Comfort and Joy (20 page)

‘The girls said you were bathing the children,’ the text says. It’s from Julian, my former stepfather. ‘So doing this the
modern way to wish you all a very happy Christmas. Love to all, J x.’

He could have called back later. He could have left a voicemail. He could have rung earlier, to be honest, if he wanted to
talk to me.

It’s when you stop needing each other that it all goes wrong.

We turn the lights out for the Christmas pudding. Everyone is gathered around the kitchen tables. I’ve asked Sam to light
the pudding, because that’s what we’ve always done. He comes
through holding it aloft, burning on a white plate, to awed gasps from the smaller children. The blue flames flicker in the
darkness, lighting up the faces of my babies, my friends, my family. Here we all are. Will we all be here next year, and will
it be the same? Will we all still be together? I say a quick prayer in my head – ‘to health, to love, thank you God, amen’
– and blow out the flame.

Terrible, terrible mistake. Fatal error. Monstrously bad call. We’re at the airport.
The airport
. On Christmas Eve. Whose brain-bleedingly moronic idea was this, then? Oh, that’s right. Mine. My idea. It came from me,
who loathes flying and whose only motto in life is ‘We spend Christmas at home.’ Cherry on the cake: it’s just coming up for
6 a.m. We got up before 3 a.m. You can imagine the levels of good humour. Jack and Charlie are slumped over a trolley, their
faces grey, moaning about wanting breakfast and having a half-hearted argument about thin versus fat chips. Maisy is in my
arms, which is breaking my back. Her legs are dangling down by my knees: we must look absurd. She’s far too big (and long)
to be carried, but she was so overexcited about our trip that what with falling asleep late and getting up inhumanly early,
she’s only had a couple of hours’ sleep. She’s got the mood to match. I don’t know where her father is – he’s supposed to
be meeting us here, in the hideous, unforgiving neon lighting by Counter B6 (like a vitamin), but there’s no sign of him.
I push our two trolleys forward and somehow manage to bang myself on the shins. What I would really like to do at this stage
is lie down on the floor and have a snooze, and maybe a little cry.

It all seemed like such a good idea. I was at the hairdresser’s last month leafing through the kinds of magazines I never
buy any more. It was late November and it had, by that point, been raining solidly for nine days: proper, award-winningly
miserable English weather, without even one crisp, cold-but-sunny morning to atone. In the right mood, I can totally work
with torrential rain and it being dark at half past three: I embrace fires and endless cups of tea and blankets on the sofa
and making cakes, and I quite like it. But it was still term time, our car was at the garage waiting for a part that seemed
to elude capture, and walking Maisy to and from school in the deluge before going to buy food in the deluge before going about
my normal business in the deluge began to get me down. The boys were like sun-starved plants longing for photosynthesis, setting
off for their own schools in inadequate rainwear – they really needed to be wearing wetsuits and rubber balaclavas – and coming
home looking like drowned rats every afternoon. We all got colds, so the soundtrack to all of this was sneezing and honking
and coughing, with the odd up-at-2-a.m.-to-administer-Calpol-and-Tixylix-to-Maisy thing thrown in. Our house was awash with
tissues, which I kept forgetting to remove from pockets before doing the laundry, with the result that everyone’s clothes
had a light and unshiftable sprinkling of white fluff on them.

We were weary, it is fair to say. The mood was bleak. My own mood wasn’t helped by the knowledge that Kate kept trying to
show me various bits of paperwork that had been sent through to her following the death, nine months ago, of my biological
father, Felix. I didn’t ever want to run across a field and into his arms, but it’s a bit odd suddenly losing the possibility
of access to half your DNA – to say nothing of suddenly being half orphaned. I kept batting her off, with her documents and
her forms that needed signing: if I thought about it too hard it slightly melted my brain.

Jack started it: we were having breakfast one morning, watching the miserable torrents of rain outside – it was so bad that
I was contemplating letting them off school on compassionate grounds, just so their poor bones could get a chance to dry out
– when he said, ‘You know what would be really nice?
To go somewhere a bit warm for Christmas. Not, like, somewhere flash – just somewhere it isn’t raining. Do you think we could,
Mum? Please.’

I said I understood the impulse, but that Christmas was sacrosanct. ‘We always have it at home,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, ‘but that’s mostly for us, isn’t it? The thing is, Mum, we get it. The whole trad Christmas thing. It’s
really nice. We’ll always remember it. We can do it again next year. But, just once. Somewhere warm.’

