Make My Wish Come True

Juliet folded her arms and looked at her. ‘If you have to …?’

Okay, that hadn’t come out right. ‘I meant, if you need me.’

The haughty look on her sister’s face told her she needed Gemma about as much as she needed a hole in the head. The realisation hit Gemma like a bullet to the chest. No wonder she avoided coming here. Juliet wasn’t interested in creating some balance in their relationship, and this … This was just another point-scoring exercise, with Gemma cast as the loser right from the outset.

Well, this time Gemma had some ammunition of her own to throw. ‘You know why I stay away? You really want to know?’

‘Enlighten me, o wise one …’

That sarcastic, supercilious tone Juliet often used on her, and only her, got right up her nose. ‘Because even if I do the right thing, I do it the wrong way. Even if I try, I haven’t tried hard enough. It’s exhausting being your sister! I can’t be the person you want me to be, because the person you want me to be is you! I’m not you, Juliet. And, guess what, I don’t want to be!’

Uh-oh. Maybe she’d gone a little too far with that one, because Juliet went very, very pink in the face and she seemed to be struggling to form a coherent sentence. Gemma’s eyes widened as Juliet marched right up to her and poked one beautifully French-polished nail in her chest.

‘Well, maybe I wish I could be as selfish as you are! Maybe I wish I could bugger off to the Caribbean and leave Christmas to someone else for once. God knows, I deserve it!’

As Gemma stared back at Juliet, her brain and mouth empty of words, she realised how much older her sister looked. How much more tired. There were new lines round her eyes and her highlights hadn’t been touched up in months. She hadn’t noticed earlier, because Juliet always looked so polished, and she supposed she always expected her to be that way, but looking at her now was like looking at one of those paintings made of dots – from a distance it all looked so put together and pretty, but close up it was a bit of a mess.

This wasn’t just some usual Juliet rant about family responsibility. Something was wrong. Something was really wrong. And it looked as if it had been building up for months and no one – not even Juliet – had noticed it.

Gemma had never really believed in bolts of inspiration from on high, but that’s what happened to her in the following seconds. A blinding moment of clarity.

‘Maybe you should,’ she said.

‘Maybe I should what?’

She looked Juliet straight in the eye. ‘Bugger off and leave Christmas to someone else for once.’

Juliet stared at her. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘You’re right,’ Gemma said, standing up and meeting her sister at eye level. ‘You always have to do it. Maybe it’s time someone took over.’

Juliet’s mouth twitched and Gemma couldn’t tell if she was going to laugh or cry. ‘And how – excepting angelic intervention – would that happen?’ she said, with more than a touch of desperation in her tone.

‘Take my plane tickets and go to St Lucia for a fortnight.’

Juliet stared at her sister. ‘Have you had an aneurysm or something? I can’t just drop everything, leave my kids behind and flit off to the Caribbean for a fortnight.’

Gemma stared right back at her. ‘Yes, you can.’

She shook her head. ‘No.’ And then she shook it some more. ‘That’s the kind of thing you do, Gemma. It’s not me. I can’t. And what would I do about Christmas? I’ve already invited everyone! I can’t cancel on them less than a fortnight before the big day. Who’ll cook the dinner and everything?’

‘I will,’ Gemma said, looking deadly serious. ‘We’ll swap. You can have my Christmas and I’ll do yours.’

That’s when Juliet began to laugh. And not just tittering giggles; she threw her head back and bellowed her amusement out until her lungs were sore and her eyes were streaming. The kids, who’d very sensibly been hiding out in the living room since the two sisters’ return, came running to see what all the hilarity was about. When Juliet opened her eyes, she found them all standing in the kitchen staring at her. Violet, in particular, looked a little worried. She was clutching on to Polly, who wasn’t fazed at all, just curious. The boys were young enough to join in and laugh along with her, without really knowing what the joke was about.

She took a steadying breath and smiled at them.

‘What’s up, Mum?’ Vi said, her expression watchful.

Juliet sighed. ‘Nothing. Auntie Gemma just said something really, really funny, that’s all.’

‘It wasn’t a joke,’ Gemma mumbled.

A little hiccup of laughter escaped from Juliet’s lips. ‘I know.’

Gemma put her hands on her hips. ‘I could cook Christmas dinner!’

The expression on her face reminded Juliet of when Gemma had been around two and Juliet seven, and Gemma had refused to wear nappies any more because her big sister didn’t. As always, she’d got her way, and, as always, everyone else had been clearing up the messes for weeks afterwards.

