Connor stood in the middle of Posy’s sitting room, staring at his reflection in one of the shimmering silver baubles on her tree with his hand on the back of his neck, scratching that same patch of skin. It was in that spot that Cameron had had a birth mark, the only mark by which they could be easily distinguished, and Connor found that his hand went there whenever he thought of the brother he missed with a heart-wrenching ache. Talking to Posy was the first time he had spoken about Cameron out loud in three years, avoiding even sharing anecdotes with his sister, and while he didn’t feel good, his lungs didn’t hurt as much with each breath.
He wasn’t really looking at the tree, his eyes unfocused as his mind tripped over itself to come to terms with the day. For the first time since he had met Posy, she was the one making the drinks despite his protestations, as she had insisted that the least she could do for him was pour a cup of tea and lend him her ear. She had done the latter, and she was in the middle of doing the former, and Connor struggled to snap himself out of the mist that had settled over his vision.
“Here,” Posy said, padding through to him with soft footsteps, and she handed him a floral-patterned mug of milky tea. “Come and sit down.” Her hand rested on his arm. “Please.”
He stepped back to the sofa and let himself down beside her, and he lifted the mug to his lips to inhale the scent of tea that he had grown to love. “Thanks, Posy,” he murmured, and he knew that for the next few minutes, he didn’t need to do anything except enjoy his drink and her company, and that soothed his mind a little.
“No problem,” she said, and she gave him a warm smile that never failed to melt an ounce of his worries. “So, are you going to drive over tonight?”
He looked over at her, catching up with her train of thought. “To my parents?”
She nodded and he took a deep breath.
“I don’t know. God, I don’t know if I can do this.” He dropped his head into his hands and let out a long sigh that sent ripples across the surface of his tea. Posy put her hand on his knee, letting it rest there for a couple of seconds until he met her gaze.
“You can. You need to see your parents. I know I don’t exactly know you and your family, and I really don’t want to step on your toes, but I think it’d help.” She raised her eyebrows with a hopeful smile. “I know Cass would love it if you were there.”
Connor knew that. He knew that every year his sister prayed for him to come home for Christmas and every year, he was absent at the table she sat round with their parents. Right now, she would probably be tucking into the traditional Prentiss Christmas supper of leftovers, mostly cold slices of chicken with the last of the gravy and perhaps a roast potato if she was lucky. Then they would play a game and toast to another merry Christmas, and his mother would share memories of Christmases past.
“We were chatting yesterday,” Posy said, pulling him out of his reverie. “Cass and me. She was talking about how much she misses you around the holidays. If I were her, I think it’d be a pretty awesome present if you turned up.”
Connor could imagine his sister’s face if she opened the door to see him on the other side, in time to spend a couple of hours as a whole family for the first time in eight years, and the thought alone sent a shiver of nerves and anticipation through him. It would make her year, and yet his body and mind seemed to be at odds. He couldn’t bring himself to stand, to walk out to his car and face the forty-five minute drive to his parents’ house. They still lived in the home he had been raised in: his bedroom was still his, slowly evolving as he had. All of his old posters and games were still there as though the space had immortalised him as a teenager.
Cameron’s room was gone though. It had taken his mother a year to come to terms with her eldest child’s death, fifteen minutes older than Connor, but once she had, his room had been the first thing to go. It served as nothing more than a reminder of the person she had lost, and now it was a cosy guest room.
“I can’t leave you here on your own,” he said. “Not on Christmas. I can go tomorrow.”
“Hey, I’m just fine,” Posy said with a chuckle. “I can look after myself perfectly well. I’m only going to end up in bed anyway. In fact, I’m probably going to head up in a few minutes; I’m absolutely pooped.”
Connor downed his tea and pushed the empty mug onto the coffee table and with a sudden surge of determination, he stood and he nodded, and he held out his hand to Posy. When she took it, he helped her to her feet and he pulled her into a hug, her bump a barrier between them as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and she rested her cheek against his chest.
“I’m kind of scared,” he murmured, and she slowly rubbed his back.
“You’ll be fine,” she whispered back. “It’s your sister and your parents. You don’t need to be afraid.”
It wasn’t his family that he was afraid of: Connor adored his parents, the two people who had taken on everything he had put them through, and his sister had been the first person he turned to for years now. It wasn’t them he was scared of: it was the gravity of the situation, of turning up on the doorstep after far too long with nothing to offer but an apology; of listening as his mother remembered the Christmases they had spent as five.
At eight twenty, Posy stood by her front door with a cardigan wrapped tightly around herself as Connor stood on the other side, eyes on his car. He had made it out of the house at her gentle insistence that she would be fine, and his assurance that he would be back in the morning, and now all he had to let go of was her hand.
