Tidings of Great Boys (13 page)

“He’d love that,” Lissa said before Carly could answer. “He can play it over and
over
and—”

She giggled as Carly tried to swat her and the blouse stopped her movement. “Hey! I can only lift my arms this high. What’s
up with that?”

“Ladies don’t engage in physical assaults,” I told Carly in severe schoolmarm tones. “Not wearing Worth blouses, anyway.”

“I really do feel like a lady.” Carly turned to the mirror again, fluffing up the lace trim with gentle fingers. “Like a countess,
even.”

“You look like one,” Gillian agreed. “You could even pull off royal. Come on. Back straight. Chin up.”

“No, that’s Shani’s department,” I cracked from behind the camera.

“What, perfect posture?” Shani asked. “I didn’t take deportment classes for nothing, you know.”

“No. Being royal.”

“I’m that already.” She exchanged a smile with Gillian and Lissa, then twinkled at Carly in the mirror. Suddenly I felt left
out of the frame. “I’ve been a princess for four weeks, didn’t you know?”

A second of silence fell, in which I fumbled the camera, nearly dropped it, and in the process switched it off.

Just as well. This announcement needed a person’s complete attention. “What?” I finally managed when the camera was safely
in hand again. “I thought you broke it off with Rashid. Did something happen that I don’t know about?”

She laughed, her eyes crinkling with delight at finally getting one over on me. “Gotcha!”

“You certainly did. Stop messing me about and tell me.”

Another exchange of happy glances. That should have made the penny drop, if nothing else. “It says in the Bible that God’s
children are the heirs to His kingdom, that’s all,” Shani said. “A royal priesthood. So since I came to Christ a month ago,
that makes me a princess in God’s eyes, right?”

Carly turned and smashed her blouse flat giving Shani a hug, and then had to fluff up the lace all over again.

“I guess so.” I sounded as flat as I felt. Was that all? “You really put the wind up my kilt for a second there.”

“Sorry.” She didn’t look sorry. She looked happy. So happy she practically glowed.

I grew up going to the village church with my dad and I knew for a fact that I didn’t look like that. What was going on? “Just
don’t go getting a swelled head over it.”

“Oh, come on, Mac.” Lissa put her arm round my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “We don’t make you uncomfortable talking about
God, do we?”

“Of course not. You’ve been doing it since the moment I met you. Why should anything be different?”

“You know,” Gillian said pensively, watching me, “I don’t think I’ve ever asked you. Are you a believer?”

“I go to church.” And I sat there, thinking about everything from what I was wearing to what we might have for lunch to whether
I could talk Dad into driving us into Edinburgh to stay with Carrie’s cousin Anne. It was a very contemplative time for me.

“But do you believe?”

“Believe what? In God? Of course.”

“In what He can do in your life,” Gillian persisted. “In grace. In Jesus. All that.”

I eyed her the way Dad’s hens do me. Friend or foe? Coming in peace or likely to kick? “Does it matter?”

“To us?” Lissa put in. “Not as far as being friends. But we
are
your friends. So we care about you.”

“Okay. I care about you lot, too. Not seeing the connection.”

“We love you,” Carly said in her sweet way. “So does God. It’s all one.”

“If you’re asking whether I want to be a Christian like you, I’ve been baptized in the Anglican church. Happy now?”

Gillian and Lissa did that conversation-without-words thing again. “Sure,” Gillian said.

And then Dad called up the stairs. “Girls! I think your mothers have beaten breakfast into submission. Care to risk it?”

I’d never been so glad to see cheese omelettes in my life.

A
FTER BREAKFAST, I hid in my room with my computer and the video camera. I knew I was neglecting my duties as hostess, but
now that Mummy was here, maybe I could skive off a bit and no one would notice.

She and Patricia seemed to have connected. All during breakfast they exchanged stories of people and clothes and travels,
with Gabe and Dad doing their best to chip in details. Gillian, as I’ve already said, is quite the globetrotter, so she had
a few stories of her own to tell.

I should have been glad all my houseguests were getting on so well—especially Dad and Mummy, who actually managed to tell
one story together and laugh about it.

Instead, I felt out of sorts and a bit cross. Were my friends judging me because I didn’t make a big production out of religion?
It wasn’t the sort of thing a person talked about in public. Religion and one’s beliefs were private, to be talked over with
the minister, maybe, if you were in trouble and needed spiritual guidance or whatever.

Religion was just sort of
there
for me. Like the steeple of the church above the trees in the distance.
There
. I didn’t understand the kind of belief Gillian had, the kind that popped out in daily conversation like it was normal. And
look at Shani, talking about things she read in the Bible the way you’d say what you had for breakfast.