‘Please Mum,’ said Jack again.

‘Christmas
in the sunshine
? In T-shirts?’ said Maisy, just before she sneezed. ‘That would be so, so cool.’

I said I was very sorry and repeated my mantra, that Christmas happened at home, like it always happened and like it would
keep happening until the end of time. Then Maisy and I swam to school.

Anyway. So there I was in the hairdresser’s a week later, having my roots done. The weather hadn’t improved. There was a glossy
travel magazine in my lap. And there it was: Marrakesh. Specifically, an article about a lovely-looking, newly done-up big
old villa, a riad in the medina – the old town – with a little courtyard pool and orange trees in big terracotta pots. I love
Morocco. Sam and I went there on honeymoon, as it happens. I fell into a kind of daydream for a while, and then I sat up straight
and read the article. The house sounded divine and was alluringly photogenic. The flights only took three and a half hours.
But then, most incredibly of all, the price for a week’s rental was not nearly as astronomical as the pictures of the house
suggested: if you split it by the number of people it could accommodate, it was actually affordable. I photographed the letting
agency’s number with my phone and when I got home an hour or so later, I called them, on impulse. I had a feeling. And my
feeling was right: the house was available from Christmas Eve, for
seven nights: they’d had a cancellation that very morning. I barely even thought about it: I booked it. It felt like fate.
And then I rang round my relatives and quickly booked a bunch of the cheapest flights I could find, which, despite the dates,
were very cheap indeed – I don’t suppose that many people go and spend Christmas in a Muslim country. And then I stared into
space for ten minutes, gasping at my own audacity. I’d broken all my Christmas rules in the space of fifteen minutes.

And so here we are. It’s going to be great – of course it is. I am the boss of Christmas and I decree that it shall be so.
But first we have to get there. I wonder if it’s too early to take my sedative. I
really
hate flying – not so much the bobbing along in the sky bit as the acute claustrophobia, the massed, helpless humanity hurtling
about sealed inside a metal tube.

Everyone seems to arrive at the same time. There’s Sam, looking bleary-eyed, accompanied by Pat, who is wearing a comedy-enormous
sombrero and practically trotting with excitement on her size-four feet: the general effect is ‘jaunty donkey’. ‘This is great,’
she says, kissing me and Maisy and waving to the boys, who are still leaning comatose on their own trolley, bickering weakly.
‘Is this not great? This is great. Morocco! Africa!’

‘I like your hat, Pat. Yes, it’s going to be great,’ I say, giving her a hug. ‘Good Lord, is all this luggage yours?’

‘Yes,’ says Pat. ‘I’m not keen on that foreign food, so I just brought along a few bits and pieces from home. Couple of wee
pies. And toilet paper. Plenty of that. They have those toilets where you squat down and
pigs are waiting underneath to eat your business
.’

‘I’ve tried telling her,’ laughs Sam. ‘She won’t listen. And she’s brought an unbelievable number of presents,’ he adds, kissing
my cheek and taking Maisy off me. ‘Hello, my lovely girl,’ he says to her.

‘Hi,’ I say. This is possibly the most ancient joke in the world,
but it makes me laugh like a simpleton every time. I also like saying ‘Thanks’ when the three of us are in a room and Sam
says ‘I love you’ to Maisy.

Sam rolls his eyes. ‘The old ones are the best. Hi, Clara. I see you’re not doing too badly on the luggage front either.’

‘A mere five suitcases,’ I say. ‘Nearly one for each day of the week. Mostly presents and, um, Christmas stuff.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t pack a tree and baubles. I can’t believe you organized this,’ Sam says. ‘I’d have bet money on you
never, ever spending Christmas anywhere other than at home.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what came over me. But I’m so pleased everyone else liked the idea. And that they could all
come.’

‘Where’s Robert?’

‘Meeting us there. He managed to get a direct flight.’

‘Yoohoo!’ yells somebody. ‘YOOHOO, Clara, Sam, Maisy, Pat, Jack and Charlie!’ The other people in the queue turn round to
stare at my sister Evie, who is channelling a kind of Talitha Getty vibe with loosely pinned-up hair, a silk kaftan, enormous
hoop earrings and half a ton of kohl in each eye. She is wearing an enormous parka on top and a pair of green woollen mittens
on her hands. ‘Pat! Your hat! The beauty!’

‘Just a wee sombrero,’ Pat says shyly but looking very pleased. ‘For my holidays, like.’

