Page 79 of It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square
‘No. She was adopted, that’s all I know. I just hope she’s happy. She’d be eight years old now. I’m sure she’s better off with her current family than with me, the local drunk.’
Angela looks with meaning at Estelle.
‘Would you be the local drunk if your baby hadn’t been given away?’ Estelle asks, not pulling any punches. ‘I’m going to take a wild guess that’s when you started drinking?’
Angela nods. ‘Yep, I was a good girl up until then, with a promising future – that’s what my parents liked to think, anyway. Then I got knocked up and I ruined everything in their eyes. I don’t think they ever saw me the same after that. They didn’t seem to care all that much when I moved out and came to live in the city. So here I am now bouncing from job to job, drinking myself silly to numb the pain. I’m broken, Estelle, in more ways than one, and do you know what the worst thing is?’ Angela’s face crumples and she begins to tremble.
Estelle, looking visibly moved, shakes her head.
‘I don’t know how to fix it, Estelle. I don’t know how to stop.’
Angela begins to sob. Huge tears roll down her face as her legs buckle and she drops to the floor.
Estelle simply stands up and goes over to her. She lifts her up gently and holds open her arms. Angela begins to cry even harder at Estelle’s simple gesture, and, as Estelle wraps her arms tightly around her to comfort her, she buries her face in Estelle’s green cardigan.
‘Help me, Estelle,’ I hear Angela whisper. ‘Please, I need someone to help me.’
‘I think we can help each other, Angela,’ Estelle whispers back, as a single tear rolls slowly down her own cheek.
Twenty
Bloomsbury,London
23 December 2018
Immediately I turn to Angela and Estelle.
They both gaze emotionally at each other across the room.
‘And you did help me,’ Angela says quietly. ‘You helped me so much, Estelle. I can never repay you for what you did.’
‘Nonsense,’ Estelle says, wearily settling herself in her favourite chair. ‘I only did what any good citizen would have.’ She pats her lap and Alvie jumps up on to it.
‘It was more than that, and you know it.’
‘If anything, you helped me by moving in. I was extremely lonely then. I don’t think I realised how lonely until you came along with your wacky clothes and your loud music. You brought a breath of fresh air to the house.’
Ben and I sit down next to them and quietly listen, neither of us wanting to intrude on this precious moment.
‘Ha, I did a bit. We had some good years here, didn’t we? Parties with the other housemates, birthdays, Christmases. This was a very happy house in those days. Even if they were tough ones for me.’ Angela turns to us. ‘Estelle helped me kick the booze habit. I was an alcoholic – I know that now. But Estelle’s kindness in letting me live here with her and Christian turned my life around. Eventually, I got a job at the hospital with Estelle.’
‘I’d gone back to nursing again by then,’ Estelle explains. ‘Like Angela, I needed purpose in my life – a reason to get up in the morning. Angela became a ward cleaner to begin with, and then decided she wanted to become a nurse too.’
‘I did,’ Angela continues. ‘After all, medicine was in my blood. Luckily I had the required O levels already. Before I went off the rails, I’d been quite the swot at school. So I did my training and began work a few years later at Great Ormond Street down the road. I was clean, happy, and at last I had a career and a reason to live.’
Estelle and Angela exchange a look of total understanding, that only two people who have known each other a long time can.
‘This is such a wonderful story,’ I tell them. ‘I always wondered how you two met, and now I know. Christian is the young man in the graduation photo in your hall, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. After he graduated, he became a solicitor,’ Estelle says. ‘He actually practised next door for a while. Just like you, Ben. But eventually he moved on. He helped us a lot when we set up the foundation, didn’t he, Angela?’
Angela nods. ‘Yep, Christian knew what we were doing was invaluable too.’
‘What foundation?’ Ben asks. ‘Tell us about that.’
‘After we’d both been nursing for a while, Angela decided to take another step up and trained as a midwife.’
‘When I’d given birth to my daughter it had been so horrific, and the nurses had been so mean to me, I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through that same experience. After I did my midwifery training, I delivered a lot of babies before I decided there was still more I could do to help.’
