For the Love of Christmas. Kate Forster

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СКАЧАТЬ walked through the house. The dining room had a thin film of dust on the table, and one of the sideboard cupboards was ajar.

      Moving to close it, she felt a familiar trepidation that she hadn’t experienced for the past two months.

      Herein lies my problem, she thought as she opened it.

      It was empty.

      She was grateful to Jamie for at least having the foresight to clear it out before she came home, but shame filled her body and her cheeks burned with memories.

      This is what you get when you leave rehab, she reminded herself. A wreathless, alcohol-free, deserted family home.

      The tears threatened to fall again and she blinked them away.

      There was one thing she could change on that list, she thought, and shrugging off her coat, forgetting her jet lag and suitcases waiting to be unpacked, she climbed the three flights of stairs to the attic.

      The box of Christmas decorations was light compared to the table she had just disposed of, she thought, as she carried it downstairs to the living room.

      The wreath was on top, wrapped in tissue paper to deter dust and moths, and as she carefully unwrapped it, she gently wiped off some imaginary specks of last Christmas.

      ‘Hello,’ she said to the wreath.

      Taking it by the red velvet ribbon, she opened the front door, and found the nail near the top.

      She hung it as though it were a priceless painting, straightening, fussing until she was sure it was sitting beautifully.

      She stepped back and smiled.

      ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said to the wreath and, most of all, to herself.

      She might be alone but she wouldn’t let that stop her from having her own special Christmas. She might even make some shortbread or even some strong coloured popcorn because she’d always wanted to do that and never had the time.

      This was the start of the new Rebecca Swanson: recovering alcoholic, mother, wife – perhaps soon to be an ex-wife, she thought – CEO and, above everything else, a Christmas addict.

      Jamie

      ‘Where is it, Sofie?’ Jamie demanded, trying to keep the anger from his voice.

      His temper was part of the problem, Rose-Marie had said during one of their Skype therapy sessions.

      ‘You fly off the handle so easily, it’s exhausting to live with,’ Rebecca had remarked.

      ‘So that’s why you drink? Because of me?’ he had said in return, even though he knew it was unfair, and that he was really just deflecting the attention away from himself.

      He was stressed, and worried about everything. The last year had felt like life was creeping up on him, about to give him a terrible surprise.

      And then Rebecca fell down the stairs.

      She lay for two hours until the children and their nanny found her and called an ambulance, and that’s when they finally accepted that her drinking was not just a sometime thing.

      ‘Come on Sof,’ Jamie coaxed. ‘You were the last to have my phone. I need to check if Mummy has called.’

      The mention of Mummy swayed her enough to spill her secret and she looked down at her pink-socked feet. ‘I dropped it,’ she said in a half whisper.

      ‘Dropped it where, darling?’ asked Jamie in a quiet voice.

      ‘Rain, not thunder, helps the flowers grow,’ Rose-Marie’s voice rang in his head.

      Bloody Rose-Marie and her bumper-sticker sayings, he thought. They resounded in his head like old school songs.

      Oscar came rushing inside, a gale of freezing wind making the fire in the grate shudder in protest.

      ‘I think it’s going to snow,’ he announced.

      ‘I hope not,’ said Jamie. ‘We have to go back tomorrow.’

      He returned his attention to his daughter, who at seven looked like an angel but had the wiles of a teenager.

      ‘Where did you drop it, Sofie?’ He was a little sterner now.

      Sofie looked up and widened her eyes, a tactic she had learned from Rebecca, and he felt himself fill with love for both the females in his life.

      ‘In the bath,’ she said, her voice quivering as she spoke.

      ‘In the bath?’ he repeated, as though trying to make sense of the words. ‘In the water?’

      She nodded.

      ‘Why did you have my phone in the bath?’

      ‘I was watching Taylor Swift videos,’ she said with a slight eye-roll, as though he knew nothing about anything.

      ‘And you dropped it in the water, and then didn’t tell me for the past day, even though you have seen me frantically looking?’ He felt his temper rising.

      Rain, rain, less thunder, he reminded himself.

      ‘Go and get it,’ he instructed.

      Oscar, who was twelve and so considered himself wise beyond his height, was lying on the sofa, flicking through a gaming magazine.

      ‘It’s screwed now,’ he offered.

      ‘Don’t say screwed,’ said Jamie crossly.

      ‘Buggered then,’ Oscar said.

      Jamie left it alone. At twelve Oscar knew too much about life, electronics, and the truth about his mother.

      Sofie was back, holding out the phone to Jamie.

      He turned it on and off but nothing happened.

      ‘You could put it in a bag of rice; that might soak up some of the water, but I doubt it, since it’s been left wet for so long,’ Oscar offered.

      Jamie went to the cupboard of the farmhouse he’d rented to try and get to know his children for a few weeks while Bec was in treatment.

      Two weeks had felt like a long time when he booked it; now it felt like an eternity.

      ‘We don’t have any rice,’ he said, as he peered through the staple items. ‘Can I do flour?’

      ‘No,’ said Oscar, not looking up from his magazine.

      ‘Pasta?’

      ‘No,’ came the same answer.

      Jamie stood facing the pantry with its jars of mixed herbs and lack of rice and felt himself wanting to cry.

      How ridiculous was he? he asked himself.

      He СКАЧАТЬ