(This post was written for the January issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News)
January is traditionally the time when holiday companies’ commercials start popping up on our television screens. What better distraction from our post-Christmas overdrafts than sundrenched villas and beaches?
In the depths of the January gloom, these adverts tempt us to raid the rainy-day fund reserved for moments of crisis, such as when dishwasher gives up the ghost. (Now there’s a middle-class problem.)
The Budget Travel Option: A Good Book
With Helen Hollick, creator of the fabulous escapist Sea Witch adventure stories
I for one will be resisting the lure of travel agents and instead taking refuge in a good book. This time last year, through the pages of Helen Hollick’s excellent historical novel Sea Witch, I sailed away with her enticing pirate Jesemiah Acorne. After an interesting stop-off in South Africa, we headed straight for the Caribbean, where thoughts of palm-fringed shores and tropic temperatures helped me shut out the dark nights and icy winds of Hawkesbury Upton. It may have helped that I was reading in a comfy armchair by a log fire, with what was left of our Christmas bottle of Lamb’s Navy Rum.
My Little Free Library – offering armchair travellers an easy source of escapist books
Good books are much cheaper than holiday bookings – and you don’t even have to wait till the summer to enjoy them. And, as with radio, the pictures are so much better than on television. If your budget doesn’t run to a new book, check out the huge range of £1 books in the Hawkesbury Shop and Head Start Studio, or the free books available round the clock from the Little Free Library box on my front garden wall in France Lane.
Last January, my sorrow at ending my voyage with Captain Acorne was cut short when I realised that “Sea Witch” was the first in a series. I’ve been saving the sequel especially for this winter. So wish me bon voyage – I’m back off to the Caribbean via the pages of Pirate Code. I just wish I could bring back some duty-free.
OVER TO YOU What’s your favourite book for armchair travelling? I’d love to know!
If you’ve enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends!
And if you liked this post, you may also enjoy this anecdote that centres on reading a book on a plane, inspired by my avid travelling: Flight of Fancy: A Cautionary Tale
A report on my appearance on BBC Radio Gloucestershire’s Chris Baxter Show yesterday
“I love this book! It’s festive, fun and a bit silly at times!” said BBC Radio Gloucestershire presenter Chris Baxter yesterday, when I was a guest on his excellent afternoon show. “It gets your imagination going, which stories at Christmas need to do.”
I’d been invited to talk about Stocking Fillers, my Christmas book of short stories, and I was thrilled to hear that Chris had been enjoying reading it on the train on his way to work that morning. We talked about the writing process, when I’d started writing them (high summer! – more about that here), and the challenge of writing short pieces.
After that, I was invited to read extracts from some of my favourite stories, which of course I was very pleased to do. I can now describe the book as “as featured on BBC Radio”, which is a terrific endorsement.
As ever, it was a joy to take part in a BBC Radio Gloucestershire programme, and I came away, as always, so impressed with what a great job they do bringing the community together and spreading goodwill throughout the county, not only at Christmas but all year round.
At a Christmas fair
And this time, there was also something else to take away: a request from Chris Baxter for some ghost stories for next Christmas. Hmmm, I’ll have to give that one some thought…
In the meantime, if you’d like to listen to interview, for the next month you can catch up with it on BBC iPlayer here:
Stocking Fillers is in the left hand window, in the centre at the front
If you’re in Gloucestershire and would like to pick up a last-minute, er, stocking filler, the book’s currently stocked at four local independent shops:
The Cotswold Bookroom in Wotton-under-Edge
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop (branches in Tetbury and Nailsworth)
The Hawkesbury Shop (general village store)
And you can download an ebook from online retailers at any time. (Paperback also available for online purchase.)
Merry Christmas reading, folks!
Julia Forster and me outside the Nailsworth branch of the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, where we’d just delivered new stocks our the books we’re holding
Together with 25 other authors, today I’m taking part in a special Christmas Party Blog Hop, organised by the ever-generous historical novelist Helen Hollick.
Each of us is running a party-related post on our blogs today. You’ll find mine below here, followed by a list of links so that you can hop over and enjoy all the others’ goodie too. Some of them are even offering virtual party bags – a prize for a lucky winner who will be chosen after the hop is over.
