The Only Boy For Me (32 page)

Charlie is writing last-minute instructions to Father Christmas. He’s decided he’s going to be a spy when he grows up, and I now have to preface every request with the words ‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it’. He wants a special wristwatch that can fire bullets, and a pen that squirts poison ink, but I’ve told him Father Christmas doesn’t bring presents that you can kill people with, unless
you count roller-skates. I’m getting fed up with this spy business. It was bloody annoying in Safeway’s yesterday: ‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get some Flora and put it in the trolley.’ I announce his new mission, whether he chooses to accept it or not, is to go to bed and get to sleep as fast as possible or Father Christmas won’t come at all. I wrap presents like a demented person, lose the scissors and feel sure I’ve wrapped them up but can’t face opening all the parcels, so end up using nail scissors instead which takes ages. I just hope Charlie doesn’t get the real scissors in one of his parcels, or he’ll insist on keeping them and cutting things up.

I get rather drunk by mistake, since I have a swig of wine each time I wrap a present. As a result I can’t really walk when I try to stand up and stagger around piling up presents on the sofa and under the tree. Getting upstairs with Charlie’s stocking proves very tricky, but I finally manage it and collapse into bed. What seems like minutes later I’m woken up by Charlie yelling, ‘He’s been, Mummy, he’s been,’ and playing a small trumpet, which I do not remember buying. I certainly will never buy one again, except for children whose parents I hate. My bed is soon full of pieces of paper, Charlie is eating chocolate coins and playing his trumpet with all his might, and it takes all my negotiating skills to get him to agree to stay in bed for another hour and play with small stocking toys. I hide the trumpet under my pillow. Apart from the trumpet I also wish I hadn’t bought a balloon shaped like a chicken which deflates with a rude noise, a small flexible torch that can shine right in your ear, and a book of rude poems.

Finally I can stand it no longer and we get up. Charlie finds the huge pile of presents downstairs and goes into a frenzy of ripping up wrapping paper and screaming with
delight. He wants to start playing his new board game, build his new Lego spaceship and watch his new video simultaneously, and refuses to eat any breakfast except chocolate. I start peeling sprouts and Charlie ‘helps’ by chopping up carrots with a small blunt knife, so that each one takes about ten minutes. Then he spends hours feeding all the peelings to Buzz and Woody for their Christmas lunch. We’ve put tinsel on their hutch, and they look very festive. The cavalry arrive in the form of Mum and Dad. Dad takes Charlie off to do Lego, and Mum finally stops laughing at the size of the turkey and works out how long it will take to cook the bloody thing. She says it will have to ‘rest’ for half an hour after being cooked so there’s space in the oven for the potatoes. I quite fancy the idea of half an hour’s rest, preferably right now, but Mum rather pointedly remarks that parsnips do not peel themselves, and could she please have a sherry.

Auntie Joan and Uncle Bob turn up. I’m not entirely clear why Auntie Joan thought I would like an apron with ‘Cooks Do It Standing Up’ written on it, but I thank her all the same. Mum and Dad seem pleased with their present from Charlie: a rather flat nest with baby birds in it, made out of modelling clay which we baked in the oven. I think I might have got the temperature wrong because it took days to go solid. The baby birds are very comic, especially as Charlie insisted on painting them bright orange. Auntie Joan has knitted a jumper for Charlie, which is about six sizes too big and has a Postman Pat motif on the front. Charlie looks horrified but thanks her nicely, and we have a whispered conversation in the kitchen where I promise he will never ever have to wear it, ever.

Lunch is finally ready at teatime, but everyone declares the food delicious and Auntie Joan begins a long story,
which she tells us every year, about the time she had ten people to Christmas lunch and there was a power cut. Charlie gets very excited about the crackers, and insists everyone wears paper hats. He also thinks the jokes are excellent. He appropriates the presents from all the crackers, and the wheels fall off the small plastic car he’s liberated from Uncle Bob.

‘Mummy, these crackers are a swiss. My car just broke for no reason.’

