Christmas for One: No Greater Love (31 page)
‘I think if it was me, I’d move to the wrong district and have a bathroom a bit bigger than a biscuit tin,’ she muttered under her breath.
‘Morning, Mom!’ He was as chirpy as ever. ‘Sleep okay?’
‘I always do. A clear conscience makes a soft pillow.’ She nodded sagely.
‘So that’s why I’m an insomniac! It’s all down to my misspent youth.’ He laughed as he looked out of the window towards the city skyline in the distance and the bend of blue nestling between the buildings. ‘Another beautiful Greenwich morning.’ Edd sighed. ‘I love this time of year: the frost on the ground, a nip in the air, getting ready for Santa!’
Brenda turned round, smiling at her boy, who sounded like a child. ‘A big day for you, son.’
‘Yes.’ He grinned.
‘I wish your dad was here.’ She reached for the tissue lurking up her sleeve. ‘He wouldn’t believe it, you being made partner in a fancy firm of architects. He’d be so proud of you. As I am.’ She sniffed.
‘I know.’ Edd nodded and adjusted the cufflinks that sparkled in his cuffs, sticking out below his jacket sleeves. He ran his finger over the two little seahorses that would always remind him of Meg. Ah, beautiful, beautiful Meg…
*
Meg shouted up the hallway, ‘Come on, Lucas, you don’t want be late on your very first day at big school!’
Lucas appeared at the other end of the hall wearing a black velvet cape over his school uniform.
Meg tutted. ‘You can’t wear your Harry Potter cape to school. Take it off. You’re going to be late!’
‘But Milly said I should take my spell kit. In case I need to make myself invisible or turn my teacher into a frog.’
Meg shook her head despairingly. ‘You are not going to need to turn your teacher into a frog, I have met her and she is lovely. Ignore Milly.’
Milly slunk back into the sitting room. A coffee could wait.
‘Is he nervous?’ Isabel peered from beneath her specs, the
Daily
Telegraph
laid flat on the dining table.
‘He seems fine. I think we’re more nervous than he is.’ She sat on the floor.
‘I remember William’s first day at school. He looked so sweet in his little cap and shorts. He marched in mid afternoon and said he’d had a nice time but didn’t think he’d bother going back again!’ Isabel shook her head. ‘That was him all over, really; thought he knew it all already. I loved his spark, his confidence.’ She swallowed.
‘He was confident,’ Milly agreed. ‘And funny.’
Isabel nodded, not wanting to give in to tears, not today.
‘Lucas is very much like him,’ Milly offered.
Isabel beamed. ‘He certainly is. He’s the image of him actually. Oh, did I mention I bumped into Piers? He was at a point-to-point up the road from Mountfield.’
‘Ah, how was he?’ Milly thought about sweet, dull Piers.
‘Very well, gloriously happy and getting married!’ Isabel mouthed the last two words as though it was a secret.
‘Oh well, that’s a good thing. Who to? Anyone we know?’ Milly meant the ‘we’ sarcastically – she and Isabel knew hardly any of the same people.
Isabel leant across the table and whispered, ‘A rather homely-looking girl.’ She tightened her jaw and let her mouth droop. ‘I honestly thought it was his sister. They were dressed in identical clothes and she had that chin thing going on, the same as him.’
‘What chin thing?’ Milly tried to picture Piers’ face in more detail.
Isabel flapped her hand. ‘Oh, you know what I mean. That look that suggests all betrothals have happened within the cousin-once-removed category.’ She nodded conspiratorially.
Milly snorted her laughter; Isabel was good fun when she was this cutting. ‘Blimey, sounds like Meg had a lucky escape!’
Lucas stamped his foot on the hallway floor. ‘Dad said I could wear this! He said I needed it to learn about witchcraft and wizardry.’ Lucas pushed out his bottom lip and folded his arms across his chest.
