Фиона Гибсон – How the In-Laws Wrecked Christmas (страница 2)

Ben laughs. ‘I drove as fast as I could, sweetheart.’

She grins as Ben’s parents step out to greet us: Clara, impossibly elegant in a cream shift, a pale grey cashmere cardigan draped over her shoulders; Charles more rumpled in a huge, ratty-looking fisherman’s sweater and fawn corduroys with well-worn knees.

Ben hugs them. ‘Mum, Dad, this is Anna …’

Clara blinks at me. ‘Oh! Nice to meet you, Anna.’ She glances at Ben. ‘It’s just, we didn’t expect …’

‘Anna’s been looking forward to meeting you,’ Ben cuts in.

‘I have,’ I say brightly. ‘What a lovely house …’ And what a dumb thing to say: like being shown a friend’s new mobile phone and remarking, ‘Wow, it can do so many things!’ I mean, ‘house’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like a stately home. I’ve never been in one before where I haven’t had to buy an admission ticket.

We unload copious bags from the boot and all head into the enormous panelled hallway. Ben introduces me to Nell, an elderly golden retriever who presses, winningly, against my legs. I ruffle the soft, warm fur behind her ears, gazing around me in awe. Antlers are mounted on the wall beside the sweeping staircase; real antlers, from slain deer. There are gloomy oil paintings – portraits, mostly, of aristocratic types, plus the odd landscape in murky greens and browns. As I’m led through the house, I can’t help but wonder, what didn’t Clara expect? That I’d be coming for Christmas? Surely Ben hasn’t just sprung me on them …

‘Let’s have coffee in the drawing room,’ Charles suggests, leading us along the hallway to a room filled with chesterfield sofas and antique furniture. Drawing room. Again – and without wanting to sound as if I grew up regarding bread and dripping as a fantastic treat – I have never encountered anyone who has a drawing room before.

As Clara glides off to fetch coffee, Ben and I arrange ourselves on one of the three sofas, while Charles occupies an armchair by the bay window which looks out on to the sweeping grounds. I sit bolt upright with my knees pressed together, hoping to convey the impression that I am utterly relaxed and find myself in rooms like this all the time.

The dark, polished floorboards are scattered with faded rugs. There is a grand piano and shelves of leather-bound books and vases filled with red, velvety flowers I don’t know the name of. In pride of place, in front of the window, stands a Christmas tree: the biggest I have seen outside a department store – only, it’s real (of course), and bedecked in coordinated silver and purple decorations. Beautifully wrapped presents are stacked around it.

‘So,’ Charles says, as Nell settles into her basket in the corner, ‘good drive?’

‘Yes, no problems,’ Ben replies. They start discussing our journey, as if the route from South London to Little Winterden has changed beyond all recognition since Ben’s last visit. I look down at Daisy, who has squeezed on to the leather sofa between her father and me.

‘I like your shoes, Anna,’ she offers.

‘Oh, thank you. I bought them specially …’

‘Aren’t they lovely, Grandma?’ she says as Clara appears with a tray of coffees.

‘What’s that, darling?’ Clara asks.

‘Anna’s shoes. I love them!’

‘Er, yes,’ Clara says, eyeing them as if they were splattered in horse shit. She places the tray on the coffee table beside a stack of board games: Scrabble, Monopoly, Risk. I glance down at my shoes, and see them through Clara’s eyes: strappy heels, as red as the Christmas flowers in those huge vases – a bargain, I’d thought, my heart performing a little somersault of delight as I snatched them in New Look. Not especially comfortable, admittedly – but so festive. ‘Very sexy,’ Jamie had said when I’d brought them home. God, they look cheap in this room.

‘D’you know what I’m getting for Christmas?’ Daisy asks.

I smile. ‘Lots, I expect. Did you write a list for Santa?’

‘Erm, yes, I asked Father Christmas for a musical box, a scooter and a bead-making thing …’ Whoops, they say Father Christmas here, not Santa.

‘Sounds great,’ I say. ‘I wish I’d done a list …’

‘And I’m going to wake up very early tomorrow,’ she enthuses, ‘so I get to see Father Christmas. I want to see him in my room, so I’m not going to sleep at all …’

‘Oh, but you must!’ Clara exclaims, pouring our coffees from an ornate china pot. ‘Otherwise you’ll be exhausted. Mummy wouldn’t want you to be tired and crotchety and spoil the day …’

I glance at Ben, whose expression is impassive. ‘She’ll be fine,’ he says, ‘won’t you, Daisy? But, yes, Grandma’s right. You should probably get a little sleep tonight …’

‘Can I stay up a bit later than normal? It’s Christmas Eve!’

