Once Upon A Winter (17 page)

Christmas Eve had come and very recently gone. Up at Bryn Heulog not a creature was stirring - except for Nell. The clock in the lounge had chimed midnight as she set out the last of the presents beneath the tree, including the one Daniel had left for her.

She sat back on her haunches, surveying the glittering array with the satisfaction of a mother who had ticked off everything on her children’s Christmas lists. Then she yawned, shivered, and wrapped her oversized, fleecy dressing gown tighter around her.

Even as an adult she had found sleeping on Christmas Eve nigh on impossible. She had to at least try, though. Tomorrow -
today
, rather - would be arduous enough without feeling shattered all the way through it.

Tucked up in bed, Nell flicked inattentively through a magazine before her eyelids grew heavy. She tossed it aside and wriggled down under the duvet. Her last memorable thought was a form of prayer for the day ahead. A hazy hope that her brother-in-law would be far less taciturn than of late, and that her sister wouldn’t take over and monopolise the kitchen.

*

Joshua
sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. What time was it? Something had woken him. A sound, maybe. It was still dark, save for the small night-light plugged in by his desk. He kicked off the duvet and shuffled to the door, grabbing his small wind-up torch on the way. Straining his ears, he thought he could make out footsteps coming from downstairs.

A bolt of excitement shot through him. He padded out on to the landing and into his sister’s room.

Freya regarded him blearily in the torchlight as he shook her. ‘Josh? What’s wrong . . . ?’

‘
Sshhh, we need to whisper. I think Santa’s downstairs.’

‘Santa?’ She frowned, and sat upright. ‘But . . .’

‘I can hear someone down there.’

‘It’s probably just Mum.’

‘It isn’t. Her door’s open. I saw her in bed. She’s asleep.’

‘Then . . .’ Freya scratched her head. ‘You must have imagined it.’

‘I didn’t. Honestly.’ He went to the door and listened. ‘I can still hear him.’ He beckoned to her. ‘Come on.’

Freya swung her legs round, pushed aside her own duvet and stood up. ‘Josh,’ she hissed quietly, ‘if you really hear something, we should tell Mum.’

‘Why? Grown-ups can’t see Santa on Christmas Eve. It’s not a well known fact, but he’s invisible and . . . inaudible. Only kids know he’s there.’

‘Josh, I don’t think Santa wants
anyone
to see him. Even us.’

He stared at the weird shadows cast by the torchlight across his sister’s face. She seemed hollowed out and worried. ‘I wa
nt to go downstairs,’ insisted Joshua. ‘No one ever gets to say thank you properly. That isn’t fair to him.’

‘Josh, no.’ Freya tugged at his pyjama top. ‘It might be a burglar.’

‘At Christmas? He could easily bump into Santa. That would be
awkward
.’

‘You said adults couldn’t see or hear him.’

‘They can still bump into him. He’s a solid mass, not a vapour.’

Joshua shook off his sister’s grasp and started
heading towards the stairs.

*

Nell stirred awake. It felt as if she had been out cold for ages, yet as she blinked fuzzily at her alarm clock, she realised she couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour. She sat up in bed, and through the gap of her open door, caught the glimmer of a torch light disappearing down the stairs.

She frowned, and rolled out of bed, swaying as she wrestled on her dressing gown over her flimsy ni
ghtshirt and tugged on her cosy slipper boots. The air felt chill, with a hint of dampness. Nell dimly remembered it had been raining when she’d put the kids to bed. So much for a white Christmas.

Out on the landing, her own faint, flickering torch in her hand, she checked the children’s rooms. Both beds were empty.

Little so-and-sos. Nell welled up paradoxically with anger and affection. Couldn’t wait until morning, could they?

Half the joy of giving gifts to Joshua and Freya was watching their faces light up as they tore off the wrapping paper.

What were they planning? To rattle the gifts, and attempt to guess what was inside? To tear back a tiny portion of paper? Or just succumb to the temptation of ripping it all back, and deal with the consequences of an irate mother in the morning.