First stop is my free short story, one of the 12 lighthearted tales in my new Christmas collection, Stocking Fillers, now available to order in paperback or ebook from all the usual retailers, online and on the high street. It makes gentle mockery of the supposedly perfect Christmas dinner, which somehow never materialises in my house…
Short Story: Good Christmas Housekeeping
Until this Christmas, I’d never believed that anybody really used the kind of fancy Christmas table setting that you see featured in every glossy magazine this side of September.
You know the sort I mean. They’re always pictured in rooms absolutely dripping with home-made swags of holly, gathered fresh from your vast and well-kept garden, of course. Enormous dinner tables for implausibly large family gatherings sport wildly impractical damask tablecloths, the sort of thing that would never withstand the onslaught of gravy, red wine and Ribena that accompany Christmas dinner in our household. There’s usually a breathtaking centrepiece, or even a whole series of little installations running down the table: bonsai’d holly trees; sculptures made from gilt-sprayed pine cones; exotic flower arrangements, each worth about as much as the turkey.
The dining chairs are festooned with gold bows or swathed with tartan. The vast array of cutlery promises at least five courses. Half a dozen crystal glasses suggest these will be accompanied by champagne, white wine, red wine, desert wine, sparkling water (probably Fijian), not forgetting the after-dinner brandy or liqueur.
As to the china, it’s either exquisitely simple, price rising in inverse proportion to the degree of decoration, or it’s a wittily mismatched medley of vintage Christmas designs, picked up for a song at a little market in Provence.
It goes without saying that in such a setting, the conversation among your most intimate friends and family would be no less than sparkling.
I’m never sure when the hostess is meant to find time to set up such an ornate display. After all, the same magazines usually implore us to start the day with a light but elegant spread of fresh home-made bread, croissants and smoked salmon, washed down with Bucks Fizz (not the sort that comes ready-mixed in a single bottle). They make us feel inferior if we’re not also rustling up the most complex combinations of vegetables to accompany our exotically stuffed turkey or goose. Now I’m lucky in that cooking comes easy to me, but I just can’t be doing with the rest of it. I’d rather spend more time relaxing with my family than handcrafting centrepieces for the dinner table.
In the odd spare moment, we hostesses are meant to style our hair to perfection, slick on this season’s show-stopping festive make-up, and slip into the elegant silk cocktail dress that our perfect husbands have surprised us with, alongside our Christmas stocking crammed with designer toiletries, none with a price tag of less than three figures.
Christmas looks rather different in our household. Even if I were to conjure up such a vision of domestic bliss, it would be lost on my husband Kevin and our ten-year-old son Ben, which is why I was pleased to accept my cousin Moira’s invitation to have Christmas dinner at their place. For once I’d be off the hook from feeling a failure for not matching the ideal trumpeted by so many women’s magazines.
We’d never been to Moira’s for Christmas dinner before, but as this year Christmas Eve coincided with her silver wedding anniversary, she and her husband Douglas had invited all the family to celebrate. What on earth possesses people to get married at Christmas, I wonder. Isn’t life complicated enough? It’s like choosing to have your birthday on New Year’s Eve. A normal person just wouldn’t do it.
Alarm bells started ringing as soon as we approached their front door, from which was suspended a picture-perfect wreath of real holly, heavy with clove-studded oranges and tartan-wrapped bundles of cinnamon sticks. Matching ribbons festooned the fairy-lit bay trees that stood sentry on either side of the front door.
“At least you don’t have to water plastic holly,” I said brightly, thinking of our own tatty wreath, which we’ve used for as many years as we’ve been married.
Moira shimmered to the door in a silvery silk sheath dress. Perfectly made-up and accessorised, she had not a hair out of place. As it was her silver wedding, I forgave her. Inside the hall, the banisters sparkled with elegant silver-dipped ivy. It looked as fresh as if it was growing there. Glittering above our heads were levitating silver stars, presumably suspended from hidden wires
Once Moira had taken our coats, she beckoned us into the lounge. On a snow-white tablecloth were dozens of expensive delicatessen canapés, displayed like high art on silver cake stands nestling among a forest of miniature potted Christmas trees and frolicking velveteen reindeer. I felt like we’d been asked to eat Narnia.
“Mum, why don’t we ever have stuff like this at home?” hissed Ben, seizing three cheese straws in each hand.
“Daddy and I haven’t been married 25 years yet,” I improvised, false smile plastered on my face like make-up. And there was me thinking I’d done well to buy Ben festive star-shaped Hula Hoops.
The dining room table was no less impressive. To the right of each place setting stood six frost-topped crystal glasses, which I knew from an article I’d just read was done by painting on egg white with a brush and rolling the glass in caster sugar. To frost so many glasses would require a labour force the size of Santa’s.
