The Mother of All Christmases Read online

  ‘I have been trying to get her to the doctor’s, but she won’t go,’ said Joe, a helpless tone in his loud whisper. ‘She is frightened. And to be honest, I am frightened too.’

  Annie came out of the toilet to face three pairs of concerned eyes.

  ‘You’d better go and get checked, you know,’ said Iris with a soft smile. ‘It’ll probably be the menopause, it takes all sorts of forms.’

  ‘I know,’ said Annie. But she didn’t think it was and that’s why she was scared.

  After work, they drove home and Joe decided he would cook. Annie could tell that he was in full-on healing mode because Joe thought of food as medicine; he was trying to make her better with pasta and garlic and minced beef and pork. She couldn’t match him in the kitchen: he was a superb cook, thanks to his Italian parents, who’d owned a restaurant outside Naples and knew all the little tricks that made food taste as if it had been shipped over especially from there rather than made in a kitchen in South Yorkshire. She volunteered to go and buy a dessert from the supermarket and the teabags for the office that she’d forgotten to pick up last week because as much as she loved him, she needed an hour’s breathing space away from him. The air in the house was thick with his concern and that made her all too aware it was because he thought there was something horribly wrong with her.

  She kept it light, told him she’d be back as soon as possible and left him happily grating parmesan and singing along to Pavarotti. She drove to Morrisons in the centre of town, only to soon wish she’d driven past it and gone to Tesco instead, because if she was stressed out before she went, she was buckled under with the weight of it by the time she came back.

  She only narrowly missed the man who stepped out in front of her Audi in the supermarket car park as she was turning into a spot. He flipped her the bird and strolled on, a scruffy long-haired blonde trailing in his wake, whilst Annie sat frozen, hands gripping the steering wheel so fiercely her fingernails were almost embedded in the leather. Her nerves were jangling, not because of the near miss but because of whom it was that she’d almost rammed into. She’d have recognised him anywhere: the gaunt face with the razor-sharp cheekbones, snake-dull eyes sunk back in their sockets, mean line of mouth, the baggy tracksuit bottoms hanging from the stick-like frame, baseball cap, a similar garb to what he was wearing the last time she saw him. In court. It could only be Clint O’Gowan.

  About three years ago, she’d read in the local paper that he’d been sent to prison. Obviously not for long enough because if she’d been the judge, she’d have stuck him in there and thrown away the key, hoping he suffered, the way he’d made her suffer. And Joe – especially Joe.

  She felt her stomach stir, but with a different sort of nausea to the one she’d been experiencing for the past weeks. This time it was agitated by long memories and hatred. And she really did hate the man now approaching the entrance of the supermarket. There were people on the planet that Annie disliked. Her incompetent local MP for one, who had been about as much use as a chocolate kettle when she had begged him for help. And the prosecuting counsel who had made Joe sound like a vicious thug to Clint O’Gowan’s defenceless victim, but did she hate them? No. But Clint O’Gowan made her more than capable of the emotion.

  Her legs were shaky when she got out of the car with her empty carrier bags. She could see him hovering by the entrance, pacing up and down, arguing with the security guard who had come out from behind his desk to refuse him admittance. Annie thought it best she wait until he had cleared off, but another – stronger – part of herself wanted to cross his path, look him in the eye, smash her fist into that bent, skinny nose and feel it splinter against her knuckles. She despised him further for making her even entertain such thoughts because it wasn’t her. Annie abhorred violence, but he took her way past the boundaries of her moral code, forced her into ripping up her own rule book and tempted her to concede to the primal urges that were buried deep in her DNA. And it wasn’t as if the police could do anything that would really wound her. Not in comparison to how she’d been hurt before.

  She walked slowly towards the store. The security guard’s arms were wide like those of an aggressive goose, a clear gesture that Clint O’Gowan would not be allowed past him. Another man rolled up behind the guard in a shirt and tie. O’Gowan appeared to give up the ghost then, threw up his hands in defeat and doubled-back out.