It was the first time they’d ever conspired to try this, but Nell wasn’t about to let them get away with it.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she caught a glimpse of Freya scuttling after Joshua into the lounge. Nell took a determined breath and marched across the hall, flicking on the lounge wall lights as she stalked in through the open door after her children.

In the soft amber glow of the sconces on the walls, Nell blinked, and sensed that the world beyond her own self seemed to have fallen still.

Facing the Christmas tree, her children had stopped dead in their tracks. Nell slowly stepped around them, following their paralysed gaze.

As if still in a dream, and from very far away, she heard her son mutter as an indictment to the man crouched in front of the tree, ‘
You’re
not Santa!’

Eventually, all her senses blunted, Nell registered that the sudden piercing sound ringing in her ears was her own scream.

‘
Ah, Shall WINTER mend your case?

Set your teeth the wind to face,

Beat the snow down, tread the frost,

All is gained when all is lost.
’

William Morris

Silas
crossed the room in a few quick strides, and shut the door. ‘Ellena, hush . . . You’ll wake your grandmother.’

He turned and put his finger to the woman’s lips. His wife. Yet that seemed a technicality, and misleading somehow, like meeting a stranger only to be told they were related to you.

The screaming stopped, but she stared up at him in a disbelieving stupor, her brown eyes enormous, hardly blinking in her ghost-white face.

The two children stared, too, glued to the spot where they had reeled to a standstill at the sight of him by the Christmas tree.

‘It’s all right,’ he said calmly, belying his own alarm at being caught here, like this. ‘Ellena . . . it’s fine . . . It’s just me . . . I never meant to scare you.’

Her eyes still wide, fixed on his, Silas warily moved his finger away from her lips. He’d never known her to be so loud, not even in childbirth with the twins. Such a
mouselike creature always.

Her mouth opened, and he found himself holding his breath. But all that crept out was a harrowed, incredulous whisper. ‘Silas?’ 

He sensed more than saw her knees buckling. Grabbing her by the arms, he steered her to the sofa. ‘Here. Sit.’ He could feel that she was trembling, even though he couldn’t see it under the absurdly large dressing gown she was enveloped in. ‘You need a hot tea, with sugar.’

Silas looked up, turning towards the girl in her pale pink pyjamas. She’d had a baby-suit that exact colour once; one of those all-in-one things. He remembered the mundane ritual of changing nappies in the night, popping and
unpopping, while Ellena tended the other twin. It seemed to have the distant quality of a dream now.

‘Can you make tea?’ he asked his daughter.

‘I’m not allowed.’ When she spoke, she was remarkably composed, especially for one so young faced with a near-hysterical mother and an intruder in the night. ‘Mum’s afraid I’ll burn myself.’

‘Scald,’ said the boy. ‘Hot water
scalds
. It doesn’t burn.’

‘The kettle gets hot,’ retorted the girl belligerently. ‘I touched it once. It burned me.’

‘But boiling water would hurt more than the kettle,’ insisted the boy. ‘And leave a scar. Ashley Parkinson at school has a scar on his leg. I saw it in PE. He said a pan of hot water spilled on him when he was four.’

Silas looked from one child to the other, disoriented. Frowning, he snapped his mind back into gear, assuming control again. ‘Your mother is in shock,’ he said firmly. ‘Can you watch her while I make the tea myself?’

They stared up at him, almost challengingly now. Silas grew unsettled again, as if the balance of the situation he had found himself in was tipping out of his favour. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said the boy.

‘You’re our dad,’ added the girl.

‘
That’s right.’ Silas nodded, and even to his own ears his answer sounded clinical. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Stay here.’

Quickly, efficiently, he prepared a large mug of tea, with a generous amount of sugar, and returned to the drawing room.

The girl was now curled up beside her mother on the sofa, nestled against Ellena’s shoulder. The boy knelt beside the tree, sifting through the brightly coloured boxes and packages. He looked up as Silas dragged a small coffee table closer to the sofa. Silas carefully placed the mug on the table.

‘Don’t let it get cold,
Ellena.’