‘Ignore Dad. I have already told you, this is not wizard school, it’s James Wolfe Primary, a normal school, for non-wizard children.’ Meg ran her palm across her brow. Who knew it would be this hard to get him out of the door?
‘Dad said you’d say that.’
‘What did Dad say? Are you getting me into trouble, pal?’ Edd bent low and picked Lucas up, sitting him on his arm.
‘I just want to wear my cloak and Mum said I had to leave it here,’ Lucas whined.
‘Sure you can wear it!’
‘Edd! No he can’t.’ Meg put her hands on her hips, exasperated.
Edd placed Lucas on the floor. ‘You are going to have a great day, pal. And remember, no matter what the day throws at you, the real world is what is behind our front door; everything on the other side ain’t important. And you will be back here before you know it.’
He walked over to his wife. Pulling her towards him, he kissed her face and whispered, ‘When we arrive at school and he’s settled, I’ll take it off him. Trust me.’
‘Trust you? I tried that once before and look where it got me!’ She batted him away. ‘You look rather dashing, if you don’t mind me saying, Mr Partner.’ She smiled.
‘I’m wearing my lucky cufflinks!’ He showed her his wrists and raised his eyebrows.
‘Very smart.’ She winked.
The sound of a mewling cry came from the small bedroom.
‘Gabriel is awake!’ Lucas yelled and ran to where his new baby brother lay.
‘I’ll get him!’ Brenda shouted as she dashed from the kitchen at lightning speed. Her cup of tea could wait. ‘What
are
you wearing?’ She paused to stare at the face on Meg’s T-shirt as she tore up the stairs. ‘Is he not a baseball player?’
‘No!’ Lucas shouted as he ran back down the hallway. ‘He
is
baseball!’
Edd high-fived his son. His training was going well; he’d make a Yankees fan of him if it was the last thing he did.
Brenda appeared minutes later with Gabriel wrapped in a white blanket and lying in her arms. ‘It’s okay, darling, your grandma has got you.’ She kissed his little face and took him into the sitting room.
‘You might want to loosen that blanket, Brenda. He doesn’t like to be too swaddled,’ Milly commented from the floor.
‘William always liked to be tightly bundled, I think it helped calm him.’ Isabel abandoned the newspaper and offered advice from the dining table.
None of the three grandmas had wanted to miss Lucas’s big day, or the first week of having Gabriel home, or the dinner to celebrate Edd’s new position. A big day indeed.
‘I had fourteen stitches when I had Edward,’ Brenda recalled. ‘I was in agony. Haven’t been right since in that department.’
‘Stitches? I couldn’t sit down for a fortnight! The doctor said my haemorrhoids were the worst he had seen in forty years of practice,’ Isabel countered. ‘I had a Filipina mother’s help at the time and she only ever saw me sitting on a rubber ring, thought I was part mermaid.’ She shuddered at the memory.
Brenda glared. ‘I endured nine hours of labour with nothing but gas and air.’
‘Gosh, gas and air would have been a luxury! I had William at home and had to survive on nothing but a big dose of grin-and-bear-it.’ Isabel smiled.
Milly looked from one to the other. ‘I think I’m very lucky.’
Brenda and Isabel both looked over at Milly, who was building a Lego pirate ship, ready to play with when Lucas came home from school.
‘I’ve had no stitches, no haemorrhoids, no stretch marks and no bloody pain, yet I get to be a nana to both of your grandchildren, kind of like I took a shortcut! Bosh!’ She chortled, chopping at the air.
They both ignored her.
Edd strode into the sitting room. ‘How do I look?’
‘Very handsome!’ Isabel remarked.
‘You look lovely, mate. Like a very important partner at one of London’s finest architect’s.’ Milly winked.
‘That he does,’ Isabel added.
Brenda wanted to speak but tears and pride stopped the words in her throat.
Meg walked in behind him. Edd grabbed his wife around the waist and kissed her gently. ‘See you later. I love you, Mrs Kelly.’
