12 Days 'til Christmas ✓

chapter eight

"Oh, Beth," she murmurs as I cry into her shoulder, a forceful surge of tears as though I've just unstoppered a tap. Mum holds me in a tight hug for a full minute, until the flood becomes a leak, and then not much more than a sniffle. I push my glasses away to scrub at my eyes and she passes me a fresh tissue from her pocket. You can always rely on Debbie King to have what you need.

"I made you a cuppa," she says, passing me one of the steaming mugs as we sit down. She puts her warm hand over my icy fingers. "How're you, Beth? Are you all right?"

"I'm okay. Thanks, Mum." I extract my hand to lift the mug, using it to warm myself up.

"I hate to think of you all alone at this time of year." She pouts, shaking her head. "You know you can come and stay with us. We'd love to have you around, baby."

I glance around. It's chaos here, midway through poorly-timed renovations that mean the conservatory's out of action and the kitchen's a mess, the sitting room filled with everything that had to be cleared out.

"I love this time of year, Mum. You know that. And I'm not alone," I say, realising I've yet to tell her about the Casper debacle. Her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.

"You're not? Have you met someone?"

"No. I'm not interested in that right now." My standard answer. The way I see it, love is something you stumble upon, not something you search for, and it happens to be a while since I last stumbled upon it. "You know Casper, from Java Tea?"

"Hmm." A thoughtful frown creases her forehead. "I don't think so."

"You do. You said he reminded you of a puppy with an over-excitable tail. Brown guy, curly black hair. Kind of short."

"Oh! Yes! I remember him. He's a sweet thing." Her eye shine as she sips her tea, and I know she's picturing us together. My mother's a sucker for love. Where she doesn't see it, she imagines it. "What about him?"

"His boyfriend broke up with him and he needed somewhere to stay. So I said he could stay with me. It's quite nice, having someone else in the house. Even though I forget he's there half the time. It's only been a couple of days."

Mum gives me a knowing look, that little eyebrow wiggle, the quirk of a smile, and I can't deny her insinuations with any strength because I felt something last night. Maybe it's only because it's been a while since I've been with someone, or because he looked so good in the light of the fire, but there was a spark. A one-sided spark, most likely, but a spark nonetheless.

"Well, this is the season of love," she says. Before I can protest, she holds up a hand and adds, "Even if it isn't, I'm glad you're not alone, Beth. I know, I know, we're all coming to yours for your birthday"—I love that she calls it that, that she has always put my birthday ahead of Christmas no matter what I say—"but it makes me happy, knowing you've got some company. As long as he's a nice boy."

"He's a very nice boy," I say with a laugh, forever grateful that my mother knows how to be here for me without making today entirely about my grief. "He's great. You'd like him. Funny and a bit sarcastic."

She grins, and then leaps up when a loud timer goes off. "The cake! Hold on one second, hun."

Scurrying around the kitchen, she pulls out two plump, perfect sponges and sets them out to cool by the window before returning to me as she pushes her hair off her face. "Sorry, you know me. If I don't do it the second the timer goes, I'll forget and then it'll be burnt shards of rock-solid cake for us."

"That's for us?"

"Yes!" Her blue eyes sparkle when she smiles. "I'm testing out a recipe for the St Mary's charity bake sale next week and I thought I'd probably see you today, so what better time to practise? Anyway, anyway, what were you saying about this boy? What was his name again?"

My mother's a chatterbox, if that wasn't obvious. She can rattle off a hundred words a minute with ease, stopping only to eat or breathe, or wait for the answer to a question. But that's not to say she's a bad listener or she's self-absorbed. She cares so deeply about all of us, and she's always armed with the best advice, and the best ears to vent to. She just likes to talk.

"His name's Casper, he's almost twenty-five – oh! We share a birthday, actually."

"Oh, how lovely! Another Christmas baby! That explains his name!" Each of Mum's sentences is punctuated with joy, ramped up extra high to offset the undercurrent of today. It takes a moment to process what she just said, and my eyebrows pull together when I hear it.

"What? Casper? That's not Christmassy. It's a ghost name."

Mum laughs, wagging a finger at me. "You're not up to speed with your nativity, my little Bethlehem. Casper's one of the three wise men. Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar. I think, of all the names, his parents chose wisely."

Oh. My. God. All this time, all this time, I didn't realise. I didn't make the connection. Four years of ghost jokes could have been four years of Christmas jokes; wise man jokes; jabs about gold and frankincense and myrrh.

"That is incredibly valuable information."

"You'd have known that if you'd read the Gospel of Matthew," she says.

"Ah, yes, I'm a bit rusty on the gospels."

Mum tuts. It's not a real tut, though. There's no judgment behind it. My parents are not so much religious as they are spiritual, a clarification Mum's made many a time when my sisters and I have picked apart our plentiful issues with the bible.

Casper's a wise man, I think. It's exactly the sort of stupid distraction I need today. Cake with my mum, and a new way to take the piss out of my new housemate's name.

"If you're living together now," she says, "can I meet him?"

No harm, no foul, right? I shrug and say, "I guess. I'm picking him up from Java Tea at seven. We could go earlier and have a drink, if you want. That's getting kind of late tho-"

"I'd love to," Mum interrupts. "It's a mother's prerogative to suss out the strange men her little girl's living with."

"Even if her little girl"—I try not to choke up on the words—"is almost twenty-four, and has been living alone for four years?"

"Especially then," she says sagely. "You know I don't like to interfere, but I do like to be able to keep tabs on all my chicks."

"Speaking of keeping tabs on your kids, where's the one that lives here? It's weirdly quiet," I say. It's a Sunday so Paisley's not at school, and unlike Juneau was, she isn't the kind of sixteen-year-old who spends her life floating between parties and sleepovers and day trips with friends.

"She and Dad took the dogs for a walk. I thought it'd be nice for you and me to have some quiet time together. Quiet time"—she holds up a knife—"with cake. Just let me put it all together."

Perfect, I think. I can't bear to be mournful. What happened could have broken me, and it did, for a long time. It could have ripped my Christmas spirit from me, scarring my favourite time of year with the most awful tragedy imaginable. But it didn't. If anything, I throw myself into it even more.

It's a memorial. A time of celebration. A reminder to love out loud, to pour my heart and soul into the bright festivities of the darkest months, to be a Christmas cracker with unabashed pride because it makes me happy. It's as simple as that. Christmas makes me happy. I lost sight of that for one year, one season lost to the deepest sorrow I'll ever know, and that was enough.

I can deal with Casper's grinchiness; his hatred of the songs and films I adore; his aversion to tinsel and baubles and red-nosed reindeer. I so want him to see the light, but if I can't change his mind, it's not the end of the world. I've dealt with an awful lot worse. 

*

a bit of a heavier chapter today. I hope you liked it; I'm loving reading your comments about Beth and Casper! 🎄♥️