The Little Christmas Kitchen (20 page)

By the end of breakfast, Hugo was going to fix Margery’s living room light and email her re: golfing breaks, Stella had apologetically invited them all up for a cup of tea, and Margery had said that she could feed Stella’s cat if she ever went away and if she made sure that there was enough food because she didn’t want to have to go out and buy any. They’d consumed the stacks of pancakes Maddy had made and Hugo left saying that he’d be more than happy to pop round again if she ever had surplus.

The whole experience made her feel like she’d recaptured her
joie de vivre
, so by the time she was getting ready for her shift Maddy was feeling good again. Nothing at
Big Mack’s
could bring her down.

‘Maddy you’re on
Christmas Spirit
duty!’ Mack shouted from across the other side of the bar where he was standing on a stool taping some tinsel to the ceiling, his belly visible where his shirt had untucked. It was a big night for them he’d said as he’d gathered the staff for an impromptu meeting. It was office party night.

Betty had rolled her eyes and sloped outside for a fag, the others started to prep the bar in preparation of the upcoming rush. Maddy had tried to stay out of everyone’s way and make herself look busy without having to make eye contact with anyone.

Walter was already in situ – looked like he’d been propping up the bar all afternoon. He’d given her a sidelong grin as she’d walked in but otherwise she’d ignored him. Today he was dressed in a white suit, white shirt and black tie. His shoes, that rested on the brass foot-rail running around the bottom of the bar, seemed shined especially.

‘Madeline, darling, I have dressed up as an apology for my behaviour yesterday.’ he said, leaning over the bar to where she was looking dubiously at the bottle of
Christmas Spirit
. ‘I wanted to make an effort so that you might forgive me.’

‘Ok, Walter.’ Maddy shrugged without looking at him, then walked away. But when she heard him laugh she couldn’t resist the urge to glance back over her shoulder, narrow-eyed, to show him that she wasn’t impressed.

‘Oh go on, forgive me. I like you. I like this small-town thing you have going on. It brings me endless amusement. Please. Don’t hate me.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I used to love your books. I’m so disappointed.’

Walter put his hand over his heart and feigned devastation as Mack jumped down from his stool and, reaching into the box next to him, hurled something in Maddy’s direction.

‘New outfits tonight guys. Don’t worry Maddy, nothing too revealing!’ he joked just as Betty was coming back in and Maddy saw her lips twitch in amusement. ‘But something just to liven it up a little in here, help get the cash flowing.’

Maddy watched as the guy whose name she still couldn’t remember tore open the plastic bag Mack had thrown his way and pulled out a sleeveless red and white checked cowboy shirt and matching neckerchief.

‘What the hell is this?’ he said, holding it up to Mack.

‘It was the most Christmassy thing they had that wasn’t an elf costume. You should be thankful.’ Mack snorted a laugh and went back to hanging more tinsel.

Maddy gingerly unstuck the plastic flap on her bag and tipped out the contents. A cherry red boob tube with see-through plastic straps, neckerchief the same as the boys and an alice band with two gold stars that wobbled on springs. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t exactly what she wanted to stand behind the bar wearing as she served toxic liquor to drunken office parties.

‘I think you’ll look marvellous.’ said Walter, lifting his drink in a salute to the outfit.

‘Up, up, up.’ they were all chanting. Betty took a swig of tequila and then hoisted herself up onto the bar top where she tipped the two bottles she held upside down, splashing sambuca and tequila into the mouths of the eager punters, wetting their faces, soaking their shirts and stinging their eyes.

Maddy looked on dubiously and, deciding that the top of the bar wasn’t the place for her, backed away and snuck out to do a circuit of the room with the
Christmas Spirit
bottle. Squidging through the mass of sweaty bodies, she pushed her way through the throng, shouting over the music to ask if anyone wanted a free shot.

‘Just pour the bloody stuff.’ Mack yelled from where he was cajoling a group of men in suits to down the last of their Taittinger and get in another magnum.