‘Well, never mind, darling, eat your lunch.’

‘Yes, but it’s a swiss, Mummy. You should go back to the shop and get your money back.’

‘It’s not a swiss, Charlie, it’s a swizz.’

‘No it’s not. James says it and it’s swiss.’

Dad helpfully joins in and says he think swiss is the perfect word for something that looks exciting but turns out to be very boring, like fondue. Charlie says he wants fondue, and what is it? Auntie Joan says she loves Switzerland and can’t imagine what Dad means. Uncle Bob says he hates Switzerland and is not going again, ever, and that’s final. It looks like a heated discussion is imminent so I decide to open the bottle of champagne which Uncle Bob brought. This is an excellent diversionary tactic, as everyone has to put their heads under the table in case I hit them with the cork. I’ve never quite mastered the technique of opening champagne without the cork ricocheting around the room, and everyone knows this.

Calm is restored, and lunch continues. I’ve cooked and peeled chestnuts to chop up and put in with the sprouts. It took bloody hours, and just as I finished Mum helpfully pointed out that you can buy them ready-chopped. Charlie peers at his sprouts with suspicion and begins picking out all the nuts, and I tell him he’s being silly. It seems daft to
make such a fuss about this, but I end up getting more and more annoyed, and Mum starts to laugh. Dad explains that I once did something similar with almonds in a trifle, and it’s very nice to see Charlie carrying on the family tradition of annoying your mother at mealtimes. I gradually calm down, although setting fire to the Christmas pudding proves harder than I thought, and in the end I use so much brandy it looks like the flames will never go out. I eat too much brandy butter and feel sick, but everyone else seems happy and Charlie finds a pound coin in his pudding and is thrilled.

Finally lunch is finished. There is intense lobbying from Charlie for us all to play Snap, but we hold firm and then Lizzie and Matt arrive. They’ve been to Matt’s parents for lunch: not a huge success as Matt’s grandmother is not getting any better and hardly recognises anybody now. This time she decided Matt was a burglar and kept throwing brazil nuts at him. More presents are exchanged, and they’ve brought Charlie a sword that extends to about ten foot long so we all have to keep ducking. It also makes a piercing whistling noise. Lizzie apologises but says Matt was adamant Charlie would adore it. I point out to Matt that if he doesn’t find a way to stop the noise he will have his tea in the garden, with Charlie and his new sword. Matt enters into long negotiations with Charlie, and I escape to the kitchen to prepare tea.

The Christmas cake is greeted with much hilarity because Charlie and I decorated it ourselves. I still think my reindeer were very sweet. Charlie insists we have candles, because then it will be like a proper party. Leila rings up and wishes us all Happy Christmas; the Flying Dutchman has flown home to Amsterdam for the holidays so she’s staying with friends in a castle in Scotland. She says this sounds a lot
more glamorous than it really is, and it’s absolutely freezing and she has to wear three pairs of socks and a woolly hat in bed, but apart from that she’s having a brilliant time.

Kate also rings, but she’s not having such a brilliant time. Lunch was a disaster as her mother insisted that the children should be forced to eat sprouts, which they both hate, and should not be allowed to leave the table until they’d eaten everything on their plates. Kate finally cracked and told her she was a fascist, and took the children off to watch television. Her mother is still sulking, and Kate has been reduced to sucking out the contents of liqueur chocolates.

With a slight shock I realise that I haven’t thought about Mack at all today. I’ve had a lovely time, and feel very happy with life, even without Mack in it. I hope he’s enjoying himself – unless he’s with a new woman in which case I hope it’s a nightmare. I still want it to be him every time the phone rings, and haven’t completely overcome my new-found Whitney habit, nor can I listen to Frank Sinatra, especially ‘New York, New York’. But there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. Sort of.

Mum and Dad are staying the night, and are downstairs making supper while I try to get Charlie to go to sleep.

‘I think Nana and Grandad really loved my nest, don’t you, Mummy?’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘And do you really love your slippers?’

