Page 78 of Every Christmas Eve
‘How did you know where I was?’ Ava asks me when she ends the phone call.
‘Because I’ve been here before too, many times,’ I tell her.
‘Really?’ she asks in bewilderment. ‘Roly found this place when we went walking with Grandma. She said I’d found a secret hideout never discovered before.’
‘Well done, Roly,’ I whisper. ‘He has been helping your dad look for you too.’
She sniffles loudly and gasps.
‘I wasn’t going to stay here for long though,’ she says quickly. ‘I only wanted to get away from everything and have a think. I’m not sure what’s going on with you and my dad and it scares me.’
I remind myself how Ava doesn’t know me very much at all yet. To her, I’m the florist in the place that makes nice hot chocolate, I’m the family friend who helped a bit with the party. I’m the one who was once in love with her dad, though I don’t know how much of that she’s heard so far.
‘When I was about thirteen, not much older than you,’ Itell her, ‘me and my friends would come down here in the summer. I wasn’t allowed out this far, so I didn’t dare tell my parents or Nana Molly where I was going. Some local boys gathered wood, we found some rubber coverings in my dad’s shed to make a patchwork roof, and soon we had our very own place to play card games, listen to music on our battery radio and hang out together away from it all. I’d sometimes come here alone too when I was confused or scared, to think, just like you were doing. We called it the Shepherd’s Mud Hut. It’s cool, isn’t it?’
She nods, looking around her, wide-eyed in wonder.
‘So, you built this?’
‘Yep,’ I say, feeling a pinch of nostalgia for innocent days gone by. ‘With a little help from my friends. But see that patch of rubber right above you? If you look really closely, you can see where I wrote my initials in permanent marker. It was my thirteenth birthday, and I thought it was the coolest place in the whole world.’
I point my phone torch towards it to show her.
‘Impressive,’ she says, taking in her surroundings.
We sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and suddenly I’m hiding here at the age of thirteen again, caught up in tangled emotions. One minute bold and confident, the next full of fear and frustration.
‘Ava, I know that Christmas can be hard when you’ve lost someone special, especially your beautiful mum,’ I tell her, hoping I haven’t crossed a line by bringing it up. ‘You see lots of friends your age with both parents, and it makes you feel very lonely and very different.’
She wipes away some fresh tears from her eyes, staring at the ground with her knees huddled under her chin.
‘No, you don’t know,’ she replies. ‘How would you know what it feels like? You’re a grown-up, so you can’t know anything about it. You all think you do, but you don’t.’
I take a deep breath, understanding how isolated she is feeling right now.
‘You’re right, I don’t know fully what you’re going through, but I can understand a little because my daddy died very suddenly when I was a teenager,’ I explain.
‘Oh,’ she replies.
‘Very suddenly,’ I reply. ‘He was killed in an accident at work. I was so angry at myself for a long time. I was angry at everyone, to tell you the truth. I ran away too. Not in this way, but I ran away to America for the summer, as I couldn’t bear to be at home without him.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ she mumbles.
‘And even though I was quite a bit older than you were when it happened, it hurt like nothing had ever hurt before,’ I say, doing my best not to well up. ‘I still feel very sad when I think of him and how much he missed out on. And then when I think of my mum, who really misses her husband, that can make me sad too. It wasn’t fair. It still isn’t fair, even though I’m a grown-up now. It still hurts. I still miss him.’
Ava stares at the ground. I realise I need to get her home quickly to the cosy fire in Ballyheaney House, but I also need to let her air her feelings now that she’s away from it all.
‘I don’t remember her all that much,’ she gasps.
‘Oh, Ava.’
‘It scares me,’ she says, her chin trembling and her shoulders shaking as she speaks. I could put my arm around her, but I don’t want to interrupt what she’s saying. ‘I’m so afraid I’m forgetting her that it keeps me awake at night. And now I’m afraid that Dad will forget her too.’
‘Your dad could never forget your mummy,’ I say.
‘He will now that he’s found his one true love again,’ she tells me.
My heart skips a beat.
