Comfort and Joy (29 page)

‘Pleasure,’ says Kate. ‘You seemed to be going a little bit doolally on the families front. I thought you might find it grounding.’

‘That’s gorgeous. Lovely photies. But now my turn,’ says Pat. ‘Open mine.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, ‘but you all open some too. I don’t want to be the only grown-up who’s opening presents.’

Pat’s present to me, wrapped in paper featuring bare-buttocked, mooning Santas, is a white porcelain mug lavishly embellished
with gold paint around the rim and handle.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘Turn it round,’ Pat says. ‘There’s writing on it.’

I turn the mug round.
World’s Best Daughter-in-Law
, it says, in curlicued writing.

‘Oh, Pat. I don’t know what to say. That’s so nice. It’s so nice of you. So incredibly nice that I …’ It’s useless: my eyes
have filled with tears.

‘Have a tissue,’ says Pat, pulling one out of the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘You don’t have to thank me. It’s a pleasure, love.
And I mean it,’ she adds, grinning at me. ‘So I do.’

I hug her very vigorously and get up for a bit to distribute the usual piles of presents to everybody else and also, to be
honest, to take a few surreptitious deep breaths. When I sit down again, my own presents keep coming. There’s a handwritten
invitation from Robert, on thick cream-coloured card, asking me to be his companion on a press trip to Zanzibar, which he
knows I’ve wanted to go to since I was twenty.

‘This is fantastic,’ I tell him. ‘Are you sure?’

‘No one I’d rather go with.’ He smiles. ‘You have to swear to keep your hands off me, though. No funny business, Clara.’

‘Challenging. I can’t promise I’ll manage to control myself …’ I say.

‘Who could?’ says Robert.

‘… but I’ll try my hardest.’

‘Here,’ says Evie, shoving a parcel into my hand. ‘I got you other stuff, but this is my best present to you.’

‘It’s Christmas Hamster!’ I say, as soon as I’ve torn off the first inch of paper. ‘Christmas Hamster! He was your favourite
thing in the whole world!’

‘You taught me how to knit, when we were little. I thought you’d like him. I’m quite cut up about losing him again so soon,’
she says. ‘But I can come and see him every year at your house, at the Christmi. So it’s okay.’

The next hour goes on in this vein: meaningful present after
meaningful present. Sam gives me a picture made out of shells he and Maisy have gathered on the beach in Ireland. ‘We’ve been
making it for weeks,’ he says. ‘I hope you like it. Sorry about the glue smears.’

‘I love it,’ I say truthfully, covering Maisy, who is pink and beaming with pride, in kisses.

‘Rather puts the small leather goods into perspective,’ says Kate.

‘Doesn’t it just?’ I go to kiss Sam, and find he kisses me back like a normal person.

We sit there, all together, and wade through our gifts. The champagne is flowing, Jack and Charlie are bickering, the little
girls are squealing at everything they open.

Later, just before lunch, I ask the boys to go and get their laptop and to log into one of their Facebook accounts. This Charlie
does.

‘What are we doing, Mum?’ he asks.

‘We’re seeing if we can find some people,’ I say.

‘Okay – well, what are they called? I need names.’

‘Try looking for Isabel Maddox,’ I say.

‘There are seventeen of them,’ Charlie says a moment later. ‘Look – here they all are.’

‘See if there are any in San Francisco,’ I say.

‘Yep, two.’

‘Let me see.’

It’s obvious immediately: Isabel Maddox, though bearing very little physical resemblance to me, has my ear – my Maddox ear,
with its little pointy bit. She looks nice. She works in television production. She has two children. She lives near a park,
by the look of things.

‘Look up Katherine, also Maddox. Actually, no – that’s quite a common name. Look up Elias Maddox.’

Another minute, and there’s my half-brother. He lives in Mexico City and is a doctor. He has two big dogs. He’s handsome,
actually, Elias. And he has my ear too. So does Jorge, who is a tree surgeon.

‘Do you know who they are?’ I ask the boys. ‘They’re your uncles and aunts.’

‘How … oh, from your real dad,’ says Charlie.

‘Except he wasn’t really your dad,’ says Jack. ‘Julian was more your dad, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He was.’

‘They look okay,’ says Charlie with a shrug. ‘Oh God, Mum – you’re not going to ask them to Christmas next year, are you?’

‘Oh man,’ says Jack. ‘Not
more
of us. We don’t
need
more of us.’

‘Yeah,’ says Charlie. ‘We’re good as we are.’

I could meet them all. It would be so easy. A few messages exchanged on Facebook, a couple of plane tickets … My family: my
blood, my DNA, my genetic inheritance. A whole new sort of life. And a whole new sort of Christmas.

I look over at the seating area. At my mother, my lovely, loopy, fantastic Kate, my force of nature, mad as a bat and brave
as a lion. I look at my technically half-sisters, whom I love in ways I can’t even express. I look at my children, the apples
of my eyes, and at their fathers, their fabulous, funny, talented fathers, whom I’ll never stop loving either, in a different
way. I look at Jake and at Tamsin, my oldest friend, and at little Cassie. I look at my adorable nieces and at my dear brother-in-law.
I look at Pat, who’s not even related to me any more and whom I bitch about in my head and whom I love, and who made me cry
with a mug. I’m so busy looking that at first I don’t notice my phone beeping, and when it beeps again I look down at a text
from the man from the Connaught.

Kate was right. Water
is
thicker than blood. Love is what matters, and love is what I have, and who cares where it comes from?

I close the laptop lid.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Lunchtime.’

THE END

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thanks to my publisher, Juliet Annan, for bearing once again with my unauthorly approach to deadlines. I’m a journalist –
the idea of writing something eighteen months in advance is absurd to me, but I do see that it’s not remotely absurd to publishers,
and I’m very grateful that my dear Mrs Penguin didn’t get her feathers in a flap and peck me to death with her beak while
awaiting delivery of my manuscript.

Thanks to Jenny Lord and Ellie Smith at Penguin, who didn’t peck me to death either.

Thanks, as ever, to the incomparable Georgia Garrett, my agent and beloved friend. (She’s not my friend because she’s my agent
– I hate that ‘how gloriously you love me, person whose job it is to do well by me’. She’s my friend because we’ve known each
other since we were eighteen.)

Thanks to the wonderful Leanne Shapton for making me my favourite book jacket, ever.

Thanks to Patricia McVeigh for help with the Irish.

Thanks to Jenny McIvor for ‘Mr Penis’. That must have been a fun night.

Thanks to my family, blood and extended, for their love and support. Special thanks to the fathers of my children.

And thanks to my mother for being my mother. Any other mother would be the most hideous comedown. Any small talent I may have,
I owe to her.