“Have fun,” Posy said, and she pulled him in for a hug.
As Connor slowly pulled away he said, “Come with me?”
She smiled, and she shook her head. “You need to do this,” she said. “I’ll be right here. But your family is right there, and that’s who you should be with. Go, Connor, and have a merry Christmas.”
“You too,” he said, and she beamed.
“I already did.”
*
The roads were silent but Connor’s car was not. Duke was stretched out across the back seat, too big to get comfortable in the front, and despite being stuck in the house since Connor had walked him twelve hours ago, he seemed pretty happy to doze for the drive. Connor tuned into Radio 1, his sister’s favourite channel, as he made his way down the country lanes towards the motorway. By eight-thirty at night on Christmas Day, most people were already where they wanted to be, tucked up in front of log fires with a good film on TV, or gathered around the table with a board game as they finished off the remains of the day. But Connor wasn’t most people and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove the route he knew so well.
The roads were dark and dangerous at this time of night, when the lack of the sun or even the glint of the moon shadowed the ice that had frozen over the road, and he drove with caution as his eagle eyes scanned everything his headlights allowed him to see. But he was alone, just him and a pre-recorded radio programme for the next forty minutes. Every time that sliver of doubt returned to his mind, he conjured up the image of Posy’s smile and the conviction with which she had insisted he go. And she was right. It would be worth it, for the look on Cass’s face alone.
The minutes whizzed by quickly, a combination of driving a journey he knew off by heart and the sickening fizz of butterflies multiplying in his stomach as he neared the road he knew so well, and he wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. Posy had convinced him that this was the right thing, but Posy wasn’t here right now. She was at home, tucked up in bed alone as she put an early end to her favourite day, and he should have been doing the same in his own house, but instead he was driving through rain that turned to snow.
White flakes swirled down from the sky, highlighted by his headlights like specks of dust, and they fluttered to the ground in the beams from the street lights as Connor navigated his way down the avenues of the city suburbs. He eased up on the accelerator when he came to Fremont Way and his childhood home stood out like a sore thumb. A string of white lights was wrapped around the bare bones of a tree in the patch of front garden, and he pulled up behind Cass’s car with his heart in his throat. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his temples and his knuckles paled from the tightness of his grip on the steering wheel, staring up at his old home.
The last time he had stepped through that door was six months ago, to wish his mother a happy fifty-seventh birthday, and she had thanked him profusely as though he had given her more than a card and a hug. The infrequency of his visits had led to his mother placing even more meaning on each one, and he knew that for her, this would be the cherry on the cake. It was that thought that pushed him to undo his seatbelt and open his door, closing it quietly so as not to disturb the festive celebrations going on up and down the street. Opening the back door, he clipped on a lead and Duke jumped out onto the slushy pavement, nuzzling against Connor’s knees. He recognised the house: he always came along.
The path from the pavement to the front door was one two thousand, one hundred and eighteen centimetres long. Connor only knew that because one summer, he and Cameron had found themselves in an argument about whether or not it was longer than the back garden. Connor had won with his bet of no: the back garden was almost two metres longer, fairly generous for a house so close to the city, and that garden had served him well throughout his childhood. Flanked on either side by tall fences that kept the neighbours out, he and Cam had made dens and had races and taught their little sister how to ride a bike in that garden.
He stood in front of the door, staring at the brass knocker in the middle of the wood, painted a deep shade of red, and the wreath the hung three quarters of the way up. His mother always hung up a wreath two weeks before the twenty-fifth, one of the first signs of Christmas in the Prentiss household, and he gazed at it for a while until Duke whined and without thinking about it anymore, he knocked on the door. Scratching Duke’s head, he swallowed his nerves when they tried to jump out of him at the sound of footsteps on the other side.
It was Cass who opened the door, swinging it open before she saw her brother on the other side and her jaw dropped. She said nothing but she threw herself at him with the force of a cannonball, almost knocking him off his feet, and she held on so tightly that it hurt.
“Happy Christmas, Cass,” he said, his voice muffled against her thick hair that she had let out of its usual braids, and her fingers dug into his back as she hugged him. She couldn’t even bring herself to say anything but she pulled him and Duke into the house and pushed the door, shutting out the cold.
“Who is it, Cassie?” called their father, Neil, and Cass put her hand on Connor’s back and pushed him towards the sitting room. She had tears in her eyes, sniffing behind him, and Connor took a deep breath as he stepped into the room next door. His parents were sitting on the sofa, each holding a class of mulled wine, and his mother’s reaction was instantaneous. Shock switched to sudden tears, her face crumpling as she stood and pulled Connor to her and let out a loud sob against his shoulder.
