Page 78 of It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square
‘Fine,’ Estelle replies, continuing to sip at her teacup. ‘I don’t wish to pry.’
An awkward silence falls on the room, and all we can hear is the clock’s rhythmical tick above the mantelpiece.
Angela paces around the Christmas tree for a bit, pretending to look at the decorations.
‘Some of these are really old, aren’t they?’ she asks, breaking the silence.
Estelle nods. ‘Indeed they are.’
‘Which is your favourite?’
Estelle thinks about this. ‘They all hold special memories. Times they were bought, or times they were hung. Some of them have been passed down through my family over the years.’
‘What about this one?’ Angela asks, pointing to the baby in the cradle that the moon shone on for our first story.
‘That is one of the oldest. I believe it was bought for one of the first trees that stood in that spot over one hundred years ago.’
‘What is it about babies and Christmas?’ Angela asks.
‘Do I really have to answer that?’ Estelle replies with a half-smile.
Angela looks puzzled, then the penny drops. ‘Lordy! How stupid am I?’ she exclaims, shaking her head and smiling. Then her face falls. ‘Really, really stupid … ’
Estelle, to her credit, doesn’t ask any questions. She just sits and waits patiently.
But Angela has a question. ‘You don’t have kids, do you?’ she asks Estelle.
Estelle silently shakes her head.
‘Why?’
‘It was never the right time,’ Estelle admits. ‘My husband died young, and I never met anyone else. Mainly because I spent many years caring for my ill mother. I don’t think I could have cared for anyone else as well. It takes a lot of time, energy and patience to care for a child, let alone a baby.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Angela says, still looking at the cradle on the tree. ‘I was never given the chance to care for mine.’
I turn sharply to our Angela. She looks just as sad and desolate as her younger self does right now as she watches the scene unfold.
‘Why was that?’ the young Estelle asks gently.
‘Unmarried mother, wasn’t I? They said I wasn’t fit to care for my own child just because I didn’t have a ring on my finger.’
‘Who did?’
‘My parents, the hospital I was sent away to have her in, everyone around me, basically. I should have stood up for myself. You’d think because my own father was a doctor that would have been in my favour, but, no, that just made it worse. He was an upstanding member of the community; he couldn’t have his precious only child seen to be giving birth out of wedlock. Like he was so perfect – he was addicted to gambling.’
‘I had one like that,’ Estelle admits. ‘My father was addicted to gambling too. Almost lost this house a number of times.’
‘They’d have made a right pair, then!’ Angela says ruefully. ‘What happened to yours?’
‘Died,’ Estelle says without sorrow. ‘During the London smog of fifty-two. He had lung cancer before that, but the smog finished him off properly.’
Angela looks with interest at Estelle. ‘You don’t sound like you miss him much?’
Estelle shakes her head. ‘For my sins, no, I don’t. He was a horrible man.’
Angela nods in agreement. ‘I actually cared for mine until he let that happen to me and my baby. Then I couldn’t give a shi— monkey’s, I mean. It wasn’t long after that he started to lose his mind a bit. I like to think of it as a punishment from Him up there.’ She looks upwards. ‘Is that really mean of me?’
‘After what you went through, I think you can be let off a few mean thoughts. Do you know what happened to your baby?’
