In the car on the way home, I glare out the window.
‘I know that was humiliating, but it’s for the best,’ Mum says. ‘We’ll come up with some boundaries so it can’t happen again.’
‘We didn’t do anything!’ I say. ‘I wish you’d listen to me!’
Mum pats my knee. ‘You want some pancakes? We can stop for pancakes.’
***
Christmas Eve dawns still and sticky a few days later, like the world outside is holding its breath. Our Christmases have always been quiet, even when we lived at our house. We always went to church on Christmas Eve, which I complained about but actually didn’t mind. I loved the candles and the hymns and the smell of worn wood and old paper.
Mum had been brought up religious, but now only went to church at Easter and Christmas time. She’d sung in the choir as a teenager, although she was too shy to sing for us now.
Mum plays Christmas carols on her old, portable CD player, and Taylor and I take turns in the bedroom to wrap our presents. I wonder who Dad’s buying for; I wonder if he bought the present, or whether it was just another thing Mum had to do to pick up after him.
‘Done,’ Taylor says, coming out of the room, looking glum.
‘What?’ I ask.
She pokes me and goes and sits down on the couch, just as there’s a knock on the door of the annex. ‘Yoo-hoo!’
Muriel stands on the little doormat, wearing Christmas earrings and a t-shirt with a reindeer on it. ‘You coming to the Christmas party?’
‘The what?’
‘At the pavilion,’ she says.
‘What time?’ Mum asks, coming up behind me.
‘Five,’ Muriel says, smiling at us both before wandering off. She’s wearing elf slippers with bells on the toes.
‘That’ll be nice, won’t it?’
‘What about church?’ I ask.
‘We can go to this first,’ Mum says, but her voice is flat and I wonder if we’re going to church at all this year.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask.
‘Lying down,’ Mum says.
Dad spends a lot of time out in his hammock, now. And I think he’s relieved to get away from us, particularly in the run-up to Christmas. He’s even slept out there a few times, although nobody’s ever mentioned it. Not out loud.
Mum and Dad don’t talk very much these days. But three times I’ve seen them dancing. Nothing flashy, nothing energetic. Just the two of them swaying in the annex or out near the hammock, in the dark. To music that I suppose must mean something to them, although to me it’s just the sort of background stuff that’s been played all through my life.
‘Why do you dance?’ I ask Mum as she settles down behind her sewing machine. As soon as I’ve said it, the words feel wrong, inadequate. I want to know why she dances when her feet are so sore from work. I want to know why she dances with Dad when she’s too angry to look at him properly most of the time. I want to know whether they whisper things that I’ve never been able to hear, or whether they come together and dance and part all in silence. There’s so much you can’t get from books.
‘It makes me think of all my happiest moments, Stell,’ she says, not looking up from her sewing machine.
‘With Dad?’ I ask. I think of how much I’ve been pestering them to talk to each other, but maybe there aren’t words for everything they need to say.
‘Some of them,’ she says, fanning out the fabric.
***
The Christmas Eve party in the pavilion is a blur of crackers and mince pies and bad music and even worse t-shirts. There are more people than at the garden night, and even with all the portable fans on, it’s dizzyingly stuffy and I end up sitting behind the pavilion in the place where the snake bit Jube. Matthew’s whipper-snippered it down to the dirt and I trace shapes in the dust with my fingers. I think about going into Richard’s lean-to, but know it will be suffocatingly hot.
‘We’re going to the church,’ Taylor says, appearing from around the edge of the pavilion in her netball skirt.
I stand up. ‘Dad coming?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t think so.’
Taylor and I fight over who’s going to sit in the front seat and the little purse I’d made for her falls out of her pocket, and I’m so touched that I forget to hang onto the doorhandle and she swings into the car, triumphant. Dad’s standing outside the annex as we pull away and I wonder what he’s thinking.
The service at the church is the same as it always is. I see Clem’s mess of hair and his mum’s sleek bob a few pews ahead. His mum had sung with mine in the choir when they were young. I don’t think she sings anymore, either.
I wonder what she said to Clem about missing his birthday. Or if she said anything, or if Clem had just been presented with another roll of cash with not even a card. I think about what she said, about the way Clem looks at me. It’s alarming how wrong she is about her own son, thinking that we’re anything other than friends. Clem’s not interested in me – he doesn’t exhibit any of the eighteen classic signs I read about in The Unspoken Language of Love. For instance, he never ignores me and the book explains in a lot of detail how if a boy ignores you, it means he likes you. He also smiles a lot when he looks at me and the book clearly states that if a boy likes you he’ll gaze moodily off into the distance a lot and not smile at you, at all. I’d have explained it all to her, if she’d given me the chance.
Mum hums a little during the gaps between songs and the sermon. I’ve never noticed her do that before. I recognise snatches of songs that she dances to with Dad and I wonder if she’s thinking of him.
After the service, we mill around outside while Mum chats to some of the other ladies she’s known for years. Normally, Taylor rushes her home – wanting to watch the Christmas Eve High Life special that’s always on – but tonight she just leans against the side of the church and plays with her hair.
I feel a tug on the back of my top. ‘Price.’
Clem has damp, wild hair. He’s wearing a terrible shirt covered in cartoon reindeer that his mother bought him a few Christmases back. He stretches and I see that he’s wearing the stupid belt I’d made him.
‘I’m not going to ask if you’re alright,’ he says, tugging his shirt back down. He stands so close that the toes of our shoes touch.
‘Good.’ Neither of us moves. I think of dancing, of Mum humming. Of things that can’t be captured properly with words.
‘Stell! Taylor!’ Mum calls, already at the edge of the car park.
Clem is slow to step away. When he speaks, I can smell the candy-cane sweetness of his breath. ‘See you tomorrow?’
He’s wearing too much cologne.
I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know how to explain that everything has changed too much. I stop myself panicking and give him a weird, forced smile. ‘See you, Clem.’
‘But what about tomorrow?’ he asks.
I stride quickly away and pretend not to hear him, even when he calls my name again, loudly enough to carry to where Mum and Taylor are now waiting beside Mum’s car.
‘What’s he want?’ Taylor asks.
‘Nothing.’