Christmas at the Log Fire Cabin: A heart-warming and feel-good read

‘I haven’t got it yet, Mum.’

‘When do you find out?’

‘Friday.’

‘Well, they’d be stupid not to make you restaurant manager. You know the place inside out.’ She takes my hand and squeezes it. ‘Who else would do such a good job?’

I smile at her, surprised to find my throat tightening with emotion. Mum’s default mode is generally prickly and defensive these days. She’s rarely so openly affectionate. ‘I hope you’re right, Mum.’

She smiles. ‘Of course I’m right. You’ve given everything to that place. It’s only what you deserve.’ She sets off on a winding assault course to find the kettle, weaving around wobbly landmarks and walking over a rustle of newspapers that haven’t yet migrated to one of the towers against the wall.

I stare around me, taking in the full extent of the nightmare. I try not to look, usually, because what tends to happen is, I start noticing things that surely even Mum wouldn’t be sad parting with. (Most of it is useless tat, to my eyes anyway, but stuff like the growing stack of washed-out tin cans she’s keeping ‘just in case they come in handy’? I mean, really? So then I’ll start hinting about possibly disposing of them to make space for other things, at which point a heart-twisting mix of seething anger and tearful vulnerability will appear on Mum’s face, and I’ll know to stop because I’ve gone too far. Then I drive home feeling sad, guilty and utterly frustrated because I’ve racked my brains and I really don’t know what to do to help her.

The one time I gently suggested she might want to speak to someone about her collecting (I wouldn’t dare call it hoarding), she stormed away into the bathroom – the only room with an operational door to slam – then wouldn’t take my phone calls for a week. She apologised eventually but I haven’t dared be so direct with her since.

Mum was a doctor specialising in cardiology before she and Martin divorced and she went to pieces.

The only hearts she’s interested in these days are the cheap, ornamental kind with cute slogans on them.

Harrison and Mum tend to give each other a wide berth these days. He and I had a shouting match over Mum – the only heated argument we’ve ever had – when he said wasn’t it time I took the situation in hand and cleared out all the clutter myself instead of letting her fester her days away in such a hell-hole? I couldn’t make him understand that Mum has always had a will of iron and that if she digs her heels in over something, there is no one on this earth – not even me (especially not me) – who can shift her.

She was pregnant with me when she started her medical degree, and it’s a mark of her steely determination that she gave birth during the Easter holidays and was back at uni along with all her classmates when the new term began. Despite baby me keeping her up at night, she still managed to pass her exams that first year with flying colours.

I don’t know how she did it without any help and precious little sleep. I always imagine her sitting in a little pool of light at the kitchen table, poring over her medical books at some deathly hour of the night, flicking the pages over with one hand while managing to soothe and feed me at the same time. Having a tiny baby to take care of was never going to stop Donna Patterson, as she was then, in her quest to become a doctor.

When I was one, Mum fell in love with Martin Ainsworth, her next-door neighbour. At least, I think she loved him. She must have, in the beginning. But I can only really remember the rows.

Until I was twelve, I assumed he was my dad because neither he nor Mum ever told me any different. I couldn’t understand why we didn’t have the close sort of relationship my friends had with their dads. I was desperate for his approval but I never quite managed to please him and I thought it was because I wasn’t bright enough or funny enough or well behaved enough. There were times when I almost managed to convince myself that it was just the type of person he was – always harshly critical of everyone – because he was like that a lot of the time with Mum, too. She could never do anything right, either.

But deep down, I always knew it was my fault he didn’t love me enough.

When I found out – at the age of twelve – that he wasn’t actually my biological dad, a lot of things that puzzled me about him finally made sense. I wasn’t his real daughter and he must have resented me being there, particularly because I ate up so much of Mum’s time and love.

Mum fell to pieces after he left and they divorced, which surprised me. I thought she’d much prefer the peace that reigned in the house once he’d gone. I certainly did. When Martin was there, it sometimes felt like we were inhabiting a war zone, never quite certain from one moment to the next what was about to rain down on our heads. Not literally. Martin was never physically abusive. But emotional abuse, I discovered, can feel just as wounding.

When he’d gone and it was just Mum and me, I could finally relax.

It was alien to me at first. I marvelled at the peace, picturing the inside of my head as smooth and silky soft, like the new lilac throw on my bed, instead of the jumble of painful chaos it contained when Martin lived with us.

Being older now, and having had time to reflect, I can see that he struggled right from the start, bringing up another man’s child. He was a jealous sort of person anyway, and I was a constant reminder to him of Mum’s first love. It was never going to be a solid basis for a harmonious family life.

That Christmas when I turned twelve, Martin was working away and I met my real dad, although I didn’t realise at the time that this was who he was.

Christmas that year was wonderful.

No arguments. No stern expectations. No worrying that I was doing things wrong and would upset Martin and ruin Christmas. We just had a fun time, me and Alessandro, doing lots of silly and exciting festive things. Mum said she was pleased I had a good time but she hung back from joining in. I have a clear memory of her standing with her arms folded in the doorway, biting her lower lip, watching as Alessandro and I hammed it up in the kitchen, singing along to Slade as we cooked Christmas dinner together.

Even now, looking back, I get a lump in my throat, remembering how hopeful and excited I was to discover that this fun-loving, kind, affectionate man was actually my real dad. This was how my life was supposed to be. This was how it would be from now on! Of course, he had to return to Italy because that was where he lived. But he would come back to see me, I was certain of that.

