Christmas at the Comfort Food Cafe. Debbie Johnson
slamming open. By that point, Laura has dropped the shower head back into the bath, where it lies, twisting like a snake, sprinkling upwards into the sky.
She looks at her mum, guilt written all over her face, and feels tears sting the back of her eyes.
Her mum has tinsel wrapped around her head like a crown, and is wearing an apron in the shape of a fat Santa’s body. There is a big wooden spoon in her hand, and she waves it threateningly in the air, as though she might use it like a sword at any moment. Her cheeks are red from the cooker, and there is dusty flour on her fingers.
‘Can’t you two play nicely for five minutes, for goodness sake?’ she says, sounding as annoyed as she looks. ‘All those new toys downstairs and you’re up here arguing and fighting? It’s not very Christmassy, is it?’
‘Sorry Mummy,’ says Laura, staring at her feet and trying not to cry.
‘Aaaaaaaggh!’ screams Becca, soaking wet and almost hysterical.
‘I HATE Christmas!’ she yells, pushing past her mum and her sister and squelching her way out into the hallway.
December 25, 1991
Laura decides that her mum is a bit drunk. Or ‘merry’, as her dad describes it, as they dance around the living room together, loudly singing along with ‘I’m Too Sexy’ by Right Said Fred. They are doing actions as well, pretending they are models strutting on a catwalk, and driving a car. Maybe Dad is a bit ‘merry’ as well, she thinks, watching as he tells the world that he is even too sexy for his shirt.
At the age of ten, Laura isn’t quite sure what constitutes ‘sexy’ – but she hopes her dad isn’t it. She also hopes they don’t get so merry they collide with the Christmas tree, because the living room isn’t really that big, and they don’t seem to be entirely in control of their legs.
Becca sits in the corner of the couch, sulking as usual, rolling her eyes in a way that makes her look a bit like she’s having some kind of seizure, and making gestures of glug-glug-glug with an invisible glass while she points at Mum.
That’s because Mum had a bottle of wine open while she was cooking the Christmas lunch this afternoon, and said she needed it because ‘the dragon-in-law’ was visiting.
That’s her nickname for Laura and Becca’s grandma. She says she means it ‘in a nice way’, but she never says it to Nan’s face, so Laura’s not altogether sure she does. Plus she stayed in the kitchen for ages, saying she was busy, but every time Laura went in she was just sitting at the table, muttering to herself, and pouring another glass. Grown-ups, she’d decided with David, were weird.
She wishes that David could have come over, but his parents have taken him away to Wales. Which is a whole different country and everything. She misses him, and hasn’t even been able to speak to him on the phone to see what he got for Christmas.
He’d been hoping for a Gameboy, and had even carried on pretending he believed in Santa because he thought it would give him a better chance at getting one. Laura is also still pretending she believes in Santa, just because she thinks it makes her parents happy to think she does.
It had been harder this year, because Becca had finally decided that it was all made up. She stayed awake throughout the entire night, and all she heard, she said, was Mum and Dad going up and down the stairs, next door’s cat yowling, and some random drunk people going past very late and setting off a car alarm.
Plus, Christopher Eccles at school – who had three big brothers – had laughed at her when she even mentioned Father Christmas. Becca wasn’t keen on being laughed at, especially by Christopher Eccles, and she’d punched him in the face and run off to hide in the bike shed.
So now, Becca is mega-tired and in a mega-bad mood. Nan and Granddad have gone home, and Mum and Dad have decided to have a party of their own, and she’s really annoyed that she got a Girl’s World styling head and a Polly Pocket Country Cottage playset when she’d actually asked for nothing apart from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys – she’d drawn circles around them in the Argos catalogue and everything.
Laura has decided that the most sensible thing to do is ignore Becca and carry on making friendship bracelets from the set she got for Christmas. She plans to make one for David and one for Danielle and Sarah out of her class, and maybe – maybe – one for Becca too. Because leaving her out would be mean.
The music has changed and that Dizzy song is on now. Mum and Dad are whirling around, shouting about how their heads are spinning, and laughing out loud. Dad comes over and tugs Laura up by the hands, spilling her bracelets on the floor.
‘Come on, join in!’ he says, starting to spin her. ‘It’s Christmas! And it’s you girl, making me spin now…’
Mum spins her way over to Becca, and tries to pull her to her feet as well. Becca doesn’t want to join in, though, and instead she wriggles out of Mum’s grasp and runs off up to her bedroom.
Laura doesn’t hear it, because of the music and the dancing and the laughing, but she knows there will have been a door slam. Even at eight, Becca is really good at door-slamming.
By the time the song finishes and all three of them collapse onto the sofa, a bit sweaty and a lot happy, Becca storms back into the room.
‘I didn’t want this!’ she yells, lobbing her Girls’ World head onto the carpet. It rolls around for a bit, like a decapitated blonde, until it comes to rest beneath the Christmas tree, where it totters, red lips facing the ceiling. Laura sees that most of the shiny synthetic hair has been brutally hacked off, leaving bits sticking out in tufts, and that there are now just gaping holes where the eyes should be.
Becca stands in the doorway, hands on her hips, hair wild and tangled, brown eyes full of angry tears. She probably expected more of a reaction, but in reality, Mum and Dad are a bit too ‘merry’ to blow their top at her, even if she is behaving like a brat. A brat who likes killing blondes.
‘Crikey,’ says Dad, his chest puffing up and down after all the dancing. ‘That’ll be a good story to tell at your wedding.’
‘I’m never getting married! And Santa doesn’t exist, because if he did, he’d have brought me turtle stuff! And I HATE Christmas!’
December 25, 2000
There has been a lot of dancing in the Fletcher home this Christmas. The kids are older, and the fridge is well stocked with giant pork pies and Black Forest gateaux and multiple packs of lager, nestled next to Mum’s Baileys.
Nobody gets out of bed at 5am to check for presents any more, and Dad doesn’t have to spend the first half of the day with a screwdriver in his hand, searching for yet another pack of Triple A batteries.
The girls have their own rooms, so there is less fighting, and Laura has her own fiancé, which is a whole different story. David – the fiancé in question – has been at the house all day, with his Labrador, Jambo the Second. Even Jambo got in on the party, jumping up and down and woofing along to ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’
David and Laura did lots of joke-dancing to S Club 7 songs, and a smoochy to ‘Never Had A Dream Come True’, and Mum and Dad did mock line-dancing to ‘Man I Feel Like A Woman’, and everyone leapt around to Robbie Williams being a Rock DJ.
Everyone apart from Becca, that is. Becca had had a tough time recently. She’d split up with her boyfriend Shaun, and taken it hard. Nobody else in the family could quite figure out why she’d taken it so hard, as they’d only been together for a few months and always seemed to be arguing anyway. Even Laura couldn’t get anything out of her, apart from a mouthful of bad language and a bedroom door slammed in her face.
But since the split, Becca had been sulky and sullen and had apparently forgotten how to operate a shower or use shampoo. Her skin was blotchy and sore-looking, her hair glued to her head with grease, and she spent as much time as she possibly could either asleep, pretending to be asleep, or, Laura suspected, indulging in substances – some legal, some not – that would help