The centrepieces had moved up a notch from Narnia to focus on the openly religious. Silvery angels were doing some kind of synchronised flying beneath an ice sculpture shaped like a giant star. I could tell Ben was itching to break a bit off an icicle to eat, so I held his hand firmly in mine, hoping to look like an affectionate parent rather than a police officer carrying out a restraining order.
I was glad the metre-square silver gauze napkin provided concealed my less than glamorous denim skirt, though I knew I’d be wiping my hands on my skirt rather than spoil the napkin. But I admit I was looking forward to having my Christmas dinner cooked for me.
And that’s when things started to go wrong.
“I’m afraid the cream of chestnut soup is just a little scalded,” Douglas apologised as he circled the table, whisking away snow-white soup plates. The smoke billowing from the closed kitchen door suggested his explanation was an understatement. “So we’ll be moving straight on to the fish course.”
At that point a shriek came from the walk-in larder. “Bloody cat!”
Moira appeared in the doorway, fanning her slightly flushed face with a paper plate.
“I’m so sorry, everybody. Barnaby has been a naughty boy with the salmon. Let’s fast forward to the palate cleanser. Douglas, sorbet, please!”
Douglas obediently produced from the kitchen a silver salver filled with tiny tin foil tart cases. “Cranberry sorbet,” he explained when Ben picked one up to sniff it.
“What’s a palate cleanser, Mum?” Ben asked loudly. “Is it like paint stripper?”
“No, not that sort of palate, Ben,” I whispered. “It’s what you eat between courses to get rid of the taste of the last one.”
“But we haven’t tasted anything yet,” he replied at full volume.
Kevin sniggered.
“Please excuse me a moment while I go to carve the bird,” announced Douglas. “Or rather, birds. We’ve got a multi-bird roast. You know, a quail inside a pheasant inside a chicken inside a turkey inside a goose.”
“Does that count as cannibalism?” piped up Ben.
As I shushed him, Moira began to set down snow-white vegetable tureens. I wondered what magical mixtures of vegetables lay inside. She lifted the lids.
“Carrot and garlic puree with caramelised onion. Compote of sugar snap pea.”
Kevin, normally fond of vegetables, sniggered again. I tried not to gasp at the twin pools of orange and green slime. They looked like the stuff Ben plays with in the bath.
“Are you sure that’s not the paint?” Ben hissed. “For the palate cleanser?”
“Chestnut loaf!” said Moira brightly, placing a large red block in front of Ben.
“Is that a brick?” he enquired.
“Saffron potatoes.”
“They’re exactly the colour of my yellow Playdoh.”
Next Douglas bustled in bearing a vast silver platter. The concentric rings in each meaty slice made me think of the cross-section of a tree trunk. This impression was reinforced when I tried to cut into my serving with the only knife I’d yet had occasion to use.
When it came to the Christmas pudding, suffice to say that brandy wasn’t needed to set it alight. It had already clearly been in flames, accounting for the loud bang that came from the kitchen just before the microwave timer pinged. Shop-bought mince pies, hastily produced from packets in the absence of anything else that was truly edible, were the only things of any substance that we ate.
“Well, at least we’re tackling these with a clean palate,” said Kevin in a voice only slightly lower than Ben’s.
To be fair to Moira and Douglas, they did keep filling all six glasses, which is why, by the time we got home, Kevin claimed not to remember anything about the meal. I was glad I’d volunteered to drive and felt entirely virtuous raising a toast over the smoked salmon soufflé and tossed salad that I’d rustled up for tea when we got home.
“To the best Christmas dinner I’ve ever had!” I chinked my glass against Ben’s Ribena. “But maybe next year we’d better invite Moira and Douglas to ours.”
THE END
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If you enjoyed this story, you might like to read the other 11 in the collection. Stocking Fillers is now available to order as a paperback or ebook from all good retailers, on the high street and online.
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Party Bag Time!
I’m pleased to offer a party bag to one reader chosen at random a week after the hop is over. It will include:
a signed paperback or ebook of any one of my books (choose from the book cover images on the home page of my website)
a packet of paper doilies fit for any party table setting
To enter the draw, just leave a comment at the foot of this post. The draw will be made on 1st January 2015. I figured that winning a prize on the first day of the new year would be a nice start to 2015 for somebody! Good luck!
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Now on with the Party!
