no onions or garlic, because Lily doesn’t like them’. Lily still left most of her plateful and insisted on going straight to pudding. Adam shrugged in an embarrassed sort of way as he cleared away the plates, leaving Chelsea and Lily to make small talk.

‘Did you have a nice day at school?’ Chelsea asked.

‘No,’ said Lily.

‘Oh dear. Why’s that?’

‘Don’t know,’ was Lily’s answer.

‘Did you have to do a subject you don’t enjoy? Did you have to do maths?’ Chelsea persisted. ‘I always hated maths.’

‘Daddy!’ Lily shouted out. ‘Please may I leave the table?’

Adam came back into the kitchen balancing three bowls of ice cream.

‘But you’ve got to eat your ice cream.’

‘I’ll eat it by the television,’ Lily said.

Adam let her go and Chelsea was secretly glad. She couldn’t imagine Jack ever getting away with such wilfulness but with Lily out of the way, at last Chelsea would get a kiss. Or so she hoped. As soon as Adam made his move, Lily reappeared.

‘Put that lady down,’ she said.

Annabel spent way too much time wondering what would be a suitable wedding present for Ronnie and Mark. Richard suggested John Lewis vouchers. Everybody secretly preferred a gift that allowed them to choose for themselves. But Annabel thought that was really bad form. It showed no effort.

She would at least go into Peter Jones and look for an actual ‘thing’. Ronnie and Mark could always take it back and swap it for something they really wanted afterwards.

She changed her mind while she was having a coffee in Café Colbert in Sloane Square. Though Ronnie didn’t know it yet, Annabel was going to be asking her for something worth much more than anything money could buy. A gift from Peter Jones wouldn’t cut it. It needed to be more personal than that.

Having finished her coffee, Annabel headed in the direction of the Pimlico Road. She could pick something up at Daylesford for supper. It would also give her the opportunity to look in on the little art gallery where she and Richard had bought many of the paintings that hung in the Great House.

Nigel the gallery owner beamed when he saw Annabel come in.

‘Annabel! How are you?’

They air-kissed.

‘It’s been a long time. I was hoping I would see you at my party in July.’

‘July was a rather … busy month for us,’ Annabel told him. Nigel’s party was one of a hundred things that had slipped by while Izzy was in hospital. ‘Did I forget to let you know we weren’t coming?’

‘Not a problem, my dear. I shall still invite you to the next one.’

‘Of course he would,’ Annabel could almost hear Richard say. ‘We pay his mortgage.’

‘Cup of tea?’ Nigel offered.

Annabel shook her head.

‘Glass of wine?’

Annabel was about to shake her head again but instead she said, ‘Why not?’

Nigel always had very good wine and perhaps a little glass would help Annabel think creatively. And one, just one, wouldn’t hurt the baby, would it?

‘I’ll leave you to look around while I get another bottle out of the fridge.’

There was an almost empty bottle on the counter. Having known Nigel for the past fifteen years, Annabel very much doubted that he’d had much help from customers in getting through it.

While Nigel was in the kitchen, Annabel wandered the walls, looking at the paintings. Some were familiar. There were a couple that Nigel just couldn’t seem to shift, though he claimed it was because he didn’t want to. He’d once told Annabel that he found homes for his paintings in the same way his sister, who ran a dog rescue centre in Dorset, found homes for her dogs. It wasn’t simply a matter of handing them over to the first person who expressed an interest. You had to be sure they were a suitable match. Nigel couldn’t do home visits, such as his sister insisted upon, but he said that over the years he had come to recognise the right buyers. The wrong ones always gave themselves away.

‘They talk about how much they’ve made from the pictures they’ve bought in the past. But I’m not about money, Annabel. I don’t care how much my paintings increase in value. I see myself as a conduit for art.’

It was just sales patter, of course, designed to make whoever was on the receiving end feel as though they were part of the inner circle and not just another punter. And when you were part of the inner circle, of course you didn’t want to disappoint Nigel by leaving his shop empty-handed.

