***
‘Kris Kringle is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of,’ Taylor says as we walk into the crowded shopping centre.
‘It’s for Mum,’ I say, closing my eyes as the air-conditioner blasts the hair back from our faces. I smother a yawn that Taylor ignores.
‘That’s easy for you to say! I’ve got Dad! Which means you must have Mum. You can’t do KK with only four people. It’s too easy to work out.’
‘Would you just stop?’
‘This is the worst Christmas ever.’
‘Yeah – and whingeing about it makes it so much better.’
‘I’m not whingeing.’
‘You’re so whingeing.’
Taylor takes a deep breath and mutters something I don’t hear over the loud rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ that’s just come on over the sound system. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know what to buy him,’ she says, not looking at me. ‘I may not hate him, but it’s like, I’ve let myself get so mad with him that I’ve forgotten all the things about him that I should know.’
‘He’ll love whatever you get him.’
‘But part of me doesn’t want that.’ Taylor gazes at a blazer in one of the front-window displays. I realise we’re right in the middle of the walkway and drag Taylor into a swimwear shop. ‘Part of me wants to do everything I can to ruin his Christmas.’
‘You know that you’ll ruin everyone else’s if you do that.’
Taylor ignores me. ‘And then I want to buy him something really special and personal to make up for being such a brat, but I don’t even know what he likes, and then I get mad all over again because if he’d behaved how he was meant to and not gotten us into this mess, I wouldn’t have a reason to be so mad and I’d know exactly what to get him. You know?’
‘I know.’
‘I’m just so mad, Stell. I’m so bloody mad.’
‘Me too.’
She eyes me for a moment and shakes her head. ‘You’re not that mad.’
‘I am too!’
‘You’re not.’
‘I attacked that guy at Lee’s party the other week.’
‘Don’t try to distract me! You’re not angry all the time like I am. I can tell.’
‘I am though. I just deal with it differently,’ I say, although I’m not sure it’s true. If I let myself think about things too much and wallow, I get pretty mad. But I’m not mad all the time. Not always. There’s too much other stuff to focus on. But I suppose I’m a lot more actualised than Taylor. I’d just discovered that word. Actualised.
‘We’ll find something, okay? I’ll help you.’
She nods. She looks young, right now. She reaches behind her and touches a very tiny bikini. ‘What would Mum do if we came home with a pair of these?’
‘Well, if her reaction to your netball skirt’s anything to go by, she’d probably have a stroke.’
Taylor sighs and pulls out her shopping list. ‘Alright. Let’s do this.’
***
Procrastination is on my mind the whole way home on the train. I feel like I’ve stopped planning and started procrastinating with the whole telling-Mum-about-the-letter situation. I can’t live with myself if I’m going to start procrastinating.
‘I need new school shoes,’ Taylor says. ‘Before next term. The sole’s worn through on mine. My feet keep getting all wet.’
‘That’s because you don’t buckle them and they scuff!’ Mum snaps.
‘I don’t scuff!’
‘You do, Taylor. I see you. I can’t keep replacing things that you’re careless with. There isn’t the money.’
‘I’ll get fallen arches or something, wearing shoes with holes in the soles.’
‘Where on earth did you get that crap from?’
‘I need new shoes!’
‘Get a job and buy them yourself, then.’
‘Fine!’
‘Fine.’
‘Kelly Russo sent me a letter,’ I say.
Mum goes very still.
‘Who’s she?’ Taylor asks.
‘My biological mother.’
Taylor laughs, like it’s some sort of joke, but Mum just slowly turns around to face me and I can tell that she’s panicking.
‘When?’ she asks.
‘Before we came here.’ My voice is too calm, too measured.
Taylor stops laughing. ‘Are you kidding me?’ She looks from one of us to the other and back again, but I notice this only peripherally. Mum and I stare at each other.
‘I meant to tell you,’ Mum says. ‘Of course I meant to tell you. But you were too young and then you were too old and it never seemed important. You’re ours.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
Mum startles. ‘What?’
‘You meant to tell me what?’ I swallow. ‘Mum, has Kelly sent me other letters?’
Mum presses a hand to her mouth. ‘We were meant to save you,’ she says. ‘We were meant to stop you ending up in a place like this. That was the point. That was the whole point.’
Then Mum covers her face and sobs.
***
Later on, when Dad comes inside and sees Mum crying, he seems to deflate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. And we all look at him and I can’t tell whether it makes me angry or sad that he immediately blames himself for my mother’s pain. He leaves a puddle of rainwater on the floor.
I wait for Mum to tell him what’s been going on, but she doesn’t and neither do I.
He touches Mum’s arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
She violently shrugs him away and mops her face with a tea towel.
I wait for Dad to disappear out of the annex, but he doesn’t. He squats down next to Mum and rubs her back, and she leans into him and cries and cries.
Taylor talks at high speed, but I’m not listening and I’m pretty sure Mum’s not, either. ‘I can’t believe you never told me!’ she keeps saying, her voice getting louder and louder. And she’s making it about her, because everything’s somehow about her. But this time I’m not being drawn in. This time it’s about me.
I wish I’d planned this properly. I know not to be impulsive with stuff that’s this important. I know that and I’d been impulsive, anyway. Mum goes to bed, muttering about a headache, and Dad sits down on the wicker couch and turns the television on low.
A little while later, I crawl onto the bottom bunk with Mum, even though I keep thinking about the letters that I’m pretty sure she stopped me getting. She’s awake and puts her arm around me. ‘What did it say?’ she asks very quietly.
‘Not much.’
‘Oh.’
‘I didn’t mean to make you cry. I didn’t handle it well, Mum. I’m sorry.’
‘I know you didn’t mean to make me cry.’ She wipes her eye with her other hand and I wish I’d kept quiet. ‘I’m just so sorry, Stella. We owed you more than this.’
‘You don’t owe me anything.’
‘If I’d ever thought that this situation was even a possibility . . .’ She shakes her head and I feel her trembling fingers stroking my hair. ‘I love you, Stella. More than anyone. You and Taylor.’