As Maddy felt herself being crushed and squeezed, two blokes behind her decided that the stars on her headband were a source of endless amusement. As they flicked them back and forth with their fingers she pictured the London life that she’d imagined; the darkened stage of Manhattans, rousing applause, cocktails after work with a host of new friends, lunch in some cool cafe as she read a paperback and sipped an espresso, strutting up Regent Street with armfuls of Christmas shopping. Trying to steer herself away from the pair wobbling her stars in every direction, holding the bottle of
Christmas Spirit
aloft and pouring it haphazardly into any glass she could find, she wondered if Walter was right. This,
Big Mack’s
, was the dream.

Her feet slipped on the damp floor, elbows backed into her and knocked the bottle, soaking her boob tube in
Christmas Spirit
, the game to flick the stars on her head caught on with nearly everyone she passed. What was she going to tell her mum? What was she going to say when she sloped home in the new year? Someone pulled her hairband, making half of her ponytail fall loose. Not having a hand free to retie it, she wedged the bottle between her knees and attempted to plait it back up, but as she tried, she suddenly found herself lifted off the ground, three maybe four pairs of hands holding her tightly aloft. Looking down she saw the heads of the men in suits with the champagne. Out the corner of her eye she could see Mack, who winked and raised his glass in her direction, and as they crowd-surfed her forward Maddy was deposited on top of the bar to the cheers and delight of the already hammered punters.

‘Oh god.’ she said, her feet tripping on the beer taps.

‘Enjoy it.’ She heard Walter shout from the end of the bar. ‘You’re only young once.’ He laughed.

Maddy glanced over to where he was giving her a double thumbs up. Below her was a sea of open mouths like fish waiting for the
Christmas Spirit
to cascade over them. The girls in corsets were up on the stage, mouthing, she realised, to a booming
Santa Baby
. A couple in the corner were snogging – an office party cliche. One girl was sobbing in a booth, her legs skewed like Bambi and her tights laddered. A tall man in a suit the colour of an aubergine was yanking down the tinsel and wrapping it round his neck like a shimmering scarf. The barman, whose name she didn’t remember, was lighting sambuca in his mouth. Mack was spraying the room with a shaken magnum of champagne. And as she watched from up high, Maddy decided maybe she should just relax. Relax and presume that things would work in the end. Relax and notch this all up to experience. Because this was the dream, in a fashion. This was her, living her life. Egged on by the crowd, she tipped the
Christmas Spirit
bottle up and poured a shot into her mouth, the clear liquid dribbling down her chin making her shudder and shut her eyes and feel it burning up her nose. She could hear Walter cheer as she spluttered a laugh.

‘Happy Christmas, everyone.’ she shouted above the noise, the heat of the liquor fizzing through her, the drunken baying deafening, the frenzy as she poured the liquid down onto the laughing, whooping crowds of office workers who got crazy drunk together once a year, making her feel like she ruled the world.

‘Maddy?’

She heard the voice as the music lulled and glancing down almost fell off the bar. It was Walter’s hand who steadied her as she looked at the person who’d said her name, and the woman behind him who watched her with a calm, feline gaze.

‘Daddy?’

CHAPTER 25

ELLA

‘You need to be honest with me.’ Sophie was sitting at the big kitchen table, her hands cradled round a mug of thick, gloopy hot chocolate.

‘You need to be honest with
me
.’ Ella snapped back.

Her mum shut her eyes and shook her head. ‘This won’t get us anywhere.’

Ella shrugged.

Behind them the fire crackled and through the window she could see the rain drops merging together in rivulets down the window.

‘How about I tell you how I remember it?’ Her mum ran a hand through her hair, holding it away from her face.

Ella sat back, folded her arms across her chest and said, ‘I’m all ears.’

Before facing her mum she’d gone up to her room and changed. Peeling off her soaking clothes she’d donned an outfit that couldn’t fail to make her feel good, superior. One that she didn’t need the polaroid for because it was just a pant suit, but a soft grey Stella McCartney one with a drop waist and nipped in ankles, the material a watery silk that rippled when she walked. The sleeves long over her hands. In it she felt like she ruled the world.

Her mum was wearing an old jumper covered in car hairs with a frayed section where she’d obviously burnt it on the hob.

‘When your father and I split up, it stood to reason that Maddy stayed with me. She was so young and needed a primary caregiver.’

