Kerry Fisher - The Island Escape

‘You know I didn’t mean it. I got carried away in the heat of the moment. I’d had such a tough day. The bank pulling the plug on that property up in Queensland, that venture capital guy messing me around. I took it out on the wrong person. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said.’ He paused. ‘It still does me in, too, you know. I would have loved those babies.’

There was no mistaking the tight knot of rage in my stomach, even though I wanted to believe that he was sorry. God, I was desperate to accept he was so sorry that he was coming apart at the seams, trembling in his shoes about whether I would forgive him this time. However furious I’d become in the past, I’d never truly considered leaving him.

But then he’d never taunted me about my babies before.

A door banged downstairs. Alicia would be getting ready for our present-opening ritual. I shrugged, unable to voice any thoughts that wouldn’t inflame me further. Christmas morning wasn’t the right morning to embark on a big discussion because I had no idea where it might end. Octavia had been right all those years ago: Scott was too unpredictable, though that was rich coming from her.

It was one of the things I’d loved about him.

I sipped my champagne, feeling the bubbles spread their soothing tendrils through me.

Scott was the picture of contrite. He smoothed a strand of hair behind my ear. I shook him off. ‘Come on, doll. I made a big mistake. What can I do to make it up to you?’

I drew my knees up to my chest. I could still feel the stickiness and grime of that police cell no matter how many times I showered. ‘Nothing.’

‘It’s Christmas. Let’s enjoy ourselves. For Alicia’s sake.’

I wavered, unsure whether Scott was just trying to weasel his way out of trouble or was genuinely regretful. I did want Alicia to have a lovely day.

In case lovely days were suddenly in short supply.

Maybe, over time, I could forgive him.

He swung round to face me, his index finger under the silk shoulder strap of my nightie.

But definitely not yet.

‘No. Just no. Get off.’

He stood up, backing away, hands raised in surrender. ‘OK, OK. No need to turn nasty.’

Pot. Kettle.

I got out of bed. ‘Come on, we need to get downstairs. Alicia still gets excited about presents.’

Scott drained his glass, shaking his head as though I was completely irrational. He paused at the door. ‘I hope you’re not going to spoil today by sulking.’

I waited until he’d disappeared downstairs to hurl a pillow at the wall.

I heard Alicia shouting down the landing. ‘Mum? Mum? When are we doing presents?’

I called down to her. ‘I’m up here. Shower’s not working properly in our bedroom. Be down in a mo. Can you see if Granny Adele wants a cup of coffee?’

As soon as I arrived in the kitchen, Adele was right there, getting in the way of the fridge, standing in front of every cupboard I wanted to open, like a dog I’d forgotten to feed.

‘Where’s Scotty?’ she said. ‘He used to love Christmas, first one up. When my Jack was alive, we’d all get up at six to make the most of the day. I used to buy kilos of potatoes, parboil them, fluff them up in the colander. And Jack, he was in charge of the turkey. We used to get it from Mr Saunders. His is the house on the corner of our road, you know, the one with the blue gates and the boat-shaped bird table on the front lawn …’

Endless detail rained down in the strong Scottish accent Adele had retained despite emigrating to Australia in her late teens, fifty years earlier. I put the coffee machine in motion and nipped into the loo to text Octavia. She’d sounded wrung-out when she’d filled me in on Jonathan’s redundancy the day before. With three kids who all came with a bewildering array of after-school activities, I knew they struggled to keep their heads above water even when Jonathan was earning. I wondered how I could persuade Octavia to let me lend her some money.

Happy Xmas – hope you are OK. All bearably festive here. Kilted kangaroo bouncing about but calm everywhere else. Going out for lunch shortly. When can you escape for a walk?

We’d always gone out for a walk on our own on Christmas Day. As teenagers, we’d examined each other’s new eye shadows and compared appalling knitwear. In our twenties, I’d tried to play down Scott’s extravagant presents. Even when we were broke, he’d still decorated the tree with little love messages, souvenirs from places we’d been, postcards of paintings I loved. Once Charlie was born just after Octavia’s twenty-third birthday, Jonathan appeared to skip romance and went straight to the practical. Octavia laughed it off. ‘Anyone can buy fancy knickers. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a husband who can build a cupboard to keep them in.’

Since we’d had children, our walk on Christmas Day was simply a pressure cooker valve – a breather to let off steam about our families so that we could return with smiles on our faces. Today, more than ever, I’d be glad of the escape.

A beep on my mobile signalled Octavia’s reply.

Jonathan deep in the doldrums and moaning about how much I’ve spent. Mum quoting gloomy figures from Daily Mail about job market. Kids high on sugar. Happy days! Can’t wait to go for our walk – 4-ish?

Poor Octavia. I didn’t know how she stood Jonathan and his penny-pinching. I’d pointed it out early on and we’d had one of our few proper rows about it, descending into a slanging match about me being born with a silver spoon in my mouth. All credit due to her though, she’d been the first to cheer me on when Scott and I shunned my dad’s money and made a living doing up tatty old houses.

Was it really all for nothing?

Jonathan usually loved choosing the Christmas tree. He would spend hours in the local garden centre, debating with the children until they found the perfect specimen, the one and only Norwegian spruce that could grace our lounge. Then he’d haul it into the right place, the exact spot between the fireplace and the dresser. Immi and Polly would decorate it according to Jonathan’s rigid spacing and ornament eking-out rules, with Charlie chucking the baubles on willy-nilly.

But this year Jonathan had come up with ‘I haven’t got time/the girls don’t want to go today/the trees will be cheaper nearer the day’ until the one ritual I could delegate without guilt had plopped back onto my plate. The result was spindly and lacklustre. Instead of the usual good-natured banter over whether to have the fairy or the star on top, the kids had argued over who was going to hang up the bloody glass reindeers and who got stuck with the crappy old snowflakes. Resentment had sliced into my fantasies of a cheery household floating about singing angelic bursts of Once in Royal David’s City , and lingered right through to Christmas Day itself.

Mum had arrived at eight o’clock that morning as though we would need five hours to prepare a roast lunch for six people. She stood in the kitchen hovering but not actually ‘doing’ until the hairs on my neck were quivering with irritation.

I managed to shoo her out to play Scrabble with Immi, which meant I could slosh industrial quantities of Chablis into my glass without copping the fourteen units a week speech. This year’s project of knocking our lounge and dining room together to make one big living space was beginning to look like a mistake. Instead of being tucked away with the XBox, Polly and Charlie were right under Mum’s nose. As Mum thought anything more hi-tech than a landline was the path to all evil, it was only a matter of time before she decided to deliver the ‘Give a child a cardboard box and they’ll be just as happy’ speech.