‘You’ve brought us presents.’ The boy spoke up. ‘They’ve got tags that say, “From Dad.” I bet you didn’t see Santa, or hear him. He’s already been, too. Look.’

‘Of course he didn’t,’ said the girl, with a scornfulness that seemed to threaten tears.

‘Silas . . .’
Ellena’s own voice was still tremulous, with hardly any volume behind it; but he sensed something new in it, too, something that chipped at his already brittle composure. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

‘I came to see the children.’

As the initial shock wore off, on both their parts, her eyes weren’t as passive as he remembered. ‘But why now . . . tonight . . . like this? It’s . . .
madness
.’

Silas didn’t reply at first. It would be hard to rationalise, he hadn’t expected to be discovered, and suddenly he felt more tired than he had in a long time. ‘I brought you
something, too,’ he said instead.

She shook her head, her gaze scouring his face. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’ She sounded as if she was choking now.

‘It isn’t from me.’ Silas looked at the rug at his feet and shifted on the spot. ‘It’s from Abe Golding. He made me promise to give it to you.’

‘Abe . . . ?’ She shook her head again. ‘But . . . How . . . ?’

‘I’ve kept in touch with him,’ Silas admitted. ‘He was always more of a friend than a landlord.’

Deep in thought,
Ellena’s bottom lip curled inward as she chewed on it. A habit of hers, Silas remembered, and one she obviously hadn’t grown out of, whatever else might have changed. ‘And his specific instructions were to break into my house and leave it under the Christmas tree?’

Silas looked away, and then back at her again. No, there was nothing passive there now. No twitchy little mouse. More of the lioness Abe had predicted. Behind the shock there was anger, deep-rooted and ancient. A woman scorned, grasped Silas. 

‘No, of course not,’ he said guardedly. ‘With hindsight, that was a mistake.’

‘Hindsight?’ she echoed. ‘And what mistake are you talking about exactly?’

‘Coming here,’ he said, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘Tonight.’

‘Can we open our presents?’ asked the boy, forcing his way into the conversation.

‘No,’ said Ellena. ‘Put that box down, Joshua.’

‘Oh, Mum, please.’

‘
No
. You need to get back to bed.’

‘Mum . . .’ The girl’s voice did not grate now compared to her mother’s. It lacked the same ability to fray Silas’s nerves. Touched with obvious weariness, she was more a child again than a small, confrontational adult. She snuggled into
Ellena’s dressing gown, as if searching for warmth and solace in its folds. ‘I won’t be able to sleep, though.’

Ellena
sighed and abruptly raked a hand through the tangle of her long hair. ‘Get a grip, Nell,’ she muttered. ‘OK.’ She turned to her daughter and gently extracted herself. ‘You and Joshua watch a little TV in here - quietly. There must be something of yours recorded. And no opening
any
presents. I’m warning you.’ She glowered at the boy, who shuffled on his knees away from the Christmas tree.

‘Where are you going, Mum?’ He seemed curious and concerned.

Fine elements to the boy’s character, thought Silas. But only to be expected.

‘I’ll be across the hall, in Grandpa’s den. I need to speak to . . .’ she hesitated ‘. . . to your father . . . Alone.’

As Ellena rocked to her feet, Silas automatically put out a hand to steady her. She shrugged it off.

‘I’m fine,’ she snapped.

‘Ellena, your tea . . .’ He bent to pick up the mug. ‘I’ll carry it for you.’

‘Do what you want. You made it. You carry it,’ she muttered, moving unsteadily towards the door in her striped, knitted boots. ‘It’s not bloody tea I need anyway.’

As he trailed after Ellena, Silas looked back at the children. The boy had joined his sister on the sofa. They were squabbling over the remote control, but caught his gaze and froze again.

It was sometimes hard, thought Silas, to know exactly what children were thinking; more so than with adults. So many of them over the decades, looking up to him, revering him, trusting him. And he had never let any of those particular little ones down.

The irony had not been lost on Silas these last few years, that the two children he had walked away from had been those he had fathered.