‘Ah-ha,’ said Nigel, returning to the room with a new bottle and another glass. ‘I knew you would like that one.’

Annabel had actually been miles away. She wasn’t really looking at the picture in front of her at all. But now that she focused on it, she saw that it was rather charming. It was a print. Victorian. The subject was a young girl. She was sitting on a window seat, half-turning to look out into the garden. She had a sampler on her lap. The needle was still in her hand as though she had just that second been distracted by something outside.

‘Lovely little thing, isn’t she?’

There was something almost familiar about the girl on the window seat. It took Annabel a second before she realised. The girl looked a bit like Sophie, her new niece. Underneath those dreadful clothes and the long black hair that hung like curtains, Sophie was terribly pretty.

‘Oh, you’re going to enjoy this one,’ said Nigel.

‘Actually, it’s not for me,’ said Annabel.

‘Oh?’

Nigel waited to be told the story. It was a very generous gift.

‘It’s a wedding present,’ Annabel explained. ‘For my … for a family friend.’

‘Lovely. I do love a wedding. Where are they having the party? Somewhere nice and flash, I hope.’

Prior to Izzy’s illness, the old Annabel might have told Nigel the true story. He would have enjoyed hearing about the reception in the pub and they might have laughed about it together. But Annabel suddenly felt quite defensive. Defensive of Ronnie? She wasn’t sure. But in any case, she told Nigel that the party was going to be in a country house hotel in the Midlands. She couldn’t remember the name.

‘Well, I’m sure they will be delighted to get this beautiful print. You know, if you hadn’t come in today, I might have taken this lovely lady home myself.’

The drawing was the only kind of lady who would ever make it to ‘confirmed bachelor’ Nigel’s home, that was for sure.

‘But then you walked in. It’s fate. She was meant for your friends.’

The glass of wine was forgotten but while Nigel wrapped the picture in its slightly too extravagant gold frame in bubble-wrap and brown paper, he brought Annabel up to speed with some of the local gossip. And he asked more questions about her.

‘How’s Izzy-Wizzy?’

‘Well, she won’t be called Izzy-Wizzy any more,’ said Annabel. ‘It’s guaranteed to send her into a mood.’

‘How old is she now?’

‘Almost seventeen.’

‘Crikey. How time flies. I remember when she was just a little tot. You know, if she needs to get some work experience, I would be very happy to have her here for a week or two.’

Annabel held it together in the shop but she burst into tears on the corner of Pimlico Road and Lower Sloane Street. The thought of Izzy being well enough to do work experience in London seemed like such a distant dream.

The day before the wedding, Chelsea travelled up to Coventry to support her sister. Though she and Mark had been together since they were teenagers and a piece of paper was hardly going to change very much, Ronnie was the archetypal bride. She was incredibly nervous and she wanted to do things properly. That meant that Mark stayed at home with the children, while Ronnie went back to Jacqui and Dave’s house for the night before the wedding itself. She was superstitious and did not want to leave for the ceremony from the same place as her future husband.

Not that there was much room at Jacqui and Dave’s. Since Chelsea and Ronnie had left home, much had changed at the Bensons’ house. The former dining room had been converted into a bedsitter for Granddad Bill. Which meant that the dining-room table had been moved into the upstairs bedroom that Chelsea and Ronnie had shared as children. In fact, they’d shared the room until Ronnie got pregnant with Sophie, after which Chelsea had a brief stint sleeping on the sofa downstairs.

As a teenager, camping in the living room, Chelsea had been desperate to leave home and find a place of her own, but for one night, it was going to be fun to be back.

‘When was the last time we shared a room?’ Ronnie asked.

‘I think it was when you were six months gone with Sophie. You started getting up and down to pee the whole time and I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I had my GCSEs coming up.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ronnie. ‘That must have been annoying.’

‘I forgive you,’ Chelsea said with a smile. ‘I don’t think I ever would have got more than a C in maths, no matter how much shut-eye I got.’

‘You were always the brainy one.’

‘Rubbish. You were brainy too.’