Connor hadn’t seen his mother cry many times. Sandra Prentiss was the living definition of a strong woman, working long hours while she raised her family and when she had lost her oldest child, she had picked herself up and carried on, but now he felt her shoulders shake beneath his hands as he hugged her and she wept. Behind her, he saw Cass standing with her arms tightly crossed the way she always did when she was trying to control her emotions, and Neil stood beside her with his arm around her shoulders. He had always been a father to Connor, whose own had left before he was even born, and he had never not had the man in his life.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” he said, squeezing her, and she pulled away from him with wet cheeks and a bright beam on her lips.
“You have nothing to apologise for,” she said, and she took his hand to pull him to the sofa. That wasn’t true, but acknowledging the truth didn’t always help. A crackling fire burnt beneath the mantelpiece, on top of which was the last photo all five of them had taken together. Neil had set his camera up on a timer to get a picture of them all in front of the Christmas tree on the morning of Christmas Eve 2012, snapping the perfect family photo with five grins. From the photo, no-one could tell that six hours later, Cameron was pronounced dead. Connor couldn’t tear his eyes from the picture, the last photo of his brother, and his mother followed his gaze.
“Isn’t it a wonderful photo?” She squeezed his hand as they both gazed at the picture, and it was Cass who broke the silence with a sniff as she tried not to cry, and her father pulled her close. Connor swallowed hard and nodded.
“It really is,” he said. Cameron stood between him and Cass, his arms around them, and the three were bookended by their parents. They looked every part the happy family, and they had been. And, Connor realised, they still could be. They still were, if he let them. “God, I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry I haven’t been here.”
She rubbed his back and held him close. “It’s ok,” she murmured. “It’s ok, Connor. You needed your space.” She gave him a weak smile, her eyes watering, and blinked a few times. “You shouldn’t be alone for the holidays,” she said. “Cameron wouldn’t want you to be alone, baby.”
He gritted his teeth and nodded, not sure whether he had any tears left to cry after confessing to Posy. He wasn’t one to cry, usually, but years of keeping it in had clearly taken its toll and his eyes watered as his mother slowly rubbed his back as though he was a child again. “I need a drink,” he said, and his mother nodded as she led him through to the kitchen. On the way, Cass caught his elbow.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “You have no idea how much this means.” She gripped his arm and hugged him again, wrapping her arms around his neck before she dropped back onto her heels with a grin and turned her attention to Duke, crouching to wrap her arms around the giant dog.
In the kitchen, Connor let out a long sigh as his mother fetched a glass from the cupboard and stirred the ladle in the pot of mulled wine simmering on the hob. He leant against the counter and watched as she measured out a drink for him but instead of handing it to him, she set it down on the table and stood in front of him, meeting his eye with her soft gaze.
“How are you?” she asked, her words soft and laced with genuine concern.
“I’m ok,” Connor glanced around at the room decorated with tinsel and wreaths and all things Christmas. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around.” His eyes fell on another photo of Cameron, this one of the two of them with their arms around each other, and his mother craned her neck to look where he was looking. “I know it’s been a long time but it’s still hard,” he said, the words difficult to push out, and his mother nodded. “I don’t know how you guys do it.” He rubbed his palms together and his mother clasped her hands around his.
“I know, baby,” she said. “But we’re all in it together. We’re a family, Connor. Family sticks together, especially at Christmas. I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’s easy, but it helps to talk about it if you’re struggling. Sometimes, even now, it hits me and I feel like I can’t get up in the morning, but I have your dad, and we talk.” The corners of her mouth took a south turn. “I worry about you, Connor, all alone at this time of the year.” Rubbing her hands over his cold fingers, she looked down at his skin beneath her darker tone. “Are you happy?”
He lifted one shoulder, slowly letting it drop as his body sagged against the counter. “I’m getting there,” he said, thinking of Posy. “I just wish I could think about Cam without feeling so awful. I can’t shake that feeling that he should still be here.”
Sandra nodded. “He should,” she said, “but he’s not. And it’s not your fault, Connor.” She knew what her son was thinking, the same thoughts he had been unable to shake for so long. “If it’s forgiveness you need, you know you have it, darling. But…” She trailed off when her voice hitched and her chin wobbled, clutching Connor’s hands. “I feel like I lost both my sons.”
Those words hit Connor like a punch to the chest, cracking through his ribs to bruise his heart, and he pulled his mother close, his arms wrapped around her. “I’m right here,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mum. I really am.”
