Chasing Pavements

Installment 2

Chapter 2. Kin

Of course it was Maggie that opened the door when he arrived on Christmas Eve.

“Jamie!” His little sister’s voice shot up a few octaves as she said his name. Then she seemed to remind herself to calm down, that he didn’t share her enthusiasm for Christmas or any other family gatherings. “Well, don’t just stand there, come in.”

He stood rigid on his father’s doorstep, Maggie eyeing his awkward posture with amusement. She was accustomed to his last-minute hesitations. But what could he do? Every cell in his body knew where he was, and every fibre of his being wanted to turn around in the direction he had come. He didn’t want to spend a single hour here, let alone over twenty.

He didn’t want to walk into the house that was no longer his home.

That was probably why Maggie always answered the door when he knocked – somehow she was the one person he couldn’t ignore, tune out completely. It had something to do with her stubbornness, her too youthful-looking face with the wavy, blonde, shoulder-length hair, and big blue eyes. Like a child rather than the twenty-year-old she was.

Or perhaps it was her annoyingly persistent voice that never shut up until she got her way.

“Merry Christmas, Jamie,” she said in her hyper tone as he finally stepped inside the threshold – he had no other choice, now that she had seen him. “No presents this year either, I see,” she continued, shaking her head, feigning disapproval when she saw his empty-looking backpack and nothing else around his person. “You’re still exhausting that tight-black-jeans-and-white-T-shirt look then?” she commented, looking him up and down. “They look new though, been shopping?” she muttered, more to herself because Jamie didn’t answer such questions.

“Maggie,” a vile voice whipped out from the living room, “is that your brother?”

“Yes, mum,” Maggie replied as she grabbed Jamie’s arm and dragged him through the hallway and towards the lounge. “Jamie’s here.”

His sister pulled him to the centre of the room that he didn’t want to be in, didn’t want to think about. So he blocked it out and focused on the silence in his head. Muscles clenched tight and eyes fixed on the floor by his feet, not really seeing it, Jamie knew that everyone in the room – his parents Peter York and Tanya Davenport, his step-father Tom Davenport – had turned towards him and Maggie. But he didn’t want to consider the scene before him, one he had been a part of every year, though only in the flesh. Whenever he came here, Jamie tried extra hard to shut out the world.

“Ah, Jamie darling!” His mother’s grating voice registered with him before the sight of her. Because his mental eyes had closed, he had no idea where she appeared from, like a bat out of hell. If only it was as easy to cotton-wool his mental ears. “You’re finally here,” she proclaimed almost wildly as she stumbled towards him, an empty wine glass in her hand. “We were about to… search party. Very last minute… as usual. Minutes before Mary calls everyone for dinner. Your timing is, as always darling, impeccable.”

She was drunk. At least she wasn’t high. Still, she had no right to say Mary’s name like that – sneer it – intoxicated or not.

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart!” his mother said as she flung herself towards him.

Jamie took two quick steps back and Maggie caught the woman by her shoulders before she fell on her face. Shame. At least his sister let go of his arm.

So his mother was high after all. She did say she needed to be both drunk and high when returning to her ex-husband’s house for Christmas on Maggie’s insistence. Jamie wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to deny Maggie her obstinate wishes. If only he could consume alcohol and drugs before coming to the Hertfordshire house that he had grown up in. Or a sedative. But who knows how that would affect his song-writing? Or the lack of, at the moment.