Page 27 of It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
‘Oh, really? I can drop you off at the station; it’s no bother.’
He took a small sip of his ‘tea’ and shook his head. ‘No, thanks. It’s actually taking me to my client’s place for a final session, then I’ll head back to London from there.’
‘Fair enough. The cab’s an electric car, I presume? Or hybrid at least?’
I could see his jaw clench in exactly the same way Mum’s sometimes did, but I couldn’t help myself. He hated being caught out in his own hypocrisies.
‘Well, it’s not ideal but—’
‘Josh, it’s okay – you don’t have to defend yourself to me; I couldn’t care less. But maybe give Dad a bit of an easier time on his car choices next time, hmm?’
‘Yeah, all right.’
I gave him a double thumbs up, but he looked at me blankly before turning away with his tea and gazing out the kitchen window.
‘Right, I’m going to jump in the shower as I didn’t get the chance before the airport run. You’ll probably be gone by the time I get back, so… merry Christmas, I guess! Oh, and you still haven’t told me how much I owe you for that wine.’
‘I’ll message you the details.’ Just like Mum, he didn’t even turn to face me as he spoke.
I trudged up the narrow staircase, the seventh one always catching me out with its ginormous creak.
Josh had left a modest-looking gift outside my bedroom door. To be fair, the calligraphic label – tied to the rectangular present with mustard-yellow string – was beautiful.
I grabbed the towel from the chair in my bedroom and headed to the bathroom for my shower. But then the freestanding bathtub caught my eye. Sod it, I was going to have a nice, long soak instead.
A few minutes later I sank into the water, which was hot enough for every nerve ending in my body to goooh!before they wentaah, producing a satisfying all-over tingle. I luxuriated in the bubbly depths for a good ten minutes, inhaling the lavender-scented oil. Eventually, I heard the gentle crunching of a car on the gravel driveway outside and the thud of the front door closing.
I heaved myself into a sitting position and began to wash my hair. The smell of the highlight-activating shampoo, not that my single-tone mousy hair had any highlights to activate, reminded me of my mum. A rush of apprehension possessed me as I thought about the days ahead.
I knew my decision not to tell my family I was going back to Scarnbrook was the right one. After all, it was the place that had crumbled our very foundations. Plus, with Mum and Dad being out of the country for the first time in forever, they’dneverneed to know I’d even been back. It felt like this would be the most opportune moment I’d ever get to return home.
Home.
Twenty years away and I still called it that. Thought of it like that. The question was, would it still feel like home after everything that had happened? I’d waited two decades to find out. It was now or never.
Chapter 7
?Unexpected reunion
Scarnbrook was about twenty minutes from the motorway, thanks to thering road that had been built during my childhood. Back then the smooth,efficient bypass had saved me from the previously winding andtravel-sickness-inducing route we’d always taken on our way to AuntieSandra’s swanky apartment in West London.
The dual carriageway eventually gave way to familiar A-roads, followed by B-roads, followed by residential streets too insignificant to be identified by letters and numbers.
And then I was there. Scarnbrook. A tucked-away pocket of suburban Bristol that liked to call itself a village but, in reality, was a hodgepodge collection of vast residential estates – with occasional clusters of cottages – that had gradually absorbed farmland either side of a valley over the course of the last century or so.
Driving along the high street as my dad’s ancient satnav indicated I was approaching my destination, I clocked the village hall where Mum and Dad had once organised community dinners for the local senior citizens. It was weird to think that they themselves were now old enough to attend such an event. Over the road was the dog groomer’s where I’d inexplicably done work experience in Year Eight, despite having zero interest in canines. Oh, and there was the old sweet shop that Mum used to take us to after the dentist as a paradoxical reward for keeping our teeth relatively clean. The sweet shop now appeared to be a luxuriously appointed residential property boasting sage window frames and a fancy-pants festive wreath on the front door. My expectations for my holiday cottage jumped up a couple of notches.
Seeing these places – which were somehow so different yet achingly familiar at the same time – brought home to me just how long I’d been away. How much the place had moved on. How much the people here must’ve moved on, too.
I took a deep breath and turned right down a narrow lane between the fish and chip shop and The Star, a pub I’d only been to once on a memorable night out with Elle just before we left for university. In the noughties, it’d been one of those pubs where underage drinkers could sneak into the function room through the beer garden entrance and spend the evening crammed around a pool table while the eldest-looking members of the party were despatched to the bar to fetch drinks. But that’s not the context in which Elle and I visited on that single occasion. No, that would’ve been far too normal. Instead, Elle had managed to wangle a gig on the local mystery shopping circuit and had talked me into going ‘undercover’ with her. And so, one humid Friday night in August, the two of us had rocked up to undertake our strict mission of ordering two cocktails, a plate of chips and inspecting the toilets for cleanliness. After doing our duty by ordering two cosmos from the cocktail menu – and burning our mouths on the hottest chips in the world – we’d left, and never returned.
Despite the fact that the story had gone on to become one of mine and Elle’s favourite Scarnbrook anecdotes – largely because the pub had ended up with a perplexingly high mystery shopping score due to the automated diligence of the staff – I remembered feeling disappointed at how the night had panned out. Because, at the back of my mind, I’d been half-hoping – fine, three-quarters-hoping – to see Tom Brinton there, since I knew he and his friends went there quite a bit.
Elle and I had only heard about their riotous nights at The Star from snatches of overheard conversations on Mondays at school. Week after week, the two of us secretly updated our ever-growing ‘saliva chain’ diagram based on who had snogged whom that particular weekend. Eventually, we were able to prove that, in a roundabout way, practically everyone in that particular friendship circle had snogged everyone. Including themselves.
But little did Elle know that I had a vested interest in the saliva chain. Because each week I waited with silent fretfulness to find out if Tom Brinton had entered the DNA-based mix in any shape or form. As far as I could tell, he’d always remained beyond the boundaries of the flow(!)chart.
As I drove alongside the pub, I noticed it’d been smartened up since then. I pulled into Hollyhock Close, a modern-ish looking cul-de-sac that had cars mounted on every pavement due to the lack of sufficient parking. I double-checked the address that Elle had only got around to sending me this morning. It was definitely the right place. Huh.
