CHAPTER FIVE
‘Look what the cat dragged in.’
Cerys was leaning against the kitchen counter with a tight smile on her face when I snuck back in, frozen hands tucked into my armpits.
‘It would take at least ten cats to drag me anywhere and that’s on a good day,’ I replied, closing the back door then opening the fridge. I shouldn’t have to deal with her without at least a snack. ‘Have you seen Manny?’
‘Upstairs. You’re such a pair of drama queens.’
Do not fight with your sister, I reminded myself as my hands began to ball up into little fists. Her kids are weird, her husband is a frightful shithead and she can’t eat gluten. She already suffers.
‘He didn’t have to be so sensitive, you know.’ Cerys was not nearly as committed to the no fighting rule as I was. ‘That’s what Oliver and his friends are like, they’re always joking about that kind of stuff.’
‘It’s only a joke if it’s funny,’ I replied, my anger rising again. Would it besouncalled-for to plant her face first into Mum’s trifle? ‘Calling Manny names isn’t funny.’
‘He didn’t mean it. Families say things to each other they wouldn’t say to anyone else,’ she snipped. ‘You’re not Twitter, you can’t cancel my husband for one insensitive remark.’
‘Cerys, your husband is an insensitive remark personified. Everything he does is insensitive. Even his breathing is offensive. Really though, have you ever taken him to have his sinuses looked at? I can hear them from here and he’s in another room.’
‘Gwen, areyouall right?’ my sister asked, giving me the kind of look you might bestow on a brave little dog that only had three legs. ‘You seem so tense. Almost as though you got dumped and you’re determined to ruin everyone else’s Christmas because you’re so bloody miserable?’
There was no winning an argument with my sister, never had been, never would be. The best thing I could do was to leave the room before we ended up wrestling under the kitchen table with me slapping Cerys with her own hand and shouting ‘Why are you hitting yourself?’ over and over until Mum came to separate us. Like last year.
‘I might be miserable but at least I’m not delusional,’ I said, stomping out of the kitchen with a chocolate biscuit in each hand. ‘Your husband is a wanker.’
‘And yours is non-existent,’ she shouted back. ‘Better luck next time!’
‘It’s only me,’ I said as I sailed into Manny’s room without knocking. ‘Cerys said you were up here. You’ll never guess who I saw outside and MANNY!’
I should have knocked.
My cousin was sat on the bed with his pants around his ankles, holding his phone at an awkward angle and taking a photo of an intimate part of his body that wasn’t known for its photogenic qualities.
‘Oh my God,Gwen!’ he yelled, ditching his amateur photography session and scrambling for a pillow to cover his privates. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What am I doing?’ I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands at the same time, just to be safe. ‘What areyoudoing?’
‘Writing a letter to Santa, what does it look like?’
‘If you send that to Santa, you’re going to find yourself on the naughty list for the foreseeable,’ I replied as I bumped, shin-first, into every piece of furniture in the room. ‘My eyes! My poor eyes!’
‘Why are you still in here?’ Manny screeched. ‘Get out!’
‘I’m sorry, I’m going. I didn’t see anything and we never need speak about this ever again.’ I stumbled out onto the landing and slammed the door behind me, for the first time in my life wishing I’d stayed downstairs to talk to Cerys.
With my back pressed up against the landing wall, I tried very hard to erase what had just happened from my memory, but I was too late. It was already burned in like the licence plate of my dad’s old Ford Fiesta, theLive and Kickingphone number and that time I came home late and turned on the TV to see Keith Chegwin wearing nothing but a hard hat. Why was Manny taking dick pics on Christmas Day? And more importantly, who was Manny sending dick pics to on Christmas Day? He’d been single forever.
‘Gwen!’ I heard Dad bellow from downstairs. ‘Are you up there? Your mother wants you!’
‘Are you even home if a family member isn’t shouting your name from a completely different room of the house though?’ I muttered to myself as I slunk back down the stairs and into the warm bosom of my family.
‘Can I get anybody anything?’ I asked, poking my head around the door to the living room on my way into the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea? Glass of wine? Cyanide pill?’
‘You can get your coat on,’ Mum replied, clipping Arthur around the back of the head as she attempted to ram his arms into the sleeves of a neon orange parka. Artemis sat on the settee, already in her leopard-print puffer jacket, staring sulkily at an iPad while Dad, Cerys, Oliver and Nan all fussed with their own buttons, zips and belts. ‘We’re going over to Dorothy’s.’
‘But I haven’t had my Christmas pudding yet,’ I protested. ‘Can’t we go later?’
She grimaced as my nephew wriggled away, flapping his arms like a T-Rex crossed with a traffic cone. ‘I’ve cleared it all away now, you can have some when we get back. Can you shout Manny down?’