‘It requires not only cooking skills, but organisation and strategic planning,’ Juliet warned. ‘You can’t just get up in the morning and wing it, you know.’

Her sister glowered at her. ‘You have no idea what I do all day when I’m at work, do you? Logistics is my thing. It’s what I do best.’

Juliet did her hardest not to start laughing again. And failed.

The younger kids wandered off now the fun was over and it looked like another spat was brewing. Only Violet stayed to hear the whole thing out. ‘Why are you talking about Auntie Gemma cooking Christmas dinner?’ she asked. ‘You’re not going away, are you?’

That sobered Juliet up pretty quick. ‘No, darling. I’m not.’ She’d thought Vi had been the least upset of all her children when she’d had to break the news they weren’t going to be seeing their father over the Christmas holidays, but maybe she’d allowed herself to be fooled by a bit of teenage bravado. She walked over and hugged her eldest, and Violet even let her. ‘Gemma just made a joke about me going on her beach holiday and her staying here to look after you all. It wasn’t anything serious.’

Gemma huffed out a breath. ‘I said it wasn’t a joke! I was trying to be nice.’

‘You are nice, Auntie Gemma,’ Vi said, peeling one arm away from her mother and inviting her aunt to hug her from the other side. Gemma rolled her eyes, but she didn’t turn her niece down. So Juliet and Gemma stayed like that for a few moments, joined by a fifteen-year-old and almost touching, but as soon as Violet released them, she and Juliet retreated to opposite corners of the kitchen, eyeing each other like boxers in a ring.

Juliet kept staring at Gemma, but used a soothing voice on her daughter. ‘Can you go and check what the boys are up to, Vi? It’s gone awfully quiet, and that usually means trouble.’

Violet looked nervously between her aunt and her mother, then left to check on her brothers.

Gemma lifted her chin. ‘I meant what I said. The offer still stands.’

Juliet shook her head. It felt heavy on her shoulders. ‘I know you did,’ she said wearily, ‘and that’s the saddest thing of all. Because if you really knew me, if you really understood one tiny thing about me, you’d know that I’d never abandon my kids at Christmas.’

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_4b3cc2e6-e2f1-5a0a-a5ba-0f67aba2a813)

Juliet woke up with her face stuck to something smooth and flat. And moist. She poked a finger at the edge of her mouth and discovered she’d been drooling. She blinked a couple of times and tried to make sense of her surroundings. The hard thing beneath her cheek was the kitchen table. The overhead light was on and its harsh glare made her want to close her eyes again, but she pushed her body up with her hands so she was sitting up straight and looked around. A heap of satiny fabric and tinsel lay strewn on the table in front of her.

Oh, yes. Polly’s angel costume.

The last thing she remembered was rubbing her eyes and telling herself just another ten minutes and then she’d crawl upstairs to bed, set the alarm for five thirty and then get up and finish it off in the morning.

She twisted her head to look at the clock on the wall. Ten past two. She moved her jaw, loosening it a little. She was exhausted, but that was hardly surprising. She’d always been pleased all of her children had wanted music lessons, but now she was starting to wonder if it had been such a good idea. Not only was there the inevitable ferrying of her brood to and from those lessons, but Christmas brought a flurry of rehearsals, dress rehearsals and finally the ear-splitting performances themselves.

And then there was the baking, the standing behind trestle tables and handing out glasses of wine poured from boxes that she always seemed to get roped into. She was on the PTA of both her children’s schools, and they didn’t even bother asking if she was going to organise the refreshments each year any more. They just assumed she’d take charge, pull together a rota of willing – and not-so-willing – helpers, wave a magic wand and, hey presto, wine and mince pies, orange squash and Santa-shaped cookies would appear from nowhere.

She linked her hands, straightened her arms above her head and stretched to loosen out the kinks in her spine, before yawning wide and long, and then she stared at the mass of half-finished angel costume on the table in front of her.

She just needed to finish tacking the tinsel round the hem, then make a halo out of a mangled coat hanger and more sparkly stuff and it’d be done. Of course, it should have been finished weeks ago, all ready to go, and it would have been – if she’d known about it. But at teatime, while stuffing her face with pasta and home-made tomato sauce, Polly had enquired loudly where her angel costume was.

‘What angel costume?’ Juliet had replied, her heart racing and an icy sensation washing over her.