Thanks for reading my party post – now hop on down the list to enjoy further festive entertainment! (I’ve tested all the links pre-launch, but if any don’t work for you, please let me know by leaving a comment.)
Finally, a huge thanks to Helen Hollick for organising this blog hop. If you need a good read to tide you over the dark nights of the Christmas holidays (or to read on the beach if you’re in the southern hemisphere!), I’d recommend any of hers.
With best wishes for a wonderful party season – and a happy and healthy new year.
(This post was written for the December 2014 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News)
Thinking of summer in midwinter
With the shortest day fast approaching, I’m already thinking about Spring. That’s because I’m starting to plan a collection of short stories due to be released at Easter.
As in the world of fashion, if you’re planning to write topical fiction, you have to think at least one season ahead. I therefore started writing my festive short story collection, Stocking Fillers, while soaking up the Greek sun back in August. At first, it seemed seem strange to be writing about Christmas while wearing a swimsuit. It got easier a couple of weeks later, when I spent a fortnight in Scotland. Although it was still only August, the weather was more like November. But as my daughter always likes to say, “We don’t go to Scotland for the weather”.
Now available to order in paperback from all good bookshops and online as an ebook
Available to buy as an ebook or in paperback from the start of December, Stocking Fillers consists of twelve short stories, all humorous, as various characters prepare for the big day. My favourites include a grumpy middle-aged dad penning his first Round Robin Christmas letter, a little boy wise beyond his years offering Santa time management advice, and a busy mum wondering how on earth she’ll fit in all of her chores before Christmas Eve. Not every character is loveable, and the stories aren’t all sugar-plum sweet, but I hope you’ll find them fun. If you’d like signed copies to give as gifts, just give me a shout and I’ll be happy to add a special message by hand.
Welcome to the Winter Solstice Blog Hop – a grand tour of 30 blog posts, published simultaneoulsly on a shared theme.
My contribution is a short story written especially for the event: Fear of the Dark, which you can read in full below. Then, after the end of the story, you’ll find links to the other 29 posts. Enjoy!
FEAR OF THE DARK
A Short Story for the Winter Solstice
Hitting the “speaker” button on my mobile, I flung it down on my desk, as if physically distancing myself from my sister Kate’s voice would protect me from giving in to her. But I knew it was already a lost cause.
“I wouldn’t have asked you if our usual sitter hadn’t come down with the lurgy, but you know the rule – I can’t have her in contact with the kids until 48 hours after she last threw up, and I can’t sentence the whole family to a sickly Christmas just because of you.”
And so it was that I found myself heading out of town earlier this evening, down unlit country lanes, on the winter solstice, the worst night of the year for anyone who, like me, is afraid of the dark. Kate’s years of legal training were not in vain. She can argue that black is white and people will believe her.
But even if it had been broad daylight, I was still not ready to go back to Kate’s, just six months after last summer’s tragedy.
Well, ok, so it isn’t really a tragedy when a 92 year old woman dies. I’m only allowed to use that word very sparingly at work when I’m writing up the obituaries, and my editor would definitely blue-pencil it in this case. But it certainly was traumatic, most of all for me, because I found her. And the 92 year old woman in question was my lovely Great Aunt Sophie.
It was Midsummer’s Eve and we were all out at Kate’s huge place in the country to celebrate her husband Tom’s 40th birthday. Normally this would be a treat for me, escaping from the confines of my poky city-centre flat to soak up fancy food and drink at their expense. Tom’s family owns a posh car dealership, and what with Kate’s lawyer’s wages too, they’re loaded. For this party, they’d pushed the boat out even more than usual, because they were also celebrating Kate’s promotion to partner at her legal firm. It felt more like a wedding than a birthday bash, and, as ever, I felt like the bridesmaid, never the bride. But I’m not complaining – I could get used to prosecco.
Relatives were invited to come during the day, with friends and work colleagues piling over in the evening. After family games for all ages in the afternoon, there followed a buffet, then dancing to a live band in a marquee in the garden. The finale was a professional firework display, with the pyrotechnics let off from the stable yard giving everyone a fine view from the vast terrace. (It was a good thing there were never any horses in the stables, only Tom’s family’s collection of vintage cars.)
Great Aunt Sophie was at the daytime celebrations of course, as she had been at every family party that I remembered. She’d even been at our house on the night that I was born, and loved to tell me of the first time she saw me, just minutes after I was born. Apparently I had rosy pink cheeks, the loudest of cries and two big tears in the corners of my scrunched up little eyes.