I didn’t do that. Nobody I knew did that. I didn’t even talk about the experiences I’d had last spring, when my half-brother
came to San Francisco to stalk me. I will admit that there had seemed to be a force at work there that was larger than Carly
and me, who were caught in the thick of it. But it wasn’t something I’d collar the neighbors about and discuss, you know?

The closest I’d seen anyone come to this sort of active Christianity was Dad, who went quietly about the business of living
and doing the right thing, no matter what it cost him. I guess he’d learned a few lessons since his fling two decades ago
with Lisbet Nelson, my half-brother’s mother, the news of which had catapulted my family to the far corners of the earth.

Dad was a different man now. Could Mummy love a different man than the one she’d married?

And how had my thoughts arrived there when I’d begun thinking about my friends and their Christian-ness? Dad was a Christian.
At least, I thought so. He was different from the Spencer girls, though. You might say he was halfway between me and the Spencer
girls. Just as committed, but not as vocal about it.

Could I be like that?

Did I want to be?

I didn’t have any answers so I focused on the computer screen and got to work downloading the film clips from that morning.
Then I began to clip bits and pieces into separate files. The one of Mummy opening her present from me—a lovely pleated Prada
clutch that I was definitely going to borrow—came out particularly well, and the fact that I’d managed to capture Dad on the
sidelines watching her was a bonus. His eyes held an expression of total concentration, as if he were memorizing her the same
way my camera was, so he’d have something to take out and look at later.

Someday they’d thank me for immortalizing our first Christmas as a reunited family.

I saved all the clips where Alasdair appeared into one big file for my viewing pleasure later, and then made a cute little
movie of Carly trying on the blouse for Brett. I edited it down, cutting out the part at the end where Shani started to talk
and I dropped the camera. But in case she wanted that bit, I saved it for her.

“Mac?” Lissa banged on my door. “Your mom is calling us for lunch.”

Good grief. Was it one o’clock already? “Coming.” The Queen’s Christmas speech was at three, which Dad listened to every year
without fail, but we girls could probably skip it and take a walk over the hills instead. And then it would be time to come
back to the house for tea and get ready for the neighbors to arrive for a drop of good cheer.

I had to finish this up.

I threw the movie files into a folder, named them all sequentially because it was fastest, and brought up e-mail.

AFTER LUNCH, Dad and Carly washed up while Mummy and Patricia put on boots and coats in the kitchen passage.

“Where are you two going?” I asked.

“Patricia wants to see the sea, so we’re going to take a tramp up the hill,” Mummy said.

“GMTA. We’ll catch you up.” I went and found Lissa and Gillian, who were hanging round the kitchen, yakking it up with Dad.
“Want to go for a walk over the hill? You can see the sea from the top.”

“Does that involve snow?” Lissa’s face wrinkled up in distaste.

“Afraid so, lassie,” Dad answered, handing Carly the cloth so she could wipe up the counters. I wondered where Mrs. Gillie
had got to. She usually did that kind of thing.

Then I remembered what day it was. Of course the poor woman would be at home with her husband and her own family, clustered
round the telly watching Christmas movies and waiting for three o’clock. Well, it wasn’t as if we couldn’t do without her.
At least four of the ten of us could probably put together a dinner party for twelve armed with only a bottle of seltzer and
a packet of crisps.

“Then I’ll pass.” Lissa pulled her cashmere plaid closer. “I’m warm and cozy. I’d hate to disturb the balance of this perfect
ecosystem.”

“I’ll come,” Gillian said. “I’m used to snow.”

“I’ll come, too.” Alasdair didn’t even look at Lissa, for which I gave him credit. A flush of happiness began in my toes and
traveled all the way to the top of my head, where it flamed out in a blush.

Aughh!

“Carly?” I said to distract attention from my face, which was now entirely tomato colored.

“I’m going to call Brett and thank him for the locket, so I’ll pass, too,” she said softly. “He should be up by now.”

“Hearing your voice would be the perfect present,” Shani said loyally. “What did you get him?”

“Gillian drew a portrait of me to give to him.”

“Did she?” I couldn’t draw a line, so I had nothing but admiration for people who could. “You weren’t leaping on a villain
and punching his lights out, were you?” Gillian’s art tends to be of the butt-kicking variety.

“No, it was a straightforward portrait,” Gillian told me. “We had to do one for art class anyway, so she sat for me a couple
of Friday afternoons before she went to San Jose. So there you go. Art credit and Christmas present for boyfriend. I like
a nice, elegant solution.”