  He started heading her way. Annie felt her jaw tighten, her head prickle as adrenaline pumped through her body and her hand took a firm grip on the bag slung across her body. Close up she could see he hadn’t changed much in six years. He’d looked like a wizened older man then, when he was in his early twenties, but his cheeks were even more sunken now and there were horrible angry-looking sores on his forehead. As they passed each other, his eyes jumped sideways but there was no flicker of recognition. He might not have altered much, but she had. Her hair had been much shorter then and artificially lightened, plus she’d been three stone heavier. She’d lost the weight – and much more – from the stress of having the court case dangling over their heads like the sword of Damocles and never gained it all back. What hadn’t changed about her was her anger at and disgust for that despicable low-life. If anything it had grown stronger as the years had passed.

  Annie walked around Morrisons buying things she didn’t need because she knew she would have to calm right down before she went home to Joe. She could talk to Joe about anything but not Clint O’Gowan – he was subject non grata. She’d plaster a smile on her face and eat the dinner Joe would put in front of her, even though she wasn’t hungry at all, because she wouldn’t have that piece of scum ruining another moment for the man she loved.

  She realised later, when she had parked up outside the house, that once again she’d forgotten to buy the teabags.

  Chapter 9

  Palma had been devastated when her period came, because she’d been so sure that, three and a half weeks ago when she was last in the Stephensons’ spare bedroom, it had worked. The arrival of that period meant that she’d have to go through the whole Christian charade again, if they’d let her. She decided that she’d call his bluff if he insisted that Tabitha would allow them to sleep together, because she’d thought about it and reckoned it wasn’t the case at all. She’d ask Tabitha to her face, if necessary, and if she said that she didn’t mind, then Palma would leave immediately. As much as she needed the money, she had to be able to live with herself and the prospect of Christian’s hands all over her was almost as bad as the memory of Clint O’Gowan’s. If she asked Tabitha and found Christian had been lying, then there would be no recovery from that anyway. She’d walk out and leave them to call each other as many f, b and c words as they could muster.

  Then her period had stopped as soon as it had started and after waiting a few days she decided to do a test. Her fingers trembled with anticipation as she read the leaflet that came with the pregnancy test to make sure she understood what to do. As the instructions indicated, she urinated on the stick part then placed it on a flat surface, set the timer on her phone and walked around the small bedsit not daring to look at it whilst it was developing. They were possibly the longest few minutes of her life.

  Two strong pink lines, no doubt about it. She was pregnant. She was ecstatic.

  But Palma’s head did not immediately swim with pictures of soft white towels and the scent of baby powder, but with packing-boxes full of her stuff. This result indicated the beginning of the rest of her life. She would leave this shit-tip and move to a much nicer area. And once she was out of here and away from scumbags like Clint she would never look back. She’d be forever grateful to the baby for allowing her to do that, but any gratitude wouldn’t become love, she couldn’t afford for that to happen. They’d part as friends and each go on to a better stage without the other: baby to a pair of upwardly mobile parents with lots of disposable income to shower on it and she to a job which gave her steady money and satisfaction and somewhere small and cosy to li
ve where she could rest her head at night and not think about what was happening in the rooms below and above her. She didn’t dare to dream any bigger than that.

  Palma felt exhilarated by what those two pink lines meant. She’d play her part and bring the baby into the world after growing it the best she could. She would stay a long way from any cigarette smoke, not drink a drop of alcohol and make sure she ate well: plenty of fresh fruit and veg, pulses, seeds, fish; she’d look up what would be the most beneficial diet.

  She wondered if she should leave it a few more days before telling the Stephensons. She should do another test to make sure. Then again, the sooner she told them, the sooner she’d get the first lump of money. They really should have insisted on paying her when she was twelve weeks gone and the baby was well bedded in because so many were lost in the first couple of months, so she’d read; but it hadn’t been mentioned and she hadn’t volunteered the information. She was still pondering what to do when the doorbell went – press press press. It had to be Clint. Could he smell that pregnancy test? She nudged her curtain out of the way so she could see below and though it was a man, it wasn’t Clint. He had a different build: shorter with broader shoulders and though he had tracksuit bottoms on, they weren’t horrible, hacky ones that hung from his non-existent backside and had never seen a washing machine since he first put them on.

  The figure looked up, giving her a clear view of his face and she was too slow to move back before he spotted her. Tommy Tanner. What the hell did he want? And how had he found her after she told him she lived on Tollin Road?

  She hid the test in the dishcloth drawer then went to the bottom of the stairs and opened the door. In the light his face looked the same as it had at school: boyish and cheeky. In fact, give or take a couple of crinkly lines around his eyes, he hardly seemed to have aged at all from then.

  ‘I thought I’d come and find you and scrounge a coffee,’ he said. ‘I went to that house you said you lived at first.’

  ‘I lied,’ said Palma.

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘They told me to try here. House with the green door, they said.’

  Palma tutted absently. How the hell did they know where she lived, nosey bleeders?

  ‘Well?’ asked Tommy. ‘Are you going to leave me out here to dehydrate? I’ve just been doing hill runs. Can I come in?’

  ‘S’pose so,’ said Palma, seeing as she couldn’t think of a valid excuse why not.

  He followed her up the dingy stairs with the worn lino and embarrassing fake-wooden panelling on the walls.

  ‘I was going to look you up before but I’ve been warm weather training. In Tenerife,’ he said.

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Not really. It wasn’t a holiday. It was hard work.’

  ‘You do look a bit brown,’ said Palma, giving him the once-over when they were at the top.

  ‘I managed to get a few rays in,’ Tommy replied as Palma opened the door to the room. ‘Wow, this is nice.’

  ‘It’s not, it’s a shithole,’ she corrected him, crossing to the kettle.

  ‘Well the building is, but you’ve done your place out all right,’ he counteracted.

  She gave a small sarcastic laugh, but then wondered how the bedsit would appear through his eyes. It was clean and tidy and everything was colour-co-ordinated: red, cream and darkest grey. Her furniture was cheap but thoughtfully picked. She couldn’t do anything about the awful multicoloured carpet on the floor, but some red rugs she’d picked up in a closing-down sale drew the eye towards them instead. The height of luxury would be picking her own carpet to put on a floor. Carpets like Tabitha and Christian had that were as spongey as trampolines.

  ‘I thought we could have a natter,’ said Tommy. ‘We must have plenty to talk about.’

  Well, you might but there’s nothing I want to dredge up, thought Palma. Once she moved out of this place and handed over the baby, that’s when she’d start having a life full of details that she might want to share. She’d take few things forward from the past and most of those were her memories of Grace Beresford. She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Grace. She’d be in a prison at best, a box at worst.

  ‘Tea, coffee? How do you take it?’

  ‘Coffee, white,’ replied Tommy. ‘Cappuccino if you’ve got one.’

  ‘I’ve only got instant.’

  ‘I was joking,’ said Tommy, sitting on the sofa.

  It must be great being so constantly cheerful, Palma thought as she carried a mug over to the sofa for him and set it down on the sturdy square table she’d found in the Heart Foundation charity shop. She’d sandpapered the stained wooden top in her tiny bathroom until it was super smooth, then varnished it. It looked brand new when she’d finished it.

  ‘So who’s starting with the chat?’ asked Tommy when Palma had sat down on the armchair. It wasn’t a true match with the sofa but it looked as if it could have been. She’d searched for ages to find one that was like it.

  ‘You’d better, seeing as I don’t have much to contribute.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Tommy. ‘But I will anyway. I’ll start with the bad stuff. As you know I fell off the rails and ended up in Forestgate. I was a pillock back then.’

  ‘What did you go there for?’

  ‘Persistently being a pillock,’ said Tommy. ‘Smashing car windows, setting off alarms, robbing a warehouse, fighting. I was an arsehole. I was coked off my brain when I got arrested for the last time. It wasn’t good.’

  Palma wondered why the hell she had let him up here. He was making Clint sound like Mary Poppins.

  ‘I fell to bits after me mam ran off. Didn’t know how to handle it. It’s not an excuse. My dad couldn’t look after himself, never mind me. So I ended up with the bad lads.’

  Palma had a sudden recollection of him and one of the O’Gowans having a major scrap in the school lunch break. Not Clint, because he was seven years older, but one of the cousins in the year above, a flabby wardrobe of a kid who thought he was hard as nails. A re-enactment of David and Goliath with the same outcome. Palma could see him now, blood pouring out of his nose and the bulky games master Mr Fowler dragging Tommy off him. No one tangled with the O’Gowans was the general rule, but Tommy Tanner hadn’t been scared of anyone.

  ‘It was my brother that sorted me out. My older brother that I’d never met before, from dad’s first wife. He ran a boxing gym. Told me that if I wanted to fight so much to do it properly and make some money out of it. God knows where I’d have been if he hadn’t got hold of me. He gave me a home, discipline and focus. And he’s my trainer now.’

  ‘He sounds a good bloke,’ said Palma.

  ‘He’s the dad I should have had,’ said Tommy. ‘Then he got leukaemia the year before last and I thought we were going to lose him. I’ve got my title because of our Neil. That’s why I won the belt. I did it for him. If I defend it successfully three times, I’ll get to keep it and I’ll be giving it to him.’

  Emotion was present in his voice now, that chirpy smile had faded.

  ‘He’s okay now, he got through it. He drives me hard because I’ve got a defender coming up just before Christmas. You should come and watch me. I’ll get you a ticket.’

  ‘I might,’ said Palma, though she had no intention of watching two grown-ups trying to smash each other’s faces in. It was a common occurrence in Ketherwood, which she could watch from the comfort of her lounge window if she was into that sort of stuff.

  ‘Other than that, I’ve been labouring: Silkstone Buildings, you heard of them? Really good bloke, my boss. Gives me work around my training time. I bought one of his houses. Nice little estate of twelve. You got a job, Palma?’

  ‘I did have until a month ago. Nothing fancy,’ she replied. She wasn’t going to tell him that she managed the Ketherwood Fried Chicken shop. ‘Fast food outlet. Boss was really nice but he sold up, the new owner put his daughter in charge and I got the boot.’ Despite all those employment laws supposedly in place
, they’d got rid of her easily enough and the new owners weren’t the sort you argued with. ‘I’ve applied for some positions but I’ve had two rejections so far and I haven’t had replies from the others, which is annoying because I’m bored rigid, I need a job.’ And now she’d found out she was pregnant, it was going to make it even harder to find one.

  ‘You were brainy at school. I thought you’d have gone to uni or something,’ said Tommy. Palma laughed at that.

  ‘You’re mixing me up with someone else.’

  ‘I’m not. I remember you reading out a poem you’d written in class. It was a long funny one about a cat and a bird being friends. Didn’t the cat have wings or something?’

  His memory prodded something wrapped in cobwebs in her brain. That poem had been put forward for a county award and she’d won a runners-up pen.

  ‘Blimey, you’ve got a good memory. I’d forgotten all about that.’

  ‘I hadn’t. I thought you’d be a writer or an English teacher or something one day.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Palma. ‘I wasn’t that good. I haven’t found my talent yet. Maybe I don’t have one.’

  Grace used to say that everyone was good at something, that she could be anything she wanted to be and that her background was no obstacle to her future. What would Grace have said to her present situation, she wondered.

  ‘So what about you, Palma? Fill me in on the missing years. Coffee’s grand, exactly how I like it – nice and strong. I might come here again.’ He winked at her.

  She didn’t acknowledge the self-invite. ‘Nothing to tell. I went into care at fourteen. Ended up with a lovely foster mother but she died when I was eighteen and then I was on my own. That’s all of it right there in a nutshell.’ She didn’t tell him she’d had a period of such blackness after Grace had gone that she’d considered ending it all. She didn’t tell him that it had taken finding herself in bed with Clint O’Gowan and no idea how she got there to make her wake up and smell some very strong coffee of her own.