Great Aunt Sophie was so much a part of my life that I couldn’t imagine ever being without her, even though I knew that eventually we must part. Whenever I’d been away from home for long, such as when I went off to university for three years, I’d keep a little bottle of her favourite perfume in my handbag, so that I could get a quick hit of her summery, flowery aura whenever I was missing her. But she showed no sign of giving up the ghost on the day of Kate and Tom’s party, beating us all hollow at cards and charades. She claimed to be unimpressed by Tom’s milestone birthday.
“Forty? That’s nothing! I’m in my 93rd year, I’ll have you know! That’s you twice over, young Tom, plus your Zoe and Archie too.”
Zoe and Archie are Tom and Kate’s kids, aged ten and three.
Zoe was particularly impressed.
“So you’re me nine times over, plus an Archie,” she gasped. “No wonder you get so tired, Auntie Sophie.”
Sure enough, Great Aunt Sophie was flagging by the time the evening guests arrived, and she pottered off contentedly to bed around 8pm, shrugging off sympathetic looks as she made herself her usual bedtime mug of cocoa.
“I’ll have the last laugh on you, my dears. I’ll be fresh as a daisy at dawn while you’re all out for the count nursing sore heads.”
I chinked my prosecco glass against her mug, suspecting from my already spinning head that she’d be proven right.
Next day I awoke at 8.47am, according to the clock ticking away annoyingly loudly on the bedside table in the guest room. Trying to remember exactly when and how I got to bed the night before, I staggered out onto the landing, kicking aside my discarded clothes on the floor, to search for orange juice, my preferred hangover remedy of choice. It was a glorious bright day already, with sun streaming in through the tall stained glass window that dominates the staircase, scattering coloured shadows across the pale parquet floor. I had to turn my head away from its glare, and as I did so, I caught sight at the far end of the corridor of a white heap, crumpled at the foot of the full-length mirror on the wall. Oh God, I thought, someone’s been sick in bed in the night and dumped their sheets there for Kate to wash – charming!
But then, my eyes adjusting to the shadows, I realised that it wasn’t a soiled sheet at all, but a pristine cotton nightdress – and contained within it was the frail body of my Great Aunt Sophie. I ran towards it, thinking I’d help her to her feet after a fall, but before I even reached her I realised she was beyond my help.
Even so, I reached out hopefully to touch the smooth, papery skin on the back of her hand, as familiar as the taut flesh on my own. Worn smooth as old silk by her age, exuding her favourite night-scented stock hand cream, its raised veins were still.
I only realised I had screamed out loud when I saw Tom behind me, reflected in the mirror, standing over us both. He’d staggered out of his and Kate’s room, looking nauseous.
“Christ,she looks how I feel!” he began. “I thought Sophie was on tea and cocoa, but maybe it was her who drank that litre bottle of sherry?”
Kate bustled along from their bedroom, hastily tying the belt of her scarlet kimono.
“Tom, you moron, she’s not drunk, she’s bloody dead!”
Tom’s face turned ashen. He must be mortified, I thought – no that’s the wrong word, change it to gutted.
A more appropriate choice, it turned out, as straight away he dashed to the bathroom to be noisily, violently sick.
I never saw Great Aunt Sophie again.
After the funeral was over – I have to report that the post-mortem decided it was natural causes, by the way – normal life carried on for us all, except Great Aunt Sophie, of course. The only difference for me, apart from Sophie’s excruciating absence, was that I began to find excuses to avoid going back to Kate’s house. I couldn’t bear to see again the place where my beloved aunt had died. Until tonight, I thought Kate had understood. She had at least been letting me off the hook.
Of course, I knew I’d have to go there some time. I tried to bring my objective journalistic judgement into play. Surely I wasn’t going to let the inevitable death of one old lady cut me off from the rest of my family? But why did it have to be tonight, of all nights? The longest, darkest night, which I usually spend at home with all the lights on, the telly on full blast, trying to distract me from my fear of being alone in the dark.
I don’t know why the dark upsets me so, but I can’t remember a time when it didn’t. I always slept with a nightlight on in my childhood bedroom, swapping it for a brighter one after Kate had moved into her own room. I even took my nightlight away with me to university.