‘Of course you can,’ Ben says, stroking her hair.

Clara frowns. ‘But Louisa said Daisy’s bedtime is eight o’clock …’

‘We do let her stay up a bit later sometimes, Mum,’ Ben points out.

‘We have movie nights,’ I explain. ‘We watch Aladdin, Snow White and Peter Pan – all her favourites …’

‘Yeah,’ Daisy enthuses, swinging her legs. ‘And Anna makes these special things with, um, little squares on them …’

‘Potato waffles,’ I explain. ‘Daisy loves them.’

‘Oh,’ Clara says, looking startled. ‘I didn’t realise you’d met Anna before, Daisy …’

‘Yeah, ’course I have,’ she retorts. ‘She’s my friend.’

Clara turns to me. ‘So, er, you’re there sometimes, when Ben has Daisy at the weekends?’

Yep, pushing my illicit Bird’s Eye waffles and youth-corrupting Disney movies. ‘Sometimes I’m around,’ I say lightly. ‘I enjoy it. I love children. I work in a nursery actually, in Brixton, five minutes away from my house …’ As I prattle on, conscious of Clara’s pale blue eyes upon me, and Charles’s baffled gaze from the armchair, I realise how wrong this must seem: their beloved son’s girlfriend living in Brixton rather than Belgravia, and having an ordinary job which involves wiping bottoms and making up industrial-sized jugs of Ribena. I catch Clara looking me up and down. I had highlights yesterday; they came out a bit brassy this time, although the hairdresser did say they’d ‘tone down’ in a week or so. I glance down at my H&M dress – black with tiny white flowers, maybe slightly too short for my age – and wonder if that looks cheap too.

‘Anna’s great with Daisy,’ Ben says firmly.

‘And where are you from, Anna?’ Clara wants to know.

‘Um, well, as I said, I live in Brixton, in a house share – there are four of us …’

‘You have flatmates?’ Charles exclaims, enunciating the last word as if to say, ‘You have scabies?’

‘Yes. Well, housemates actually. I mean, we have an upstairs.’ I emit an awkward, barky laugh. ‘We’re good friends,’ I plough on. ‘We’ve known each other for years, since our early twenties – since college – and it came to the point where we all wanted to buy places, but you know what it’s like, the prices …’ I grind to an abrupt halt. This house has eleven bedrooms. There’s a proper wine cellar, a scullery (whatever that is) and a separate cottage somewhere in the grounds, for guests. Of course they don’t know what it’s like. ‘So we, um, all chipped in and bought a place together,’ I finish, sensing sweat prickling at the underarms of my synthetic dress.

‘You’re not from London, though,’ Charles remarks, ‘originally?’

‘No, Yorkshire. Originally.’ I use the silver tongs to drop two sugar lumps into my coffee.

He nods. ‘I thought I detected an accent …’

‘Anyway, Mum,’ Ben cuts in briskly, ‘tell us what you and Dad have been up to …’

Clara’s expression brightens as she launches into what a triumph the Christmas dance was this year, and how she’s taken the helm of the Little Winterden In Bloom Society: ‘We’re sure to win next year. How could we not, when you see how little effort they make in Haverton Brook and Sorley-on-the-Marshes?’ Although in her late sixties, Clara could be a decade younger; she has the kind of finely honed bone structure which keeps everything perky. There is barely a line on her face. Charles possesses the distinguished features and deep, booming tones of an elderly stage actor; in fact, Ben has told me that he made his money in ‘investments’, although the house has been in the family for generations.

As they fall into discussing Clara and Charles’s forthcoming skiing holiday, I glance at the framed photos arranged on the ornately carved table beside the tree. There’s a rather formal portrait of Daisy, hand propping up her chin, like a movie starlet, and Ben, at around seventeen years old in a regulation school photo, smiling crookedly with hair askew, no doubt the one all the girls fancied. There’s Charles in a tweed hat, clutching an enormous fish on a riverbank, plus wedding pictures, all of Clara and Charles and friends or relatives of a similar vintage … No, not all. There’s one at the back, by far the biggest picture, so it’s visible above all the others. It’s of Ben and Louisa, his ex.

He looks dashing in a black jacket and white shirt, and she’s a vision of wholesome beauty in a simple white, strapless dress and a veil, for God’s sake. It’s a bloody wedding photo! There are blurs of confetti, unless I’m mistaken and there happened to be a flurry of blossom. Have Clara and Charles forgotten they divorced last year, and haven’t actually lived together since Daisy was three? I look away. Some kind of powerful force drags my gaze back to stunning Louisa with her elongated green eyes and little swoopy-up nose and plump, lightly glossed lips.