“I need you in my life, Connor. I can’t lose you, not if I have a chance to turn that around. Your dad and I miss you so, so much. I know I say that every time I see you, but it will always be true.” She stepped back, returning to the pot to top up her own glass and she took a long sip of the spiced red wine. “And I can’t explain to you how much it means to see you today.” Checking her watch, she smiled. “We still have two and a half hours left of Christmas.”
*
Connor sat next to Cass, both of them perched on cushions on the floor, with the coffee table between them. Their parents occupied the sofa, Neil bent over the table as he moved the red counter on the Articulate board. Cass groaned as he overtook the counter she shared with her brother, split into teams of the parents versus the children. The game always got rather heated, especially when Cass couldn’t articulate herself or Connor couldn’t guess, whereas their parents tended to end up laughing at their inability to explain themselves. Connor reached behind himself to stroke Duke, who lay stretched out in front of the fire, sleeping in the delicious warmth. He rubbed his warm belly and took a sip of his mulled wine: it was his mother’s own recipe, one she had perfected, and it did just the job to warm him up from the inside as the fire heated his skin.
“We’re losing,” Cass said with a huff, stating the obvious.
“That’s because you suck at guessing,” Connor said, poking her with a teasing smile. He had loosened up over the past hour, relaxing in his family’s company, and he regretted every holiday that he had missed, building each one up to be more than it was. Their counter was on the object section of the board, and Cass held a stash of cards in her hands.
“Ok, we need to get at least three to beat them,” she said, eyeing up her parents’ position ahead of them. “Get your head in the game.”
Neil turned over the timer, counting out a minute, and Cass flipped over the first card. She grinned at what she saw and Connor stared at her.
“Come on, describe it,” he said.
“Your girlfriend,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Come on! Your girlfriend’s name!” she cried out. “Say it!”
“Posy?” he said, frowning at his sister, and she shook her head with wide eyes.
“Longer,” she said. “Her full name.”
“Primrose?”
“Yup.” She smacked the card down onto the table and moved onto the next one, but she had put her brother off, his head out of the game. “Ok, it’s a slug with a house. Come on. Don’t be thick.”
“Snail,” he said, and she moved onto the next card, though the timer was already halfway done. She was determined though, flipping through the cards in her hands until she found one she could explain.
“Cam’s middle name.”
“Archer,” he said, before he could think too much about the question, and Cass added the card to the victory pile.
“It’s not a freezer, it’s a …”
“Fridge,” he said, just as the timer ended, and Cass grinned at the four successful answers.
“And so we take our rightful place.” She moved their counter ahead, past their parents’, and took the timer from her father. “Ready?”
“Not quite,” Neil said, head tilted to one side, and he looked at Connor. “You have a girlfriend?”
Connor snorted and shook his head, and both of his parents frowned.
“But you said Posy,” Sandra said. “When Cass said your girlfriend’s name, you said Posy. Who’s Posy?”
Connor glanced at his sister. “I figured you’d have already told them,” he murmured, and she gave him a wide-eyed face of innocence, her hands up.
“Not mine to tell,” she said. “I didn’t want to step on your toes.”
“Well, come on then,” Neil said with a laugh. “Who’s this Posy girl?”
“Someone from the village,” he said. “She’s not my girlfriend though. It’s complicated.”
Cass scoffed, arms wrapped around her knees. “Just a bit,” she muttered under her breath, and looked up at her parents. “She’s pregnant. Not with Connor’s kid, before you get too excited.”
Connor sighed. “It’s a long story,” he said, preparing to launch into the unconventional account of his time with Posy. “I was out walking Duke and he scared her and she slipped on the ice and hurt her ankle, so I took her to A&E. The doctor told her to stay off her feet, but her baby’s due next week and she lives alone, so I offered to help her out.”
A warm smile broke through his mother’s confusion, softening her features. “You’re such a good boy,” she said. “I bet a lot of people wouldn’t do that. I take it the two of you get along?”
He smiled and nodded, and Cass butted in when she said, “That’s the understatement of the year. They’re always together. Literally, like, twelve hours a day.”
Connor let out a quiet laugh. “She’s supposed to be off her feet. I need to be around,” he said, though he knew that Posy’s ankle had been fine for a couple of days now, the sprain healed since she had twisted it a week ago. “And like I said, her baby’s due in a week. She shouldn’t be around.”
“And the father?” Neil asked. Connor pulled a face that his parents instantly understood.
“He’s not involved,” he said, his stomach gritting with a deep hatred for the man he had never met, and he hoped never to cross paths with him. “I really like her,” he then admitted, and Cass threw one arm around his shoulder, pressing her temple against his, and grinned.
