For the Love of Christmas

Walking back to the Mindthetable Table, she lifted the art and architecture books from the glass and placed them on the floor. Next she took the set of sweet little enamel boxes with mother of pearl inlay and placed them on top of the books.

Bracing herself, she bent her knees and lifted the monstrosity.

‘Gawd,’ she wheezed, almost buckling under the weight.

Tottering like Sofie once had around the table, she inched her way out of the room, and then down the hall and out the front door.

The stairs were precarious but she managed to get it out and down onto the street by the force of sheer hatred for the thing.

‘Goodbye,’ she sneered at the table.

‘Excuse me, are you throwing that out?’ said a voice behind her, and she turned to see a cooler, younger version of Jamie.

‘I am indeed,’ she said firmly.

‘Is it real or a replica?’ he asked carefully.

‘Real,’ she said with a smile, and he glanced at her home, and her lovely camel coat, and nodded.

‘Would you mind if I took it off your hands?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Not at all,’ she said with a smile. ‘In fact, there’s a chair you might like as well.’

Fifteen minutes later, the chair and the table were gone and Rebecca felt extraordinarily happy with her decision, just as Jamie probably felt the same about his. If he didn’t want to live here, then he wouldn’t miss his stupid furniture, she thought, knowing she was being petulant but unable to stop herself.

The voice of Rose-Marie rang in her head: ‘If there is anything in your life you don’t like, then change it. It’s simple. Nothing changes, if nothing changes.’

She walked through the house. The dining room had a thin film of dust on the table, and one of the sideboard cupboards was ajar.

Moving to close it, she felt a familiar trepidation that she hadn’t experienced for the past two months.

Herein lies my problem, she thought as she opened it.

It was empty.

She was grateful to Jamie for at least having the foresight to clear it out before she came home, but shame filled her body and her cheeks burned with memories.

This is what you get when you leave rehab, she reminded herself. A wreathless, alcohol-free, deserted family home.

The tears threatened to fall again and she blinked them away.

There was one thing she could change on that list, she thought, and shrugging off her coat, forgetting her jet lag and suitcases waiting to be unpacked, she climbed the three flights of stairs to the attic.

The box of Christmas decorations was light compared to the table she had just disposed of, she thought, as she carried it downstairs to the living room.

The wreath was on top, wrapped in tissue paper to deter dust and moths, and as she carefully unwrapped it, she gently wiped off some imaginary specks of last Christmas.

‘Hello,’ she said to the wreath.

Taking it by the red velvet ribbon, she opened the front door, and found the nail near the top.

She hung it as though it were a priceless painting, straightening, fussing until she was sure it was sitting beautifully.

She stepped back and smiled.

‘Merry Christmas,’ she said to the wreath and, most of all, to herself.

She might be alone but she wouldn’t let that stop her from having her own special Christmas. She might even make some shortbread or even some strong coloured popcorn because she’d always wanted to do that and never had the time.

This was the start of the new Rebecca Swanson: recovering alcoholic, mother, wife – perhaps soon to be an ex-wife, she thought – CEO and, above everything else, a Christmas addict.

Jamie

‘Where is it, Sofie?’ Jamie demanded, trying to keep the anger from his voice.

His temper was part of the problem, Rose-Marie had said during one of their Skype therapy sessions.

‘You fly off the handle so easily, it’s exhausting to live with,’ Rebecca had remarked.

‘So that’s why you drink? Because of me?’ he had said in return, even though he knew it was unfair, and that he was really just deflecting the attention away from himself.

He was stressed, and worried about everything. The last year had felt like life was creeping up on him, about to give him a terrible surprise.

And then Rebecca fell down the stairs.

She lay for two hours until the children and their nanny found her and called an ambulance, and that’s when they finally accepted that her drinking was not just a sometime thing.

‘Come on Sof,’ Jamie coaxed. ‘You were the last to have my phone. I need to check if Mummy has called.’

The mention of Mummy swayed her enough to spill her secret and she looked down at her pink-socked feet. ‘I dropped it,’ she said in a half whisper.

‘Dropped it where, darling?’ asked Jamie in a quiet voice.

‘Rain, not thunder, helps the flowers grow,’ Rose-Marie’s voice rang in his head.

Bloody Rose-Marie and her bumper-sticker sayings, he thought. They resounded in his head like old school songs.

Oscar came rushing inside, a gale of freezing wind making the fire in the grate shudder in protest.

‘I think it’s going to snow,’ he announced.

‘I hope not,’ said Jamie. ‘We have to go back tomorrow.’

He returned his attention to his daughter, who at seven looked like an angel but had the wiles of a teenager.

‘Where did you drop it, Sofie?’ He was a little sterner now.

Sofie looked up and widened her eyes, a tactic she had learned from Rebecca, and he felt himself fill with love for both the females in his life.