‘I’m absolutely mad about it,’ says Evie. ‘Hello, everybody. Merry Christmas Eve. Hello, people in the queue staring at me.
Merry Christmas Eve to you too, guys.’

Flo, Ed and the twins are next. The twins are dressed as princesses under their bulky coats; Ava is wearing a crown and Grace
is waving a sceptre around with some force. Maisy perks up at the sight of them and all three clamber onto one of my trolleys,
installing themselves among the suitcases.

‘My children are hell,’ Flo says. ‘They literally haven’t slept. They wouldn’t have breakfast. They insisted on coming in
costume. They’re like crazed beasts. I wish we could put them in a suitcase. I’d cut holes in it first so they could breathe,
like when you carry guinea-pigs home from the pet shop. Otherwise they’d suffocate, which would be awful. Also, we brought
too much luggage. It’s mostly gifts. We’re going to have to pay a massive surplus charge.’

‘I think we all are,’ I say. ‘And take some deep breaths. Where’s Kate?’

The queue for the check-in provides me with my answer, now turning almost as one in the direction of the Departures entrance.
Ah yes, here’s Mummy. She is wearing her floor-length fur coat (it was Granny’s, I found out last year – not that this appeases
anyone), enormous dark glasses and has tied her hair up in an Hermès scarf. She literally cuts a swathe – people actually
move out of the way – as she approaches Counter B6. Kate’s trolley is piled high with two reasonably normal suitcases and
– good grief – two trunks, each one gigantic, as though she were a missionary moving to the Congo. Max, her husband, is a
reverent five feet behind, smiling to himself, which is pretty much what he does: smile to himself and make business deals
on his BlackBerry.

‘Hello, Clara!’ Kate starts shouting from about forty feet away. ‘Are you going to the gym? What on earth are you wearing?
Leisurewear
, I do believe. Mine eyes. Comfort is not all. Pat – your hat! Beyond divine. Oh dear, look at this monstrous queue.’ She’s
now about thirty feet away but feels no apparent need to lower her voice. ‘I absolutely
loathe
airports, do you? Ought to be poetic – romance of air travel and all that – but, no. Rather reminds me of the thing someone
said about Dunkirk, or do I mean the Somme? “My dear, the people! The noise!” That’s how I feel. Hello, Sam. Clara says you’ve
stopped
being peculiar to her – marvellous news. Hello, grandchildren. Boys! Alertness! Posture! If I can manage it, being as I am
an antique, anyone can.’ True to her word if not to her passport, Kate is now officially sixty-five, five years older than
her real age, for vanity purposes.

‘Yo, Nan,’ says Charlie, because he knows it annoys her.

‘Kate, short for Katharine,’ bellows Kate. ‘Not Nan, short for Banana.’

‘Wotcha, Kate,’ says Jack.

The people in the queue stare at Kate. She waves benignly back at them, like the ruler of a small principality surveying her
dear serfs.

‘I’m approaching!’ she shouts. ‘Coming through.
En départ pour le Maroc
. Make way.’ I sometimes wonder whether Kate has a secret cocaine habit. How else to explain being this full-on at six in
the morning?

‘Everyone’s staring at us,’ observes Maisy, not inaccurately. I barely notice any more. Every time we’re together in a public
place, we basically become the floor show. You get used to it after a while.

‘I know, darling,’ I say. ‘We’re making rather a lot of noise, I think.’

‘Like a circus,’ Maisy says, ‘and we’re the seals.’

‘Yes, a bit like that. No, darling, don’t honk. It doesn’t help. Look, here comes Cassie.’

Jake and Tamsin – now married – are headed towards us, with their own inevitably gigantic pile of luggage. Jake is wearing
a cowboy hat at a rakish angle; it’s made out of some kind of hide. Though I’m still occasionally startled by Jake’s sartorial
choices, and though I wouldn’t fancy any of his sex-chat (brrr), I have revised my opinion of him. Tamsin has never been happier,
and he’s turned out to be an unexpectedly wonderful stepfather to Cassie, who took her time thawing but
who now appears delighted with the first father she’s ever had, really. When he made a speech at their wedding, Jake devoted
ten minutes to saying what a great little girl Cassie was, and how much he loved her, and how he might have cocked up with
his own children but wasn’t planning on making that mistake again. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Cassie smiles nearly
all the time now. All three of them do. Maybe that’s the trick: marry grandpas. Also, he is the stepdad who can’t run away,
because he’s too old. Bonus.