e i g h t
*
I didn't tell Casper the truth. I didn't lie to him, necessarily, but I do have a plan for today. It's just one of those things that I don't know how to talk about very well with anyone except my family, especially not in a minute-long conversational break with a guy I, admittedly, don't know that well. Someone who didn't know me five years ago.
Of my three messy break-ups, the first was by far the messiest, and the hardest one to think about, and I know without a doubt that my life would have gone in a completely different direction without it. Even if we had broken up a day later, an hour later, nothing would be the same. I wouldn't be parked alongside Saint Wendelin's oldest church, for one, hands white around the wheel several minutes after I've turned the engine off.
My phone buzzes. It takes a moment to properly register, and a moment more to warm my fingers enough to unlock it, to see a text from my mum.
MUM: thinking of you baby. love you <3 i'm in all day if you want to pop over for a drink!
That sounds good. It doesn't matter that almost all I've done today is have a drink, from my two coffees this morning to my mocha at Java Tea. I always have time for a drink with my mum, especially on the fifteenth of December. It takes almost a full minute to type out my reply when autocorrect seems determined to misread every word I type and my hand is stiff from the cold after fifteen minutes of sitting here in chilly silence.
ME: im at st mary's now. can i come over in an hour or so?
Mum's quick on her phone, the only person her age I know who types with both thumbs rather than one awkward finger, and I still haven't moved an inch when I get her reply.
MUM: of course! i'd love to see you! xx
I send back a heart and throw open the door, pulling on a pair of gloves as I crunch through the snow in heavy duty boots that keep my feet warm even though the temperature has dropped down to five degrees. After a brief respite earlier, the snow is falling once more, adding to what must be four or five inches covering the graveyard and the tops of most graves. Some of the older ones are almost completely buried beneath undisturbed mounds of pure white; the most recent graves are invisible. It would be easy to walk across them, but I know my way around the cemetery.
The wind is painful, nipping at my cheeks as I head towards the northeast corner, trying to pull my scarf up over my mouth and nose without exposing my neck. It works, but it means fogging up my glasses with every breath until I can't see where I'm going, and I have to sacrifice heat for vision.
Not that I need to see to find my way to the right grave, the one with the most devastating engraving. It kills me every time I come here, to see the date of birth and the date of death. The 15th of December, 2014. They're identical. Just like my girls would have been.
They were. I couldn't tell them apart when I named them, names I had chosen months earlier when I'd learnt I was due to have twin daughters around Christmas, if I made it to thirty-seven weeks. Robin and Noelle. Their names are right here in front of me, carved into the stone that marks the grave they share. My ex, once he came around to the idea of being a dad, persuaded me away from Holly and Ivy. My parents took his side on that one.
That was the last time they took his side; it was the last time he had a strong opinion on anything relating to the girls for the next three months, until he decided he couldn't do it after all. Ten days before Christmas, five years ago, he broke up with me. Ten days before my nineteenth birthday. It came out of nowhere, a blow that knocked the breath out of me in the middle of a coffee shop. He bought drinks and we sat down, two weeks before the twins would be considered full-term, and he told me it was over. He didn't want to be a dad; he didn't want to be with me. He was going to go away for a while; he was sorry; he was so sorry.
I don't know how many times he said that. It all blurred together after a while, his words tumbling over each other on their way to my ears until several minutes had gone by and I processed what he was saying.
It's my fault my girls died. I never should have got back in the car when I was so upset. I wasn't crying; there were no tears blurring my vision, but I was numb with shock, right down to the bone. I felt like the road had been whipped out from under me, and then it was. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention; maybe I was going too fast; maybe it was just bad luck. I hit a patch of ice, less than a mile from my parents' house, and woke up to the news that despite emergency surgery and the best efforts of the best doctors and nurses the hospital could offer, my twins hadn't made it.
Now they're here. Memorialised by a headstone I had to choose when I should have been choosing baby clothes; a font I selected for their grave rather than their birth announcement.
I think that's too much to dump on Casper right now. Maybe another day. He'll find out sooner or later, if he ever takes a closer look at my Christmas tree, with two baubles dedicated to my two babies; he'll realise if he comes into my room and sees the tiny plaster casts of feet that never walked, hands that never grasped.
But not yet. Today, I will grieve alone on the fifth anniversary of the day I lost my daughters. I'll cry for them here, until my tears freeze on my cheeks and I can't see through the condensation on my lenses, and then I'll go and spend time with my family. I'll imagine what it'd be like to be the mother of a couple of rambunctious five-year-olds, and the ache of missing them will be so great that there'll be a moment when I can't breathe; my mother will do her best to comfort me when really, all I need is to get through it, year after year.
And then, at seven o'clock, I'll pick Casper up from work and laugh at his expression when I put on a Christmas film. I'll cook a spaghetti bolognese because it's easy, and I never feel up to much on the fifteenth of December. We'll share a bottle of wine and he'll complain about Julio putting up Christmas decorations, and all the while I'll be making sure I can see my two favourite baubles. Pip made them when she and her siblings first opened their stall: clear, snow-filled glass, one painted with a robin above her name in cursive, the other with a sparkling snowflake for Noelle.
That's how I imagine today, anyway. But there's no use imagining how a day will go. Anything can happen.
*
It takes thirty minutes for me to work up the effort to leave, long after I'm frozen to the core. I don't leave anything at the grave. Nothing can survive in this weather. The snow is enough. By the time the car's warm enough for me to feel my fingers again and I've stopped shivering, I'm almost at my parents' house, driving along the same stretch of icy road where I lost control. The first time after the crash was hard, but I forced myself to keep going back, to conquer it before it could grow into some insurmountable thing.
Now it's routine. I barely let it into my mind as I sail towards the warm, comfortable house I grew up in, with my favourite festive playlist blasting out a bit of Andy Williams. When I pull into the driveway behind my mum's car, I suck in a deep breath and take a moment to check my emotions. I'm okay, I think, and I get out.
Mum opens the door before I reach it. She looks like she belongs in a holiday film, wearing a cake batter-spattered apron with flour in her mousy, greying hair, and her hug is as comforting as wrapping up in a blanket to watch an old favourite.
"Hi, baby," she says, her words muffled by my scarf.
No matter how okay I feel, a hug from my mum when I'm the slightest bit low is enough to start up the waterworks again, my throat tight with the acute ache of trying not to cry. Mum pulls me inside and shuts out the cold, leading me into the kitchen where the Aga pumps out delicious heat twenty-four seven. The debris across the island countertop is proof that she's baking a cake, and I can smell that irresistible scent along with the gentle aroma of chai tea.
"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! 🎄♥️