Although as a local paper reporter, I’m positively penniless compared to Kate, I’m still happy to spend a sizable chunk of money on my electricity bill every month, just so that I can keep all my lights on. I once went to stay with an environmentally-minded friend who only ever lit up the room she was actually in, turning the lights off and on obsessively wherever she went around her house. If I had to do that in the winter, I think I’d die. Either that, or I’d have to move into a bedsit, so I had only one room to worry about.
I think in a former life I must have been something like a swallow. I need light and warmth to thrive, and I long to fly south as soon as the nights draw in each winter. Then I’d only return when the nights are only as long as the time I need to sleep.
Fear of the dark dominates my life. Although the power never goes off in the city, I keep a wind-up torch and candles in every room, in a place where I know I can put my hand on them, just in case we’re ever plunged unexpectedly into blackness.
What would happen if I had to spend time in the dark? I don’t know, because I’ve never had the courage to find out.
When I got to Kate and Tom’s this evening, my heart was still pounding from driving through dark lanes with no street lighting. How do people live out in the sticks like this, with only the moon and stars to brighten the night? I’d had to drive the last three miles with the map-reading light on in my car to compensate. When I reached their house, I pulled my car up as close to their front door as I could. Thankfully, their security light came on just after I swung the car door open. My foot crunched down on the gravel, sounding for all the world as if I’d stepped on a pile of light bulbs. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
When Kate let me in, I realised she must have been feeling guilty about dragging me out here, as she’d crammed the coffee table full of upmarket snacks – olives, pistachios, kettle chips,Belgian chocolates – alongside a newly-opened bottle of Rioja on the hearth. She knows Rioja is my absolute favourite, even better than prosecco in the winter.
“I can’t drink that, I’ve got to drive home later,” I objected ungratefully, already worrying that those lanes would be even darker after midnight.
“Don’t be stupid, you must stay here, I’ve got the guest room ready,” said Kate.
I thought it better not to tell her that I wasn’t prepared to go upstairs. After all, that’s where the childrens’ bedrooms were. What kind of babysitter was I?
Kate chucked a couple more logs on the blazing open fire before tipping about a third of the bottle of Rioja into one of those big balloon glasses, the comforting sort that sit nicely in your hand in pubs, the kind they give you to make you drink more. I glanced around the room, scanning for candles. There were plenty of big fancy scented ones with multiple wicks in glass jars, the sort that cost about as much as a standard lamp. I felt in my pocket to reassure myself that I’d got matches and my smallest torch to hand.
“We’ve got a taxi booked for half past midnight, so we’ll see you about one,” said Kate, wrapping a crimson pashmina about her shoulders. “But feel free to go to bed before we get back if you want to. That would be fine.”
I scowled. There was no way I was going upstairs. There were shadows and dark corners, and no light switch within reach before you got there. I picked up the Sky remote to distract myself. My self-hypnosis would begin the minute they went out the door.
A slight figure in pink Barbie pyjamas appeared in the living room doorway.
“Hello, Emma,” said Zoe, who recently dropped the Auntie title on the basis that she’s nearly a teenager. (Nearly? She’s 10 – she must be as bad at maths as Kate.) I hadn’t seen her for a few months, and for a moment I was startled by how similar she is to Kate – same long-lashed green eyes, same fine dark hair, falling in shiny waves to her shoulders, which, just like Kate, she shrugs in a particular way when she’s restless or bored. In fact, I always think of Kate as being about 10, as that was how old she was when I first became aware of ages. I must have been about 5. Archie is much more like me: straight lighter hair, pale blue eyes, serious look. Sometimes, when we’re all out together – which has happened much less often lately – people assume he’s mine and that only Zoe is Kate’s. It’s funny how these genes seem to side-step through family trees sometimes, mannerisms and ways of speaking too.
“Archie’s in bed already, because he’s been a bit zonked since having his latest cold ,” Zoe was saying. “I’m off to bed too now, night night.”
She came over to give me and her mum a kiss.
“Please will you tuck me in before you go out, Mum?”
So much for the nearly-teenager.
I awoke, shivering on the sofa, just as the ten o’clock news was finishing. The log fire had dwindled to ash and barely a spark. Hauling myself up off the sofa, I shuffled over to the fireplace to add a handful of kindling then chucked on a couple of logs. The logs weighed much less than I expected from the look of them; they’d probably been stacked in the stables to dry since last winter. What luxury to have so much space. Soon sparks were crackling like gun shot in the grate, popping out of the dried ivy clinging to the bark. I jumped at every tiny explosion.
