‘What does that mean?’
‘It means she tries to help people who have been hurt and to look after people who have been accused of hurting others but haven’t really. Do you understand?’
No, but Carla felt she ought to nod her head anyway in case Ed thought she was stupid.
‘At the moment, my wife is trying to help a man in prison who was accused of murder but is really a good person – or so she thinks.’
‘But why did they put him there then?’
Ed was back behind his easel now, sketching. Carla felt cold without his arm around her. ‘Good question. But she is also upset because her brother’s horse has died.’
Carla made a face. ‘I’m scared of horses. One tried to bite me when we went to the zoo for our school trip.’ Then she remembered the stain on the carpet. ‘Is that why Lily spilled the coffee?’
Ed began rubbing out something on the canvas. ‘No. That’s because I … well, because I did something I shouldn’t have done.’
He sounded so sad that Carla started to jump up to hug him.
‘Please. Don’t move.’
So she sat still again. ‘Can I talk?’
His hand was moving across the page. She couldn’t see it but she could hear it. ‘That’s fine.’
‘I did something I shouldn’t too. I … I chopped up the new Charlie.’
‘Who?’
‘My caterpillar pencil case.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted something better.’
Ed’s hand was moving faster. His voice sounded like it was coming from far away, as though he wasn’t really listening. ‘Well, we all want something better from time to time, Carla. But if we stopped to appreciate what we’ve got, the world might be a better place. Now take a look at this.’
Jumping up, she ran to the easel. There she was! Sitting on the sofa. Her eyes looking straight out. A smile playing on her lips. But her hands! They were twisted together. As though something was wrong, despite her happy face.
‘It shows another side of you,’ said Ed encouragingly. ‘Judges get fed up of chocolate-box paintings. This one, with any luck, might make us win.’
Win? When that happened on television, people became famous! Carla was so excited that when she excused herself to go to the loo, she couldn’t help squirting herself with the perfume on the shelf. She also dabbed on a little of Lily’s lip gloss sitting next to it.
‘That’s a nice smell,’ said Ed, when she returned to her sitting position.
Carla crossed her fingers. ‘It’s just the soap.’ Then, feeling very grown up thanks to the perfume and the portrait, she tried to sit up straight like a proper English lady.
The picture had been sent to the judges of the big competition that Ed had told them about. But it would take them a long time to decide who would come first. ‘We will know by next year,’ he promised, giving her arm a quick squeeze.
Meanwhile, the whole world was in a feverish state of Christmas excitement. Mamma had come to the nativity play where Carla and her new friend Maria were angels. Afterwards, Mamma had cried and said that she wished Nonno could see them because then he might forgive her.
‘Forgive you for what?’ Carla had asked.
‘You would not understand.’ Then Mamma began to weep again. This was embarrassing because they were on the bus on the way home from school on the last day of term. Mamma was in her work uniform, which smelled of perfume.
‘Larry cannot be with us at Christmas,’ she sniffed.
Carla’s heart jumped. Good. ‘Why not?’
Mamma sniffed. ‘Because he has to be with his wife.’
Then the woman in front of them on the bus turned round and gave them both such a nasty look that Mamma began crying even harder. She was still crying when they got home. Maybe, thought Carla as they walked past number 3, her friends might come out to see what the noise was all about.
‘Can we spend Christmas with Ed and Lily instead?’ she asked. Now Ed had explained that Lily was not a murderer, she liked her again. Although not quite so much. She’d upset Ed, after all, and it was he who had drawn her picture.
‘They are going to their own families.’ Mamma’s arm tightened round her shoulders. ‘It is just you and me, my little one.’
Mamma had still not run out of tears by the time that Carla opened door number 24 on her advent calendar. Meanwhile, the Christmas tree which Carla had persuaded Mamma to buy from the market leaned sadly against the wall. Bare.
‘We must decorate it,’ she had pleaded. But Mamma had forgotten to buy tinsel, and besides, they didn’t have enough money. So instead she had hung up her biggest white gym sock.
At the bottom of it she could see now that there were two presents.
‘Larry gave them to us,’ said Mamma.
Then she clutched Carla’s hand. ‘We must go and say thank you to him.’
But it was dark and cold outside. Mamma said that didn’t matter. She would stop crying – ‘I promise, my little one!’ – if only she could walk past the house where Larry lived. So they walked for miles and miles because the bus didn’t come as it was a holiday and drivers need to rest too. Some of the houses they passed were so big that they could have fitted ten of their apartments inside.
And then finally they stopped at a tall white house that went up and up into the sky. Through the window on the second floor shone a light. The curtains were open.
Tears began to stream down Mamma’s face. ‘If only I could be in there, with Larry.’
Carla tried to pull her mother away. ‘Just one moment,’ Mamma said. But she wouldn’t move. Bored, Carla kicked at some leaves while she waited.
‘No!’ Mamma was gasping, her hand to her throat. Carla followed her gaze. In the window stood a little girl, looking down on them.
‘Who’s that?’ Carla asked.
‘It is his child.’
‘He has a daughter,’ questioned Carla with a jolt in her chest, ‘as well as a wife?’
Mamma nodded, her tears flowing faster.
A daughter like her? ‘What happens to them on Sundays?’
Mamma’s arms were shaking so much that Carla had to hold them to keep them still. ‘We are his family then. They belong to the other days. Come, we will go now.’
Together, they made their way back through the streets and past the street lamps and the decorations in other people’s windows. Back to the naked Christmas tree and the two presents in her sock.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Mamma as Carla put hers in the bin without opening it.
‘I don’t want it.’ Her face burned with anger. Larry had to go, Carla told herself silently. He was not good for Mamma. Somehow, she had to find a way to get rid of him. Just as she had done with Charlie.
Even if it was wrong.
I’m glad I’m not dying at Christmas.
It would be too hard for everyone involved.
Bad things shouldn’t happen when the rest of the world is rejoicing.
It makes it doubly hard for those who grieve.
And the memories spoil every Christmas after that.
Is there ever a good time to die?
I certainly never thought it would be like this.
A strange layering of pain and reflection, of recriminations against others, recriminations against myself.
And of course fear. Because I suspect, from the small sounds around me, that someone is still here.
19
Lily
Christmases have always been big at home. ‘Daniel loves it,’ my mother always used to say by way of explanation for the ten-foot-high tree and the stack of presents below. We didn’t have a lot of money, but my mother would save up throughout the year. One time, my brother got a Hornby train set which he proceeded to take apart and then put back together again, ‘just to see how it was made’. It took three days, during which he refused to participate in any family meals, including Christmas lunch, because he was ‘busy’.