‘Sames.’ She smiled.
Having waved Edd and Lucas off, Meg wandered through Greenwich with Gabriel asleep in his pram. She felt unexpectedly tearful. She smiled, figuring it was down to pregnancy hormones and a big dollop of not wanting her little boy to be starting school and growing up quite so fast. She stopped and looked through the gates into the grounds of the old Naval College where an ice rink had been set up for the season.
She thought of Dimitri and Anna, packed away in a box and currently living in their loft space; she would get them down and make them part of her Christmas decorations. Guy would appreciate the gesture. It was to be their first Christmas in their new home and their first as a proper family. It had been quite a year.
Meg twisted the gold band on her finger and felt her stomach flip as it always did when she pictured her handsome New Yorker, who at that very moment was taking up residence in his new office in the City. She couldn’t wait to hear all about it later over dinner at the Oxo Tower on the South Bank, and to meet up with Pru, Christopher and Guy, who would be joining them there.
Reaching down into the pram, Meg pulled the edge of the blanket from Gabriel’s face. He was so beautiful. She felt the usual pang of regret that Lorna wouldn’t meet him; funny how, despite all that had happened, not having her mum in her life didn’t get any easier.
Meg had been concerned about having a second child, worrying that it would be impossible to love another in the way she loved Lucas. When the midwife handed him to her, like a gift, her reward for all that huffing and puffing, she had peered at the little bundle, wrapped loosely in a pale blue cotton blanket, and she had known her worries were unfounded. He was perfect and he was theirs. Meg loved him the way she loved all the boys in her life – fiercely.
‘Do you have a name for him?’ the midwife had asked.
‘Gabriel,’ she had answered with certainty as Edd openly sobbed in the corner. ‘He’s an angel sent at Christmas, what else are we gonna call him?’ She had smiled.
Gabriel reached up from his pram and batted the air with his mittened hand.
‘Hello, little mate, are you awake? I’m just standing here having a good old think. I wonder what your story will be? I think about my own sometimes; it’s been a bit of a bumpy old ride at times, but I think the life I have now is my reward for the times when I was so unhappy. You will always be loved, baby. You will always have a family that puts you first and you will always, always have a wonderful Christmas. And if ever you want me or Dad to take you to the seaside, no matter what the time of year, you just shout and we’ll bundle you into the car and take you. Lucas will be there to hold your hand.’
She smiled at her youngest son. ‘I expect we’d better be getting back. God knows what the competitive grannies are getting up to while we’re away.’ She laughed.
A young couple caught her eye, laughing as they swirled on the ice. They were good skaters. The boy caught the girl around the waist and pulled her towards him. The two twirled and spun, holding each other fast. They reminded her of seahorses bonding snout to snout as they spiralled up towards the surface. Together, as one, ready to take on the world.
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No Greater Love
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The major yanked first at one cuff and then the other, ensuring three-eighths of an inch was visible beneath his tunic sleeves. With his thumb and forefinger he circled his lips, finishing with a small cough, designed to clear the throat. He nodded in the direction of the door, indicating to the accompanying sergeant that he could proceed. He was ready.
‘Coming!’ Poppy cast the sing-song word over her shoulder in the direction of the hallway, once again making a mental note to fix the front door bell as the internal mechanism grated against the loose, metal cover. The intensely irritating sound had become part of the rhythm of the flat. She co-habited with an orchestra of architectural ailments, the stars of which were the creaking hinge of the bedroom door, the dripping bathroom tap and the whirring extractor fan that now extracted very little.
Poppy smiled and looped her hair behind her ears. It was probably Jenna, who would often nip over during her lunch break. Theirs was a comfortable camaraderie, arrived at after many years of friendship; no need to wash up cups, hide laundry or even get dressed, they interacted without inhibition or pretence. Poppy prepped the bread and counted the fish fingers under the grill, working out how to make two sandwiches instead of one, an easy calculation. She felt a swell of happiness.