Turning my stiff back to the fire to warm it, I admonished myself that I still hadn’t adjusted my office chair as I’d meant to. I always seemed too engrossed in bashing out my latest news story to remember to sit with the health-and-safety-approved posture.
It was only while I was surveying the room with a rapidly warming bottom, like some lordly Victorian gentleman, that I remembered that Kate and Tom didn’t bother with curtains in their house. All around me, in every wall, were large, black windows, with views of nothing but the darkest of nights. Why did they need so many windows, for heaven’s sake? I could see one wherever I turned. And I really didn’t want to look.
Ever since we read Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw at school when I was about 14, I’ve had a thing about not looking out of windows after dark. I have a vivid memory of terrifying scenes in which the dismissed, disgraced servants come back to press their faces against the chill glass at night, sinister with some unspoken threat. I cannot think of anything more frightening. I’m not even sure now whether I’ve misremembered the story, but I daren’t re-read it to check, in case it makes my fear worse, not better.
I cupped my hands round my eyes, attempting to create the effect of a horse’s blinkers, screening myself from the threat of the dark windows. I tried concentrating on the telly, but was distracted by my pulse thundering too loud in my ears. I rummaged in my pocket for my matches and stooped down to light an exotic-looking, five-wicked candle in the fireplace. I didn’t like to calculate the cost of each minute’s burning of those five little flames, I just needed all the light that I could get.
Slumping back on the sofa, gazing unseeingly at Kate’s huge television screen, I tried some deep breathing exercises to calm my nerves. The sound of my pulse was just receding when there came another noise – the creaking of a door. I gave a little shriek and looked around, before realising, to my relief, that it was upstairs. It was probably just Zoe going to the loo or getting a glass of water, rather than a burglar or a ghost down by me. I tried to attend to the panel game that was just starting up Channel 4, and to ignore the glass of Rioja tempting me to take Dutch courage. Zoe’s bedroom door creaked again as she pattered back across the parqueted landing to her room.
Then just before the start of Round 3, a noisy coughing started upstairs. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, hoping the noise would quickly abate. The cough was shrill, definitely Archie, not Zoe.
His big sister will sort him out, I told myself, hopefully. They don’t need me upstairs. I’m not going upstairs, anyway. I’m staying by this bright and cosy fire.
As the intense jasmine scent of the candle started to weave its way down into my lungs, a little spluttery cough of my own brought me to my senses. Kate may be my sister, I suddenly thought, but she’s also a lawyer. I daren’t let her son die of neglect just because I’m too afraid to go upstairs.
On impulse, I knocked back half the glass of Rioja. There was still time for it to wear off before I had to drive. Then I seized a pale woollen shawl that was lying artistically draped across the rocking chair and wrapped it tightly around my shoulders, symbolic armour against the dark. Cautiously I crossed hall to the foot of the dark oak stairs and began to climb them carefully.
Please stop coughing, please stop coughing, I urged Archie at every tread. Don’t make me come all the way up there.
I proceeded as quietly as I could, as if silent passage might reduce any risk lurking in the shadows.
Archie went on coughing.
Having reached the dog-leg half-landing, I hesitated for a moment, deciding whether to continue. The higher I went, the darker it got. I couldn’t believe Kate hadn’t left the landing light on. Weren’t unlit stairs a tripping hazard? It wasn’t as if Kate couldn’t afford the bill.
Archie’s coughing was becoming shriller, tighter, grating on my nerves.
At least he’s still breathing, I comforted myself. No real harm done yet. But what was Zoe thinking? Why wasn’t she in there helping her poor little brother?
A tiny streak of moonlight glinted down through the skylight, and as I reached the top of the stairs and turned left towards the children’s bedrooms, I stood stock still. For there, at the far end, who should I see but Great Aunt Sophie, standing in the spot where she had died? Shrouded in white, she stared back at me. Her long pale hair had come adrift from her habitual bun and streamed down her shoulders, thicker and lusher than I’d ever seen it in life.
Who was it that said “Death becomes her?” And why do such random thoughts spring into our brains at the least helpful time?
I didn’t know I’d screamed until Zoe flung open her bedroom door and flicked on the hall light switch, casting a full 100 watts upon me – and on Great Aunt Sophie. Except it wasn’t Great Aunt Sophie at all, but me, staring at myself in the full-length mirror like a frightened rabbit caught in car headlights.
Then I realised that Archie had stopped coughing.