I don’t think Mum was planning on telling me he was my biological dad. When he came that Christmas, she introduced him as a friend from university, but after he’d gone, I kept badgering her about him, asking lots of questions. Even at that young age, I could feel the tension between them and sensed there was something more to their relationship than just friends.

I was also puzzled by the feeling that I’d met Alessandro once before. When Mum introduced him, I thought I recognised his face, although I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I’d seen him. When I mentioned this to Mum later, she said I couldn’t possibly have met him before because he lived in Italy; he must just remind me of someone because that sometimes happened. It still nagged at me, though.

Eventually, Mum just came out with it and told me he was my biological dad and that she’d got pregnant when she was on her gap year in Naples. That, of course, produced a flood of questions from me, along the lines of why didn’t they stay together and why did my dad wait so long to come and meet me? I could tell Mum wasn’t comfortable revisiting the past, so eventually I stopped asking questions and just accepted what she kept telling me – that she and Alessandro were both so career driven, it could never have worked between them, and that while Martin might not be my biological dad, in every other way, he was. He’d been there for me all my life – all those years Alessandro was absent. Very gently, she told me I shouldn’t count on seeing Alessandro again. He had a life in Italy and who knew when or if he would return to England? I think she just wanted to protect me from being hurt.

But deep down, I knew different. We’d had such a brilliant time together. Of course Alessandro would want to come back and see me.

For a full year, I looked forward to Christmas with a lightness of spirit and a happiness in my heart that I’d never felt before, convinced he would return. I knew without doubt that we’d have an even better time than the previous year. I was going to let him read the Christmas diary I’d written about the amazing time we’d spent together, and I’d saved up lots of funny stories during the year to make him laugh.

I was so naive.

I learned a cruel lesson that year. Daydreaming can be so dangerous when the reality turns out to be heartbreakingly different to what you imagine.

Alessandro never did come back for me.

‘Tea?’

I look up, dazed. Mum is holding out a mug.

Deftly whisking away the tears, I paste on a smile, hardening my heart to the memories, as I always do.

Mum frowns. ‘What’s wrong?’ She’s immediately on the defensive, thinking she’s upset me. ‘I’m going to have a bit of a tidy-up tomorrow, so you don’t need to worry about me.’

I shake my head and take a gulp of hot tea that burns my mouth. ‘Good, good.’ These days, I go along with her pretence that she’s going to get around to clearing up the place. I know she won’t. And that’s why I will keep coming round every day. To make sure she hasn’t toppled the huge stack of medical books piled up on the side table, knocking herself unconscious with The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Diagnosis. (It gives me nightmares, that tower of hardback books, but Mum point-blank refuses to move them, saying that she might need them for reference.) Or that she hasn’t accidentally set one of her revolting stuffed parrots on fire. Actually, that would probably be a good thing.

If I don’t laugh about it, there’s a danger I might start weeping and never be able to stop.

I take a deep breath and change the subject. ‘We’ll need to talk about Christmas Day. When I should collect you and bring you over to ours.’

It’s going to be just Mum and me this Christmas. Harrison’s dad died earlier this year and his mum lives in Spain, so Harrison is flying over to join her for the festive season. It’ll be strange not to be together on Christmas Day.

Mum waves her hand. ‘Oh, there’s plenty of time for that,’ she says, even though there really isn’t. I know she finds the festive season hard. I suspect that if she had her way, she’d elect to stay here with her pot noodles for company. She hates thinking she’s a burden to me. But I’d never want to spend Christmas without her.

I feel suddenly overwhelmed with sadness. If I were ever granted a wish by some passing fairy godmother, it would be this: Please help Mum to move on with her life the way Martin has …

*

On the short drive home, I think about relationships and how it’s so difficult to know if you’ve met the right one for you. Mum thought she had, but how wrong she was.

I’m happy with Harrison, and I know the feeling is mutual. We’re quite different in many ways but they do say that opposites attract, don’t they?

Everyone should have a hobby, and Harrison is fascinated by Britain’s industrial heritage. He reads weighty tomes on the subject (weighty in the physical sense, as well as the intellectual – they’re the sort of books that come in really handy if a door needs wedging open). And he particularly enjoys photographing manhole covers. He says there’s a wealth of fascinating history right under our feet that people don’t even notice.

I must admit, it took me a while to get my head round his passion for manhole covers. But after a weekend in London dedicated to showing me many fine examples of cast-iron street furniture, I can sort of see why he’s interested. (Well, actually, I still struggle. I’d rather have gone to Madame Tussauds, to be honest. But that’s just me. Embarrassingly lacking in intellect. We did have a brilliant full English next morning, though.)

To be fair, it’s not just manholes. Harrison will also drive a fair few miles to see a good coal-hole cover, and the occasional drain grating. At first, I thought it was a really weird hobby to have. But I’ve been online and it absolutely isn’t! You’d never believe it but there’s actually a whole army of ‘gridders’, as they call themselves.

This morning, over breakfast, he was telling me that he’d heard about a particularly fine specimen of drain cover in cast iron somewhere along Ribblesham High Street. (Interestingly, not all drain covers are made of cast iron. Concrete is also used. And it’s a little-known fact that manhole covers date back to the era of ancient Rome, which is obviously a very long time ago. I know these things now.)