‘What?’ I ask, confused.
He looks me straight in the eyes, suddenly deadly serious. ‘Trust me. Time to go. I know you have more questions, but don’t worry, you’ll see me again. I guarantee it.’ He turns back to the women, smiling again. ‘Now, ladies. Will it be three bags of chestnuts, then?’
‘I do like your tie,’ one of them says, and the watch-seller gives me a what-did-I-tell-you smirk.
I turn and start walking, feeling possibly more confused than I did before. I am still no clearer as to what is happening, or why. But something about the firmness in the old man’s voice when he said ‘Time to go’ keeps me moving forward. I glance back over my shoulder, half expecting him to have disappeared, but he’s still there, nattering away cheerfully with the old ladies.
It’s only when I get back into the house that I remember why I left in the first place: mustard. I take my coat off and hang it on the banister. It’s only me who likes the stuff anyway; I’ll just tell Mum that I’m fine with gravy.
I walk back towards the kitchen, still feeling so dazed that it’s like I’m on autopilot. The door is half open, and I can hear Mum and Daphne chatting away over the rattle of pans and the thwack of the knife on the chopping board.
‘My sister is the worst,’ Daphne is saying. ‘All the Christmas presents she buys us are just presents for herself. Last year, she got into Wicca …’
‘What, as in basket weaving?’ Mum asks.
Daphne giggles. ‘No, I wish. A basket would’ve been quite nice. I mean Wicca with two c’s. As in witchcraft.’
‘Gosh. Right. How interesting,’ Mum says, giggling now too.
‘She’s a massive hippie,’ Daff says. ‘I unwrapped her present to me last year, and it was two tiny bells to be used, in her words, “to mark the differences between ritual ceremonies”. I said to her: “Kat, seriously, do you think I’ll be doing enough ritual ceremonies to need special bells to distinguish between them?”’ I hear the potato pan clattering as Mum shakes with laughter. ‘And then when she left on Boxing Day, she just picked them up and took them with her, saying, “Well, if you’re not going to use them …”’
I’m about to push the door open and walk in when Mum stops laughing and says: ‘You know, I’ll never forget the present Ben got me the Christmas after his dad left.’
The chopping noises die out suddenly, and I wonder if Daphne has broken off to give Mum her full attention. My heart starts thumping. I hardly ever heard her talk about Dad. As a kid, it was always me that seemed to bring him up. It feels odd hearing her even mention him.
‘He must have been … what was it? Ten?’ Mum continues. ‘And everything was a bit up in the air at that time. Things were quite tough, really, on both of us. Anyway. In the run-up to Christmas, I started to notice things going missing around the house. Only little things – like my stapler, or the Sellotape, or the pad of Post-its I kept by the phone; stuff like that. But I didn’t think anything of it, because there was so much else to think about. And then, come Christmas morning, there were three presents for me under the tree from Ben. I unwrapped them, and there they were: my stapler, my Sellotape, and the pad of Post-its.’
There’s silence for a second, and then both of them burst out laughing.
‘Oh my God,’ Daphne says. ‘OK, I think you’ve trumped me there. That’s worse than the bells.’
‘I know.’ Mum snorts. ‘But you know, the funny thing was, I was genuinely really pleased to see them. I told him, “I’ve been looking for these everywhere!” and he was so delighted with himself. I hadn’t been expecting him to get me anything – he was only ten years old. I suppose he was just trying to cheer me up, and that was the only way he could think to do it. It’s silly, really. But it made me laugh and feel genuinely happy at a time when I honestly didn’t think I was capable of either.’
There’s another silence, and then I hear Daphne say, very quietly, ‘That’s really sweet.’
‘And this is probably reading far too much into it,’ Mum adds, ‘but years later, I started to wonder if those presents were Ben’s way of telling me that we could get along fine without his father. Almost as if he was saying: “We’ve already got everything we need here. We just have to remind each other of that from time to time.”’ The pans begin clattering again. ‘Anyway. Gosh. Sorry, Daphne, listen to me: one glass of cava and I start boring you with all this old nonsense.’
‘No, it’s not nonsense at all,’ Daff says softly. ‘And I take it back now, by the way. My bells were a much, much worse present.’
They both start laughing again. And as I step away from the door, I realise I need another spell under the cold tap before I can go back in and join them.
Chapter Seventeen
The rest of the afternoon passes in a warm, pleasant, vaguely unreal blur.
Mum is delighted to learn that Daphne is not in the least bit vegetarian, and once we’ve all made a serious dent in the beef, and the bottle of cava, and then a bottle of red wine, we stumble woozily through to the living room and slump onto the sofas in front of the fire.
For the first time in a long time, I actually feel good about myself, even if it’s for something I did when I was in primary school, and which – let’s face it – essentially amounted to stealing some stationery and then giving it back again.
Daphne nuzzles into my shoulder on the sofa, and at this moment, everything between us feels so good – so right – that it’s hard to believe it will ever go wrong.
The watch-seller’s comment about questioning why I’ve come back to these particular moments keeps swirling around my brain. I missed that conversation between Mum and Daphne originally. Daff never even told me about it. Is that why the old man was so adamant that I went straight back home; so that I’d overhear them, and remember that I wasn’t always a screw-up of a son? Mum shoots me an affectionate glance from her armchair, and I decide that now is not the time to analyse it. I’d rather just bask in the way it made me feel.
Unfortunately, though, I don’t get long: within a few minutes of us sitting down, the doorbells rings.
Daff stirs and sits up. ‘That’ll be my dad.’
My stomach clenches tightly, because I suddenly can’t bear the thought of her leaving. I want to stay like this, just for a little longer. I want to pause everything and remain in this weird, perfect bubble, before the future happens and everything between us warps and fractures and turns rotten.
But of course, I can’t.
Mum leaps up to answer the door, and we follow her, and there’s lots more wild flapping of jazz hands as she pulls Daphne’s bewildered-but-pleased-looking father in for a hug.
While the two of them swap animated pleasantries across the doormat, Daff sneaks a kiss onto my lips and smiles. ‘Today was great,’ she whispers. ‘Really great.’
‘Yeah, it was brilliant.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘Merry Christmas.’
She kisses me again, and then she’s gone – down the path and into the car. And I’ve got no choice but to watch her go, not knowing where – or when – I’ll be the next time I see her.