Ella, who had intended to be like her ferocious work self during this chat, immediately found herself unable to meet her mum’s eyes and instead watched Sophie’s slipper as it bobbed back and forth with the movement of her foot.

‘And then there was you.’ Her mum ran her tongue along her bottom lip. ‘You were so bright and clever it seemed unfair for us to tell you what to do. We talked to a lot of people and the advice we got was that you were old enough to make the decision yourself. We wanted to give you the choice.’

Ella thought how she hadn’t felt old at all. She had been on the cusp of teenage hood. Desperately trying to ignore the fact her mum was crying all the time in her bedroom, and obsessed with Mark from Take That, the frizziness of her hair, the fact she hadn’t snogged anyone and that someone at school had laughed at her thighs in her athletic shorts so she’d spent the whole summer sweating in tracksuit bottoms.

She had this flash of memory of her mum sitting on her bed the night before the meeting with her dad saying,
It’ll be your choice
.

This is so unfair
.

Ella, the whole point is that it isn’t unfair
.

Do you want me to choose you?

I can’t answer that
.

Two nights before that her mum had banned her from going to a party because there wouldn’t be any parents there supervising. She’d phoned her dad who had said that it would be ok. Ella’s mum had phoned her dad. After that he’d said it wasn’t ok. Ella had told her mum she hated her. The week before when Ella had seen that her mum was making
stifado
for dinner she’d moaned,
Not that again
, and her mum had put her portion in the bin. A couple of months before when she’d asked to get her ears pierced her mum had said,
Not till you’re sixteen
. So she’d gone with her dad to get them done and her mum had made her take the studs out when she got home while Ella sulked and grumbled and had her allowance stopped. It was teenage stuff. Angst. Strops. Rebellions, minor ones in Ella’s case, but rebellions all the same. Enough bricks to start building a wall.

And then when she’d been sitting there in the neutral cafe round the corner, faced with the two of them, her mum and dad, hands cradling an over-stewed cup of English breakfast tea she had been about to speak, to make her choice, when her mum had been distracted by something Maddy had said. Maddy who just clung on to her and whined and cried and needed attention. Maddy who didn’t have to choose. And just at the moment when Ella felt that just maybe her mum should have been looking at her, she placated Maddy instead. Whispered something and gave her a hug.

And so Ella said,
Dad
.

A decision made in one impetuous, stubborn moment. That she would go with the father that she loved more than anything but who didn’t live any kind of life for a child. The man who sat up a bit straighter when she said it and had to hide a brief moment of confusion. She would go with the man who worked such long hours she would have to weekly board. Who would take her to the golf club on weekends where she would sip Appletiser through a straw and watch as he chatted up investors.

As they sat opposite each other now in the taverna kitchen her mum leant forward, rested her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands and said. ‘You chose him, Ella.’

‘Yes but I didn’t mean it.’ Ella snapped before she had a chance to think of something more in keeping with her current stance of cool and demure.

Sophie blew out a breath. ‘Well how was I supposed to know that?’

‘Because you were my mum!’

‘You said you loved it. You said you loved that school. That’s so unfair. You loved your dad. Ella, you always wanted to go back whenever you were here.’

‘Well that’s hardly surprising.’

Her mum looked confused.

‘Because it was horrible here. You and Maddy were so close and I didn’t fit any more. I was the outsider.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Sophie shook her head then pushed herself up to go over to the sideboard and pick up a bottle of wine. ‘Red?’ she asked and Ella nodded, as if this was an interlude back to normal, present day chat.

‘It
was
like that. It was like that for me.’ Ella said as her mum put a wine glass down next to the cup of half-drunk hot chocolate. ‘You lived together, of course you had your own ways of doing things, but they were so different to mine. You didn’t even watch Neighbours, you watched Blue Peter.’

Her mum snorted a laugh. Ella found herself having to smile at how ridiculous it sounded but then said, ‘Don’t laugh. It’s true. I’d come here and it felt like I was on holiday.’

‘You were on holiday.’

‘No.’ Ella shook her head. ‘I was meant to be at home. It was meant to be home.’

Her mum ran her finger down the side of the wine glass, catching a drip, and then took a sip without taking her eyes off Ella.