Page 91 of Sad Girl Hours
“All right.” Dad puts his hands up. “She’s not. Now, you’d better go upstairs and get changed. You know what your grandma’s like when she sees people in pyjamas past eight a.m.”
I do. And, as much as I’d like to stay here and berate my dads some more, I also don’t want to hear about how my grandma gave birth to my father at five in the morning and then went back home with my grandpa, made him his breakfast and got his lunch ready before he went off to work. Not only does it set feminism back at least a few dozen years and make me want torage at my now-deceased grandfather, I’ve also heard the story, oh, I don’t know,eighty thousandtimes.
Once we’re in our dresses (terrible Christmas jumpers on top), we emerge downstairs just as the relatives descend on us.
“ELEANORA!” my gran crows. “Come here and give me a squeeze.”
I do as I’m told.
“And who is this beautiful young lady?” she asks, pulling her horn-rimmed glasses down to peer at Saffron.
“This is Saffron. She’s here for the holidays.”
“Oh, how lovely. You can come here and give me a hug too then.”
Saffron, wisely, also does as she’s told. My gran may be a tiny eighty-year-old woman but she still both commands and demands attention – and not just because she exclusively wears bright purple. It’s always best to just ‘yes, Gran’ things with her.
“She’s fabulous,” Saffron whispers conspiratorially to me as we follow them through to the lounge after I’ve greeted the others too.
“I am.” My gran turns round and winks at us, much to Saffron’s mortification. “And my hearing’s surprisingly fabulous too.”
Saffron throws a rather desperate look at me, and I have to bite my lip to stop from laughing.
A couple of hours of absolute present madness descend upon us. Naomi and Owen are thrilled with all their gifts of books, games and pet cage/enclosure accoutrements. Naomi’s hamster is running around the floor in his new ball, putting a greatamount of trust in the plastic to protect him from Bean Burger and Derek, the ancient asthmatic boxer dog that Pops brought home from his vet’s to continue treating while his owner’s in the (human) hospital.
The cousins are all running wild with their new monster-truck toys and, unfortunately, the Nerf guns that our aunt bought them and the twins, much to everyone else’s despair.
Saffron only had a couple of presents to unwrap, and then she just sits next to me while I open the rest of my things.
“You OK?” I whisper to her after she’s been quiet for a good while.
She blinks like she’s coming out of some kind of trance. “Huh? Oh. Yes, I’m OK. I love my pencil.”
She holds up one of the presents I got her – the famous football pencil prize that I mounted and framed with a tiny LED light – the treatment it warranted.
“And my vouchers.” I made her vouchers for all her favourite things – going to get her favourite fun drink, three items from her favourite charity shop and a picnic as soon as it’s not too cold. Our winter bucket list is coming to an end and we only have a few things left, but I wanted her to know that I still want to spend time with her.
“Andmy books.” (I bought her a couple of my favourite poetry collections that I thought she’d enjoy.) “Not to mention the things your parents got me. You’re all so generous and lovely.”
“It’s only what you deserve,” I say. “Well, it’s actually less than you deserve. I’d have got you the moon if it weren’t too big to gift-wrap and also if it wouldn’t have—”
“—devastating effects on the earth and its climate,” she finishes.
“Exactlywhat I was going to say. You’ve taught me well.”
She smiles a little, and I consider my job done. “The earth would change its axis and we could end up in an ice age. Thetides would only be a third of the size and that would cause absolute havoc with things, and I’d also just miss her. I love the moon.”
“Me too. The stubborn lady she is. Always shining, even though everything else around her is dark.”
“Reminds me of someone else I know,” Saffron says.
“Hmm. Me too.”
I move my hand so that it brushes against hers on the floor, feeling that whole side of my body prickle with awareness, and she smiles again, soft and warm. But then it’s gone, too soon.
I swear, if I ever meet her parents again, I’ll be swiping all four of the Nerf guns from the twins and the cousins, and they’d better hope they can run faster than me. Who does this to their kid?
I want to ask if she’s had a message oranythingfrom them but, as I suspect the answer is no, I don’t dare.
