Julia Williams - Make A Christmas Wish - A heartwarming, witty and magical festive treat

A strange woman in my house. With Adam. And Joe. What on earth is going on?

Livid doesn’t cover it. I hurl myself at the dark-haired woman in MY front room in a fury.

‘Who the hell are you?’ I yell. ‘What are you doing here? In my house, in my life?’

I want her to be terrified. I want her to react. But all that happens is the woman shivers, and says, ‘That’s odd. I just felt someone walking over my grave.’

Crap, I can’t even haunt people properly. All I want is for Adam and Joe to see me, to know I’m there, to want me back, the way I want them back.

‘Oh quit feeling sorry for yourself.’ Malachi hasn’t gone away. Oh good. ‘If you’d not turned your back on me a year ago all this would be sorted by now. They do need you and you need them, but possibly not in the way you think.’

‘What do you mean?’ Why does Malachi have to talk in riddles?

‘You have things to sort out, things to put right.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I’d blush with fury if I could.

‘You really don’t know?’ says Malachi. ‘Here, let me show you …’

With a jolt, I’m awake. With a living breathing human body. I’d forgotten how good it is, to feel and see and taste and smell. Wait. I remember this. I look around me. I’m sitting in a hospital bed, watching my newborn baby asleep in his cot. A sudden rush of love – hormones? – flows through me. Here is my baby at last, after all the false starts. My miracle baby.

But where is Adam? We’ve waited so long for this baby, been through so much, and he’s not here.

Then I remember. I’ve gone into early labour and Adam’s abroad. He thought we had time. We both did, but I’ve ended up giving birth alone, among strangers, in this unforgiving place. The midwives have been kind, but overworked, and Mum is away visiting friends, and can’t get here till tomorrow. I have never felt so lonely. And now I’m lying on a hospital bed, and my baby is waking up and I can’t reach him. Because of my epidural I can’t get out of bed. I’m tired and hungry and sad and overwhelmed. This is not how it was meant to be. How can I be sad on the happiest day of my life?

When the baby starts to cry, I don’t know what to do. I ring the buzzer but no one comes. I’m here on my own with a crying baby, and I feel like crying too. And I know it’s unfair of me, but I’m very angry with Adam. But then, miraculously, Adam is here. He’s dropped everything and flown home as soon as he could, just to be by my side. He’s so happy about the baby, and so pleased to see me, I forget my anger, and bury it deep. Nothing matters now but us and our new son.

And then I’m back in the future, where I’m dead, and talking to a mangy black cat. I can still feel the anger burning in the back of my throat. I’ve been angry with Adam so long, I’d forgotten when and where it began. Was it really then? The day that Joe was born?

I stare disconsolately at Adam and Joe and their new friend.

‘So what do I do now?’ I say.

‘First,’ says Malachi, ‘you need to get their attention.’

A year ago? How can it be a year since my world imploded so spectacularly? As if it wasn’t fucked up enough.

Before Livvy died, everything was going to be so different. I wasn’t proud of myself for doing it, but I had met and fallen in love with Emily. I’d been planning to tell her, but then Livvy found out anyway: You bastard. How could you? The very last words my wife said to me. In the circumstances, they were no more than I deserved, though Emily tells me I’m too hard on myself. But if … if I’d supported her more in the beginning, if I’d understood the toll of looking after Joe had exacted on her … My world is full of ifs.

I can remember the day I first met Livvy as clearly as if it was yesterday. It was our first term at uni in Manchester, and there was this bright, vivid, red-headed girl standing in the student bar, downing shots in a competition and drinking all the boys under the table. I was too shy to talk to her that first night, but gradually I found myself more and more drawn to her, and to my surprise my interest was reciprocated. It was Livvy who took the initiative from the first, kissing me suddenly and fiercely one night when we’d sat out all evening staring at the stars together. She was so unlike anyone I’d met: a free spirit, spontaneous in a way I wasn’t. She breathed life into me, showing me there was more than the staid and rather restrictive outlook my parents had given me. It was a magical, wonderful time. Since she’s died, I often think of those days and wonder how it could have gone so badly wrong.

But it did, and instead I’ve spent the last year picking up the pieces of my life. Even though our marriage was a sham by the end, I was devastated when Livvy died. I never got to say sorry that a love that had started out with such hope and promise had disintegrated in the way it did, and now there was no possibility of ever putting it right.

And now here we are and it’s coming up for Christmas again, and I owe it to Joe to try and make things cheerful even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing. I’m never sure how much of what’s happened he’s taken in, and wonder what is going on inside his head. He says things like, ‘My mum is dead,’ deadpan to complete strangers, showing no emotion. Emily says we just have to support him the best we can. So today, though I’m not sure I have the stomach for Christmas decorations (last year the lights seemed to twinkle malevolently at me as if proof of my guilt), Emily and I are putting up the Christmas tree. We always put the tree up a fortnight before Christmas, and Joe with his obsessive need for order has had it written on the calendar for weeks.

Actually, it turns out to be fun. It’s been a really blowy day, and after Joe and I put flowers on Livvy’s grave first thing, we went for a wet walk down by the canal. We get back home and make hot chocolate and sit by the fire drinking it, feeling cosy and warm, till Joe starts insisting it’s time to decorate the tree. I’d thought he might not want to do it today, on the anniversary, but he is insistent. ‘We always decorate the tree two weeks before Christmas,’ he says. ‘Mum won’t like it if we don’t.’

It makes my heart ache to hear him speak about her in such a matter-of-fact way. He must be grieving for Livvy, but it’s hard for him to articulate it.

‘Five thirty,’ Joe says now, pointing at his watch – time is very important to him – ‘if we don’t do it soon, it will be dinner time and too late.’

‘OK, Joe,’ I say, ‘let’s get on with it.’

The wind is howling down the chimney now, and the kitchen door rattles. This is an old house, with ill-fitting doors and windows. We’ve always meant to get double glazing, but I like the old sash windows, and wooden frames. They give the place character, though on a night like tonight I’m not grateful for the draughts blowing through the house.

Joe in his methodical way is sorting out how to decorate the tree. After the lights go up, he insists that certain decorations, like the Santa he made for us when he was five, and the reindeer Livvy once bought him at a Christmas market, take pride of place. Then he organizes the baubles according to a colour scheme: gold, red, silver hung in serried rows round the tree. This is something Livvy used to do with him, and I had no idea he had it down to such a fine art. Emily and I are there to do things the way Joe likes them, and I am finding it quite soothing.

After the baubles, Joe makes us wrap the tree in tinsel – he won’t let us use red because ‘it doesn’t look right’ – and I mean literally wrap it. It is starting to look overloaded, but he won’t hear of us taking any off.