Christmas Day
Our house had never been so silent on a Christmas morning. In past years, I’d watch as wrapping paper spun through the air like stray fireworks on Bonfire Night. And I’d cover my ears at the deafening squeals of the kids.
They’d normally wake Simon and I up around four o’clock in the morning, prodding our arms and anxiously whispering, ‘Has he been yet?’ And with no hope of settling them back to sleep, we’d give in to the inevitable and follow them downstairs. We’d switch on the Christmas tree lights, and take as much pleasure watching them tear open their presents as we’d had in buying them.
But that year, eight o’clock arrived and the house was firework-free. I dreaded the moment they’d wake up – not just because their dad wasn’t there, but because I was ashamed of how pitiful the gifts waiting for them were. I knew it, and soon they would too.
It was the best I could do, as my choice was simple but bloody unfair – piles of presents, or an empty dinner table for most of January. Nevertheless, I got them up one by one myself and tried to spur them into action.
‘Have we been naughty?’ asked James, when he saw there were only two boxes waiting for him to open.
I sighed. But without admitting Father Christmas was a big fat fib and what lay before them was all Mummy could afford, there wasn’t much I could say to convince them they weren’t being punished.
‘Of course not, darling,’ I replied. ‘Santa just didn’t have much room on his sleigh this year.’
It fell on deaf ears.
All day I tried my hardest to encourage them to wear those flimsy, colourful Christmas cracker hats and play with the crappy plastic toys inside. I even delayed dinner so James could watch the Top of the Pops Christmas special. Robbie said very little, and lay on his bed in his room stroking Oscar instead. Nothing I did lifted their spirits.
What should have been a day of celebration was missing its heart. Instead of the beautiful madness of six, it had withered to one drunken grown-up desperately pretending the Christmas chicken was really a small turkey. I knew what James was asking for when we pulled the wishbone together. Even a bottle of wine failed to bring me festive cheer.
I kept the house phone in my apron pocket for most of the day in the hope that if Simon was still alive, by some miraculous turn of events, he’d call. But, of course, he didn’t.
Suddenly there came a knock at the door and my heart jumped. Before I could say a word, the children leaped from their chairs and ran towards it.
‘Daddy!’ squealed Emily as her little legs buckled beneath her in the scramble. For a second, I thought they were right and chased after them, praying for the kind of miracle you see in Christmas films. But as the door opened, Roger, Steven, Paula and Baishali stood there, not him.
Their arms were full of gifts, but not even Santa could give us the only thing we all really wanted.
SIMON
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, twenty-five years earlier
10 September
I squatted on an upturned wooden box outside the hotel on the Rue du Jean. I placed my plastic hard hat on the pavement and lit my seventh Gauloise of the morning. Catherine had only ever allowed me to smoke socially or on special occasions. So with nobody to complain that my breath reeked of stale tobacco, my occasional habit had become a full-time addiction.
I stretched my legs out and winced as my knee joints cracked. Climbing up and down scaffolding twenty times a day with my hostel workforce was exhausting and took its toll on my body, but the results had been worth every second.
While the capital investment from the Routard’s owner wasn’t enough to restore it to its former glory, I’d thrown myself into my work to recreate something of worth as best I could.
I allowed myself to think back to my first project, a ramshackle collection of bricks and mortar that eventually became our first home. Before she and I could afford a car, we’d passed the cottage dozens of times on our way to and from the bus stop. It was in desperate need of restoration, yet it always caught our eye.
Ivy had crept up its faded whitewashed walls, along the patchy tiled roof, and clasped the chimney pot in its fingers. The wooden window frames had bowed and the garden hadn’t seen a tool in a lifetime. Weeds competed with trees to see which could grow taller.
But I liked that Catherine could see what I saw, a shared vision of its potential: somewhere we could raise a family, our own perfect family. We were living in a tiny apartment above a fish and chip shop when we heard that a gas-meter reader had discovered the body of the cottage’s elderly owner. Her withered shell had remained slumped face down on her kitchen table for up to a month.
Her estranged son put her house up for sale for a snip, like he wanted rid of both it and her memory as quickly as possible. Money wasn’t abundant, what with me freshly qualified with a university BA in architecture and employed at my first job with a small firm. Meanwhile, she was window-dressing at a department store in town. But we calculated we could afford the mortgage repayments if we scrimped. There’d be years of work ahead of us before it matched the image we’d painted of it in our heads. That didn’t matter – in fact, nothing mattered but buying the house.
Once our solicitor had handed us the keys, not even the stench left by a decomposing carcass put us off. We simply covered our noses and mouths with tea towels and toasted our first house with a bottle of Babycham in the hallway. We had something to build on of our own, which neither of us had experienced before.
As I stared at the progress I’d made in restoring the Routard, those same feelings of accomplishment and excitement rushed through me – the knowledge you are on your way to creating something flawless. Suddenly the voice I’d first heard in the woods the day I left Catherine made itself known: ‘Do I need to remind you of what happens to all perfect things?’
I shook my head, my euphoria evaporating in an instant.
‘It’s only a matter of time before they stop being perfect and destroy you.’
October 18
I lifted the sledgehammer over my head, swung it towards the door handle and smashed through the lock.
Bets had been placed on what secrets lay behind the keyless door in the Routard’s mysterious storeroom. Skeletal remains, valuable artwork concealed from the Nazis, an extensive wine cellar or perhaps a parallel universe were all jokingly considered.