Tearing into his room, with Zoe right behind me, I snapped on the light switch on the wall (no nightlights in this house, cruel mother that Kate is) and dropped to my knees at the side of his tiny bed. Archie’s is the sort of bed that you pull out to make a bit bigger as your child grows. It reminds me of a child-sized coffin. Archie’s eyes were closed, his cheeks pale, his body still, and sticking out of his mouth was a small plastic toy zebra. I grabbed it quick, flung it across the room, and, seizing him by the shoulders, I began to shake him.
“Archie, Archie, for God’s sake, breathe!”
After what seemed like hours, Archie stirred slightly and took a noisy deep gasp. Once he’d puffed it out, he resumed his normal steady breathing, tinged with a snuffly baby snore.
As I lay him gently down on his side, he didn’t even open his eyes. Hoping that my vigorous shaking hadn’t dislocated any bones, I was relieved to see him settle immediately into the easy sleep of a small, untroubled if slightly nasally-challenged child.
Zoe, meanwhile, calmly collected the toy zebra from the other side of the room, gave it a token wipe on her pyjamas, and stood it up neatly beside its twin on the gangplank of Archie’s Noah’s Ark.
“I don’t know why you’re making such a drama out of it, Emma,” said Zoe. “Anyone would think you were scared of the dark.”
I emitted a false little laugh and hoped it fooled her.
“Haha. Back to bed now, Zoe, or your mum will be cross with you.”
“No, she’ll be cross with you, Auntie Emma,” replied Zoe firmly.
Forgetting her near-teenage status one more, Zoe trotted obediently back to bed.
After I’d made sure there were no other choking hazards within Archie’s reach, I pulled his door to not quite closed, to be on the safe side, and turned back to stare at myself in the mirror. With Kate’s pale shawl around me and the shadows cast across my face by the moonlight, I really did look a lot like Great Aunt Sophie. As I stood there smiling at my reflection, I felt strangely comforted. Maybe she wasn’t as far away as I had thought.
As I pottered slowly back down the stairs, I began to wonder what my children will look like, when I get round to having them. Will they get any of Sophie’s genes, and mine, or will they turn out like Kate or Mum or Dad? I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
I finished the Rioja while I was busy writing in the shorthand pad that I always keep in my satchel a garden centre shopping list. I was planning the scented plants I’m going to put in my window boxes this spring: narcissus, wallflowers, hyacinths, and Great Aunt Sophie’s favourite, of course, night-scented stock. When the days are at their longest, I’ll be sitting on my balcony, a glass of something cool and refreshing in my hand. I’m, looking forward to gazing out to the views beyond the city, breathing in the perfumes of the flowers of long summer nights.
The scrunch of car tyres on gravel alerted me to Kate and Tom’s arrival. Kate thought I didn’t notice her fall off one of her designer heels as she emerged from the cab, but I’d seen them through one of the big picture windows in the lounge.
“Kate, had you ever noticed how much I look like Great Aunt Sophie?” I said casually when she came in, hoping that she would agree.
Kate gave me that knowing look that only big sisters can pull off.
“Of course you bloody do, have you only just noticed? Now get to bed, you look knackered.”
“Okay.”
I heaved myself up from the comfortable wallowing position that I’d sunk into on the soft leather sofa, and gave her a light goodnight kiss, though not so light that it didn’t leave a Rioja-coloured mark on her cheek.
“Thanks for having me,” I said, unnecessarily, and trotted off upstairs, not forgetting on the way past the children’s room to give Great Aunt Sophie a little wave in the mirror.
The theme of the blog hop is throwing light amidst the darkness, and it’s down to each author to interpret this brief however they wish. They might unravel a mystery, reveal a little-known fact, or share a short story with darkness and light at its heart – or anything else that takes their fancy.
Whatever the blogger’s take on the theme, you can be sure each post will brighten up this longest, darkest night for us all. (Unless, of course, you’re reading this from the southern hemisphere, in which case you’re enjoying your longest day!)
Huge thanks to the tireless historical novelist Helen Hollick inspiring and organising us all.
And now, pour yourself a drop of your favourite midwinter tipple, sit back and enjoy the journey…. And when it’s over, take heart, for after tomorrow, the nights will start drawing out again!
Happy Winter Solstice!
Take the Tour
Helen Hollick : A little light relief concerning those dark reviews! Plus a Giveaway Prize
January is traditionally the time when holiday companies’ commercials start popping up on our television screens. What better distraction from our post-Christmas overdrafts than sundrenched villas and beaches?
