Page 81 of Just a Taste
Noelle is going to get the Christmas she deserves. I’m going to make sure of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWONoelle
December 25th
I think I’m hardwired to wake up early on Christmas morning.
It’s been like this since I was a young girl. Eve and I would try to stay up all night on Christmas Eve in an attempt to catch Father Christmas in the act, only to inevitably fall asleep before midnight and miss all the action. But we’d always wake up at the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, and that habit has apparently followed me into adulthood.
It’s why I’m up before the sun right now without setting an alarm. I stretch out in the bed, forgetting for a minute where I am. For a moment, I wonder why it’s so quiet.Why I don’t hear the sound of my little cousins shrieking and playing as they tear open the handful of gifts they’re allowed to open before breakfast. But then Alex stirs beside me, curling his body into the space I’ve just made by sitting upright and everything floods back to me.
I watch him for a little while. His features are softened in sleep, the frown lines that often crease his forehead are smoothed away. He looks more peaceful and content than I’ve ever seen him before.
I slide out of bed carefully, not wanting to disturb him, and pad softly across the room. I open the curtains just enough for me to confirm that it’s no longer snowing at all. The sky is a pinkish-blue, and the snow that covers the world outside is melting rapidly enough for me to spy patches of green and brown in the fields in the distance.
Not quite a white Christmas but, given what we’ve endured over the last four days, I’ll take it.
A jolt of excitement shoots through me suddenly as I remember that it is, in fact, Christmas Day. I try to imagine what my family are up to right now. I have no doubt in my mind that Eve is up just as early as I am. I can picture her and Nathan cuddled up in bed together, swapping their gifts before they head downstairs into the chaos that is the Jones family’s Christmas morning.
I bet my younger cousins are already running wild around the Christmas tree, sorting their piles and piles of presentsinto neat stacks ready for when the adults come down and give them the go-ahead to tear into them.
A handful of people will be in the kitchen getting breakfast ready, the smell of frying bacon and sausages and egg quickly filling Gran’s house.
I’m actually surprised Eve hasn’t messaged or called yet. I half expected to wake up with a flurry of notifications of missed calls and increasingly agitated texts, but my phone remains silent. I fire off a quick:
Noelle
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!
CALL ME WHEN YOU’RE UP
and expect my phone to vibrate in response almost immediately after, but nothing comes.
Weird.
But I don’t have time to dwell it on right now. I’ve got a plan and the success of it depends largely on how much I can get done before Alex wakes up. Luckily, it seems like he’s dead to the world. He clearly hasn’t been hard-wired to wake up at the crack of dawn on Christmas Day.
I pull on some clothes and tiptoe out of the room and downstairs into the kitchen as quickly as I can. I pull out thefood Alex and I prepared last night and stick the chicken in the oven to roast for later.
Once that’s cooking on low, I turn my attention to the whole reason I’m down here in the first place.
Today isn’t just Christmas, it’s Alex’s birthday and I’m determined to make it special. For once. I throw open the cupboards and pull out the ingredients I need for a simple cake. I’d love to go all out, especially now I know Hoxton’s history with Christmas, but we’re running low on the core ingredients. There’s just enough flour, butter and eggs to make a small, but tasty, cake. The decadent, three-tiered genoise sponge I have in mind will have to wait until next year. This year it’s all about just letting him know that he hasn’t been forgotten. That the years of birthdays spent playing second fiddle to Christmas are over now.
I gather all the ingredients I need and start mixing the batter, the rhythmic sound of the wooden spoon against the metal bowl a comforting background noise in the silence of the kitchen. It helps to ground me and keep my thoughts from drifting back towards my family.
Why haven’t they called or messaged yet?
It’s not like Eve to be silent on Christmas morning – or, ever actually. A small seed of worry starts to bloom in my chest, but I try to push it aside. Maybe they’re just caught up in their own festivities, caught up in the chaos of Christmas.The worry morphs into bitterness because, if that’s the case, it means they’ve forgotten me.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I could, in theory, just call Eve myself, but something makes me hesitate. I feel like an outsider in my own family and that I’d be intruding if I called now.
The cake serves as a timely distraction from the increasingly depressive train of thought I’m heading towards. I take my time tidying up after myself and getting some of the dishes Hoxton and I will be having for our small, cobbled-together Christmas dinner. By the time I’m sliding the cake out of the oven and setting it to cool, I haven’t thought about Eve and the rest of family for about an hour.
Unfortunately, leaving it to cool before I ice it leaves plenty of time for my thoughts to wander. I pull out my phone again and grimace at the lack of notifications flashing across my screen.
I hit ‘call’ on Eve’s contact card, but she doesn’t answer. Same goes for my mother, my cousin Jean, Gran, and even Nathan. Every single call goes straight to answerphone.