“He’s in love,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes. “And she’s super cute.” Digging out her phone, she unlocked it and scrolled to Instagram, loading up a picture that she turned to show her parents. Connor frowned at her.
“You have a picture of Posy?” he asked, and Cass smiled at him.
“Yeah,” she said, showing him the picture that depicted Cass and Posy, head to head and beaming, each wearing a paper hat. “We took a selfie, while you were getting potatoes yesterday.”
“Are you guys, like, friends on Instagram?”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have friends on Instagram, you have followers. But yeah, we follow each other. We’re friends on Facebook.”
Connor shook his head to himself. “Wait, you guys are already friends on Facebook?”
Cass shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Christ, Cass. You move fast.”
Sandra spoke up, the game by now forgotten. “She’s a gorgeous girl, Connor,” she said, and Connor smiled.
“She’s beautiful,” he said, “and she’s amazing, and kind, but it’s complicated. She’s about to have a baby: she won’t want to get into a relationship.”
Neil laughed at that, a hearty belly laugh. “God, son, have you learnt nothing?” He put his arm around his wife. “When I met your mother, she was five months pregnant with you and Cam. You think that put me off?” He gazed down at Sandra, and he kissed her. “When she’s the one, you go for it, no matter what.”
Sandra grinned up at him, then looked over at her son. “I fell in love. And when I realised your dad didn’t care that I was pregnant, I fell a hell of a lot harder. It’s a lot easier to raise a baby when you’re doing it with someone you love. If Posy likes you, then it won’t matter that she’s pregnant.” She sipped her wine, draining the dregs of the glass as it neared midnight, the evening on the cusp of ticking over into Boxing Day. “If you’re prepared to be there for her, then she needs to know that.”
After everything he had told himself, and every morsel of advice Cass had thrown his way, that was all he needed to hear. His parents had lived through an identical situation, and his mother’s words were all the convincing that he needed. “I am,” he said, nodding to himself. “I want to be with her.”
Sandra beamed. “Then you need to tell her.”
*
It was one o’clock by the time Connor made it up to his bedroom, which he hadn’t used for almost two years. His visits tended not to last too long, and he had never much wanted to spend the night in his childhood room, but he was exhausted and the hours with his parents and Cass, reminiscing over Christmases past and future, had settled his flailing mind. It was with heavy limbs that he flopped into his single bed and pulled the covers up to his neck. Duke had curled up on the floor after deciding there wasn’t space for him on the undersized bed, finding a cosy spot on the pile of clothes Connor had changed out of.
A few minutes later, as he was dropping off, the door creaked open and he opened sleepy eyes to see his father’s silhouette.
“Hey, Dad,” he said, frowning up at the man. “What’s up?” He rolled over and sat up, switching on his lamp, and Neil perched on the bedside table.
“We never really got a moment alone tonight,” he said, “but I wanted to say thank you. You have no idea how much it means to your mum and me that you came. Cassie said you wouldn’t be coming, but I know how much she hoped you would.” His squeezed Connor’s shoulder and smiled down at him, and he felt like a child again when his father had tucked him in at night, reading a story while he and Cam crowded round to listen.
“I’m sorry I missed so much,” Connor said.
“Hey, no, it’s ok, kid. We all grieve in different ways. I’ll be honest, it took me a while to get used to how vocal Cass was. It always helped her to talk, and she still does. You and I aren’t so different, really. But in the end, I got used to talking about Cam, and remembering him. You’ll get used to it, eventually.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“As for this Posy girl…” Neil trailed off. “The way you talk about her, Con, it sounds like you really like her a lot.”
“I do,” he said, no longer afraid of his feelings. The kiss had sealed that, convincing him that he wasn’t alone in his sentiments.
“Well, you’ve got to go for it.” He patted his shoulder again. “Father to son, man to man, the only advice I can give you is that no matter the circumstance, there’s no point in waiting when you know how you feel. Doesn’t matter if it’s been a week or a decade. If I’d waited, maybe your mum wouldn’t have gone for a sucker like me, and I thank my lucky stars every day that I get to call you my son.”
Connor got out of bed at that point, overwhelmed by the urge to hug his father. He pulled him into a tight embrace, their heights just about level, and he clapped him on the back. “Thank you,” he said. “Merry Christmas, Dad.”
Neil let out a wry chuckle and held his son. “Merry Christmas, son.”
+ - + - +
I hope you enjoyed this chapter - a bit of a family break to put an end to Christmas Day.
P.S. Don't forget to add the #wattpadblockparty book to your library - my prize in the giveaway will be one signed, paperback copy of Cosy Christmas!