‘Oh yes, they’re very lovely.’

Actually this is a downright lie. They’re revolting and I can’t think what possessed Mum to go for gigantic bunny-rabbit slippers in white fleecy material with tartan-ribbon bows on the ears.

‘Yes, I did very clever choosing, didn’t I? Nana helped a bit, but I saw them first.’

‘Yes, darling, now snuggle down and go to sleep. It’s very late.’

‘Mummy, I love turkey, don’t you? Can we have it tomorrow as well?’

‘Yes, Charlie, and the next day too probably.’

‘Brilliant. I love you, Mummy. To infinity. How much do you love me?’

‘To infinity and beyond.’

‘Yes, to infinity and beyond. Now you have to say “And back again”.’

‘Alright, darling. And back again. Twice. Now shut up and go to sleep.’

Gil McNeil is a Consultant at Brunswick Arts International and works with Sarah Brown on Piggybank Kids, a non-profit venture which organises a range of voluntary projects for charities, to support their fundraising efforts. She lives in Kent with her son.

‘A joy: a laugh-out-loud account of Annie Baker’s life and
loves … a heartbreaking, funny look at parenting
and passion’
Elle

Life just keeps getting more complicated for Annie Baker. Her sister Lizzie’s pregnant and wants Annie to be her birth-partner, while Kate from the village has somehow ended up having an affair with her own ex-husband. As for the men in Annie’s own life, it just gets worse. Her seven-year-old son Charlie is now officially Pagan, and desperate for a pet pheasant. Boss Barney’s taken up TV commercials involving stunts that aren’t exactly safe. Then there’s Uncle Monty to keep an eye on, eighty-three and threatening the Meals on Wheels lady with a shotgun. And then Mark comes back from New York, just when Annie was beginning to think she might be able to cope without him …

‘A funny and touching novel. I wish I’d written it’ Arabella Weir

Alice Mayhew, part-time architect and full-time mother to Alfie, is to gardening what Alan Titchmarsh is to deep-sea fishing. So finding she’s been volunteered to design a new garden for the village comes as a bit of a shock, because apart from anything else she’s far too busy trying to convince Alfie that wearing green trousers doesn’t make you Peter Pan, and that flying is best left to experts. Molly O’Brien is finding it hard enough coping with Lily (aged four and likes washing-up) and Matt (aged thirty-two and doesn’t) before she discovers she’s pregnant. And then there’s Lola Barker, who causes havoc wherever she goes, and brings a whole new meaning to ‘high-maintenance’.

Divas Don’t Knit

‘Warm and wonderful’
Cosmopolitan

Jo Mackenzie, recently widowed, with two young sons and a perilous bank balance, leaves London to take over her grand-mother’s wool shop in the Kentish seaside town of Broadgate Bay. Marmalade mohair instead of peach four-ply, an A-list actress and a Stitch and Bitch group addicted to cake all help, but it’s not going to be easy. Very big dogs, small-town intrigue, packed lunches and the joys of knitting, not to mention romance, loom large in this funny and uplifting novel.

Needles and Pearls

The sequel to the bestselling
Divas Don’t Knit

A year after her husband’s death, Jo Mackenzie is finally starting to get the hang of being a single parent. The boys are thriving in their new seaside home, the wool shop is starting to do well and despite two weddings, an in-school knitting project and Trevor the Wonder Dog coming to stay, she’s just about keeping her head above water. But boys, babies and best friends certainly make life a lot more interesting. Can Jo cope when things get really complicated? Because if knitting truly does keep you sane when your life starts to unravel then it looks like Jo is going to need much bigger needles …

First published in Great Britain 2001
Copyright © Gil McNeil 2001

This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The right of Gil McNeil to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

Bloomsbury Publishing   London   New York   Berlin   Sydney

49–51 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781408825921

www.bloomsbury.com/gilmcneil

Visit
www.bloomsbury.com
to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can
sign up for
newsletters
to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers