slumber talk

15: P.O.N.R.

Bright lights, paper snowflakes and over-zealous jingles had managed to creep their way into every car, service station and walkway we came across on the final leg of our foray. We had well and truly tumbled into December now. Today marked 2 weeks since we'd last seen Suddington.

I didn't mind Christmas too much. The season brought back memories of happier times, though I despised the commercialism and the obsession with donating to charity as much as the next person. Battlebricks had housed many a nuclear homestead who donned elf hats and baked cookies and joined the neighbourhood in singing carols at the market square every Saturday – or assisted with organising that damn Nativity panto at the primary school, which everybody was obliged to attend – but their spirit of giving and conscience would usually pack up and disappear at the same time decorations were taken down inside their homes. With that, a couple of months of neutrality would give way to the bigotry and feeble-minded prejudice that saturated the rest of the calendar year. It was why I couldn't blame Tiffs in her cynicism of the faith, or the lifestyle we'd been raised in; its rules had always been bent for the purpose of saving face, and on the back end of it all, the two of us were consistently mislaid.

We knew from a young age we were as far as fate could play us from the traditional family dynamic – but what we did have was a devoted, loyal father who held a life-long belief in the spirit of Christ, and the power of love and redemption. Dad would spend the bulk of his time during the holiday period attending community events and taking care of the steep increase in church-goers, whilst Tiffs and I would focus on hanging cardboard chains and sparkling stars around our small stone cottage, trying new cocoa recipes and attempting to repair the insulation in our aging walls. On nights that got far too cold despite our best efforts, Dad would set up a burgeoning fire and we'd all sleep in the living room, his own back closest to the hearth to make sure neither of us got burned.

I can't really say we got much sleep on those nights. Tiffs was excitable and I was chatty, and in tandem we were far too inquisitive to let our father settle down before midnight chimed from the church clock next door. But Dad was loving, and patient, and kind, more than content to tuck my younger sister into his side as he regaled us with tales of a time before he was Pastor Pieters, before he was even in England, when Christmases were hot and celebrated with swims in the lake and barbequed meats and oil palms instead of stout firs. We'd whisper secrets and share stories and talk about going there some day to see the festivities for ourselves, to waltz through the fields of flowers and finally learn how to make the Malva Pudding Dad botched in a rite of passage every damn year.

We never talked about those dreams anymore. We didn't bring up any of those ideas, or memories, things that might reference a possible reality we had shifted far away from through no true fault of our own. I knew the last 3 years had been painful enough to navigate without making room for patched-up fantasies and consolation plans – but there was a part of me that would never be able to fully purge myself of them. A part that was still feeding a little light and water to those ancient seeds on days when I was better able to regard them, to sift my mind through their soil.

"That sounds pretty awesome, actually."

"I think so." Pulling back the paper from the toastie I'd ordered at the drive-in, I bit into its gummy entrails. "I mean what's not to like. Winter in the U.K. sucks."

"Would you take your mum too?" Hassan settled his to-go cup in the holders between our seats, struggling to secure it as he kept his gaze away from me. The rattle and leak it made as he took the turn on the accelerator sent a waft of cinnamon-flavoured something into the car.

My hefty bite bought me time to respond. Frankly I hadn't been expecting the follow-up.

"Not sure." I swallowed and cursed my peppermint tea for still being too hot to drink. "Not sure if she'd want to, to be honest."