‘Come off it, I’m too old for wishes.’
‘Humour me,’ I pressed. ‘Please?’
‘Fine, if I must.’ He rapped his walking stick against the ground three times. ‘I would wish to have them all back, even if it was only for one day. I try not to dwell on what I’ve lost but as I say, it’s harder this time of year. Must be the cold air, it makes your skin a little thinner.’
He was right, we all bruised more easily at Christmas. Too many long-buried feelings floating close to the surface.
‘And did you know more people file for divorce in January than any other time of the year?’ he added, catching me by surprise with a firm clap on the back. I stumbled forward a few steps, grabbing hold of a low stone wall to steady myself. The man was determined to see me on my arse before the end of the day.
‘Cheerful thought,’ I replied, rubbing my back. ‘Long dark nights, forced family time, it does make sense.’
‘Not to mention the fact there’s nothing on the bloody telly these days. If me and your mother’d had to find the money to pay for Sky Atlantic when we first got married, we wouldn’t have been together long enough to have you or your sister,’ Dad said. ‘Come on, we should head back before your mother sends out a search party.’
‘We should talk about Uncle Jim and Granny and Grandad more often,’ I said as we turned our backs on the buttery golden walls of Chatsworth House. ‘I bet you’ve got loads of stories I’ve never heard.’
‘Oh, never mind all that, I’m getting soft in my dotage,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Pretend I never mentioned it.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, weaving my arm back through his as we set off for home, my mind whirring with ways to make his wish come true.
After successfully keeping the peace between Oliver, Cerys, Manny and myself for an entire meal, I focused my attention to Dad’s wish. He wanted more time with his lost loved ones, a task slightly more complicated than the one I’d tackled the day before, if only because I very much doubted Dev was as good at resurrecting people as he was at making Yorkshire puddings. There was a limit to what even the best doctors could do. I climbedup into the loft, fighting the very real urge to bin the whole thing off and spend the afternoon in the pub with Dev instead. If this worked and Dad got his wish, I could call on him tomorrow, say hello, catch up. Pulling the ladder up behind me, I felt around on the wall for the light switch. Years ago, there had been talk of a loft conversion, but after one too many episodes ofGrand Designsmy mum got distracted by the idea of an extension (they ended up doing neither), meaning the loft was left with a plasterboard floor laid on top of bare beams with one naked bulb, swinging from the rafters. In other words, it was a death trap and since I was not looking to meet another untimely end, I trod very carefully.
The box of family photo albums was tucked away in the corner behind stacks of dusty old CDs and tapes (Mum and Dad’s extensive vinyl collection having been promoted back into the house proper after Cerys bought them a ridiculously expensive record player last Christmas, despite the fact we’d agreed on a £100 price limit on family presents). Wiping off the top layer of schmutz with a duster I’d brought for exactly that purpose, I pulled out album after album, their spines cracking with the effort of sharing their stories.
Dad never talked about his lost loved ones – the odd mention in passing maybe, but nothing more than that. There was exactly one photograph of my Uncle Jim in the house and that was a school picture of the two of them, high up on a shelf in the dining room. It was the same with Granny and Grandad Baker, just their wedding photo tucked away in the spare bedroom, even though Mum had dozens of photos of Grandad Collins around the house. It was something else I’d inherited from mydad, not so much keep calm and carry on, but pretend it wasn’t happening and never, ever cause a fuss.
When Michael ended things, I didn’t call Manny or my mum. I didn’t trash the house or bang up his car, even though I could have pointed to several country songs as evidence to support that course of action. Instead, I took myself to a hotel, cried it all out on my own, and the next morning, perfectly calm, I texted Manny to ask if I could stay with him for a couple of days. Since then I’d kept myself to myself, avoiding my friends, avoiding my family, avoiding anything that wasn’t work or sleep or streaming services. But, as my colleagues would apparently tell anyone who asked, bottling things up hadn’t really worked that well for me in the long run, and I was starting to wonder if opening up might help my dad as well.
Next to the photo albums was another, newer box, the Sellotape holding down the cardboard flaps still intact. Flicking at the edge of the tape with my fingernail, I peeled it back to reveal a stash of DVDs in clear cases, each marked with a short sentence; Cerys’s First Birthday, Silver Wedding Anniversary, Gwen’s 18th, Manny’sX FactorAudition. All our old home videos, transferred to DVD. Underneath our recent history was a stash of much older stories. Grandma Baker’s 50th birthday, Manny’s Christening, Our Wedding. Everything turned misty as I thought of all the special moments I’d accidentally lost over the years, snapshots of a life I’d lived and loved, but not enough to treat with care. This was love, this box, and it had to be Dad who’d done it, Mum couldn’t even send me a photo from her phone without getting her thumb in the shot. It must have taken him weeks todo it all so why was it hidden away out of sight? Going through them all, one by one, I pulled out the evidence that best supported my case, and slowly tiptoed back across the loft. The last thing I needed now was to fall through the ceiling and break my neck.
‘Famous last words,’ I grunted as I dropped the ladder back onto the landing and climbed down with care.
Everyone but Manny was assembled in the living room, and given the fact I knew exactly what he was doing upstairs in his room, I let him be.
‘Auntie Gwen, you’re in the way of the telly,’ Arthur whined as I knelt down in front of him and very much in the way of the telly. ‘I can’t seeThe Grinch.’
‘I’ll let you in on a spoiler,’ I said, checking the cable that connected the DVD player to the TV. ‘The ending hasn’t changed from when you watched it last year.’
‘Last year? Try this morning. He’s been playing it round the clock since Halloween,’ Cerys replied as my nephew started to scream at the top of his lungs until Artemis invoked sibling privilege and clobbered him in the face with a cushion.
‘I thought we might all watch something else for a while,’ I said, changing the channel to a chorus of groans. ‘Come on, you don’t even know what it is yet.’
‘I know it’s notThe Grinch,’ Arthur said, sulking in a huddle by his snoring father.
‘Thank the lord,’ Cerys whispered.
‘What’s this, Gwen?’ Nan asked, sitting forward as an oversaturated picture crackled into life. ‘Is it a porno?’
‘Why would I show you a porno?’ I replied, aghast. ‘Ew, Nan.’
‘You’re such a prude,’ she said, crossing her legs demurely at the ankles. ‘I hear they’re much better than they used to be.’
‘It’s not a porno,’ I repeated as the same room we were in now appeared on the screen. ‘Pack it in and watch.’
‘Is that you, Nana?’ Artemis asked my mother, pointing to a slim, dark-haired woman on the screen. She wore a bright red dress with extremely exaggerated shoulders, silver eyeshadow and a pink lipstick so frosted, you’d have had to pay me to put it anywhere near my face. The era was unmistakable. We had entered the eighties.
Mum raised a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, as a much younger version of herself danced around the screen, quite literally rocking around the Christmas tree.
‘It is,’ she confirmed. ‘Gwen, where did you find this?’