Page 24 of It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
‘You’ve still not got that new kitchen, then?’
I’d been saving up for some indistinct ‘renovations’ since I bought the flat, but the very act of existing had been eating into my funds slowly but surely ever since Elle had moved out.
‘Nah, the flat’s still the same as when you and Dad last visited.’
Which must have been around eighteen months ago when they stayed at mine for Josh and Saskia’s ‘intimate and low-key’ wedding they’d practically livestreamed on social media.
‘You’re still happy there?’
‘Happy’ was a bit strong. But… ‘settled’? Sure.
‘Yeah, although the baby upstairs has just started to walk and seems to enjoy jumping about above my head from about five o’clock each morning.’
‘He won’t be little forever, love.’
‘I know.’
‘And work’s going well?’
I swallowed. Why were these chit-chatty interactions with Mum some of the hardest conversations I ever had?
Because you have to hold back so much.
‘Everything’s fine, Mum. Although Elle keeps saying I should be trying to push for a promotion.’
Mum sighed, but still didn’t look up from the dishes. ‘And is that what you want?’
‘I mean, maybe? Why do you say it like that?’
Mum didn’t answer immediately. She kept scrubbing the baking tray, which was caked in a layer of hardened polenta. The insides of my stomach could relate.
‘I’d just love you to find your own way a bit, love, you know? Do something for yourself rather than doing whatever Elle wants you to do all the time. From what I remember, you didn’t even want to work there in the first place.’
We’d had different versions of this conversation over the years. The worst of which had been when she’d discovered I’d turned down an offer to stay home and study English literature at Bristol University in favour of going to Cardiff with Elle.
Mum wasn’t the shouting type. But she’d shouted at me, voice quivering, that day: ‘You’ll regret it, Amelia! One day you’ll look back at this conversation and see that I was right.’
If only she knew just how much I regretted it, for all the reasons in the world. My plan had been to move straight back home after graduating, but by the time I’d left university, home no longer existed. Mum and Dad had sold the house, Josh had gone travelling and Elle had convinced me to move straight to London with her, where she’d secured an entry-level job at a teen magazine.
Armed with not much beyond my underwhelming 2:2 degree and some initial temping leads, I followed Elle to the Big Smoke – and I didn’t even step foot in Scarnbrook on the way. The week of Livvie’s funeral had been the last time I’d been there. Did I really wantthatto be the final time I’d ever visited the place that had once been so special to me?
I pushed the question back down, switching my mind back to Mum.
‘I’ve done okay for myself, don’t you think?’
‘Of course, and you know how proud we are of you. But yours and Elle’s paths do still seem to be very much… aligned, don’t they?’
‘It’s just the way things worked out, I guess.’
She and Elle had never got along very well. It wasn’t helped by the fact that she and Elle’s mum had never clicked when the two of them had moved next door back in 2000. My parents had been really community-minded back then, but despite their repeated efforts to get Elle’s mum involved in their endless social activities, she’d never accepted any of their invitations. Mum had never said as much, but it was obvious that she’d taken the rejection personally.
‘It’s fine, Mum. I’ve got a great job, I’m financially independent, I’ve got a foot on the property ladder unlike most of my generation. It’s all good – you don’t need to worry about me.’
Apart from the fact that I’m lonely as hell.
Mum finally turned to me, fixed her mouth in a straight smile and nodded. ‘I know I don’t. You’ve always been the steady one, haven’t you?’
She dropped her gaze and turned away quickly, upping the speed at which she went at it with a scourer on the stubborn pan. I wanted to give her shoulder a gentle squeeze – or give her an unexpected full-on bear hug from behind, Joey-and-Chandler-style – but I knew it’d tip her over an edge that none of us ever wanted to confront. So, instead, I silently loaded up the rest of the dishwasher, spritzed the surfaces with that familiar citrus-laced chemical scent and wiped them down to the soundtrack of scrubbing. As she busied herself with dessert, I could see she was trying her hardest to hold it together. I left her to it: over the years I’d learnt that she, Dad and Josh preferred to falter privately. I preferred not to falter at all.
