The wish that had me trapped could only have been made by one of four people. Me and Manny left the table before the pudding was served, Oliver had his nut allergy and the kids weren’t old enough to choke down the brandy butter, so it had to be Mum, Dad, Nan or Cerys. Perhaps, if I found out what they had wished for and made that wish come true, I could get myself out of my never-ending noel.
‘Mum?’
I heard something heavy meet something hard, followed by an exasperated sigh.
‘Yes, Gwen.’
‘Is that really what you’d wish for?’ I asked. ‘If you could wish for anything?’
She paused, still with her back to me, her shoulder blades pinched so tightly together she could have held a Christmas cracker without dropping it.
‘That or a million pounds,’ she replied. ‘And Hugh Jackman to bring the cheque.’
Abandoning the sixpence box, I left the dining room and poked my head around the kitchen door where she was already elbow-deep in a sack of spuds.
‘I want to help,’ I said, crossing the threshold into the kitchen. ‘What can I do?’
‘Sod off and stop bothering me?’
‘I’m serious!’ I grabbed a spare apron from the hook next to the pantry and pulled it over my head, glancing down to see I now had the body of a Chippendale. ‘I want to help.’
Mum and her Cath Kidston apron raised an eyebrow.
‘I do! I would have offered earlier but, um, I thought you liked doing it all on your own.’
A disbelieving scoff squeaked through her pursed lips as she pulled potatoes from the sack one by one.
‘Or at least, I never bothered to think about whether or not you did,’ I said, amending my statement.
‘That sounds more like it,’ Mum replied. She tightened her grip on the potato peeler and rubbed the bridge of her nose with the back of her wrist. ‘I’m a sixty-two-year-old full-time teacher with an elderly mother to take care of, grandkids we babysit every weekend and let’s be honest, your dad doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, so when it comes to Christmas, yes I love it, but if I’m being completely honest, I also resent it. Shopping forpresents, wrapping the presents, decorating the house, writing the sodding cards and on top of all that, I have to spend the entire bloody day cooking the bloody dinner while you all sit with your feet up. Why should all of it fall to me, Gwen, why?’
Very, very slowly, I leaned over to remove the sharpened blade from her hand.
‘It doesn’t just happen,’ she added, her Welsh accent getting stronger by the second. ‘All of this, none of it appears out of nowhere. I’ve been shopping for months – months! And what did your dad do? A smash-and-grab around Meadowhall last Thursday night. Took me three evenings to write the cards, an entire afternoon to put the tree up and I’ve been buying presents since January. And the food shopping?The food shopping?’ She paused to launch an unsuspecting Maris Piper across the kitchen. ‘I got into a fight with a woman over leeks.Leeks, Gwen.I slapped them out of the hands of a woman named Sharon because they were the last five leeks in all of Chesterfield and wehadto have them or your nan would have a meltdown.’
‘What leeks?’ I asked, looking around at assorted vegetables that covered the kitchen top. ‘I can’t see any leeks.’
‘Because there aren’t any leeks! She got the leeks and I was asked to leave,’ she shrieked. ‘I can never show my face at the Tesco Extra in Chesterfield again, we shall have to drive all the way to Sheffield or start going to the big Asda and you know your dad hates the big Asda,hates it. All for bloody leeks. I don’t even like leeks!’
‘Were you not supposed to get your veg from the greengrocers?’ I asked innocently. Mum’s nostrils flared and her eyes widened and I shuffled back towards thedoor. I’d confiscated the potato peeler but there were an awful lot of knives within reach. ‘Never mind,’ I muttered. ‘Supermarket veg is brilliant.’
But she wasn’t finished. ‘I don’t spend three months shopping, twelve hours cooking and God knows how many more cleaning up after you all for the good of my health, I do it because no one else will. You asked what my wish would be, there it is, I wish someone else would make this bloody meal for once.’
And with that, she chucked another potato across the room and burst into tears.
‘Oh no, don’t cry,’ I said, awkwardly manhandling her into a hug. This usually happened the other way around and I wasn’t quite sure where to start. ‘Don’t get upset, I’ll help you, I will.’
I gently shoved her in the general direction of the living room and sat her on the settee, lifting her legs onto the pouffe as she sniffed herself back to her senses.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said, pawing at her eyes. ‘Only, I’m so tired and it never stops. I thought one of you would have taken over Christmas duties by now but somehow I have more to do than ever, I never have a moment to myself.’
‘How long have you been babysitting Arthur and Artemis?’ I asked. ‘What’s that all about?’
She flapped her hand up and down as though trying to pull a date out of the air. ‘It’s not every weekend, more like every other weekend. You know how Oliver is, with his golf and his rugby and all that, and he’s as much use as a chocolate teapot at home. Cerys needs the extra time to get on top of the house, you can’t do that with two little kids under your feet, I should know.’
‘And you don’t?’
Mum let out a laugh so loud I was surprised the tree didn’t fall over.