‘Even if I’m not that happy right now, I will be,’ I said, certain now that I meant it.
She nodded slowly and I blew on my hot drink. It really was good. Could spiked Horlicks be my million-dollar business idea? Was this the reason I’d been kept here for ten long Christmas Days? To share this wonder with the world?
‘As long as you’re not lonely, that’s all I need to know,’ Nan replied. ‘It’s the one thing I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’
‘I have been,’ I admitted, only fully understanding the truth of it as I spoke. ‘Being with someone who didn’t want to be with me, working at a job where I never felt like I belonged. Those things made me lonely. I cut myself off from a lot of people for a long time because I was miserable. But maybe loneliness isn’t always a bad thing, perhaps it’s more of a reminder.’
‘How’s that, pet?’
I thought about the deep, dark emptiness inside me, the one I was still nursing when Manny and I drove home for Christmas. The one I’d tried to fill with endless ice cream and Taylor Swift songs and online shopping and lying awake until 3 a.m. reading the Wikipedia entries for every single episode ofThe OCon my phone. No wonder none of that had worked (although Taylor really had tried). You simply cannot cure loneliness on your own. Ten days ago, there was a void in me. Now, I was full to bursting with love and hope and dreams of what might happen next.
‘Loneliness is how you know something is missing,’ I said. ‘Feeling lonely means you haven’t given up hope.’
‘And that’s why you have always been the clever one.’ Her smile softened and flickered at the edges. ‘I’ve been lonely ever since I lost your grandad.’
She stated it so simply, as though it was simply a fact and not the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever heard. I was so little when Grandad died and I didn’t really remember him. I couldn’t imagine how it must feel to spend thirty years of your life missing someone. My facebegan to crumble, bottom lip trembling, but Nan remained stoic as ever.
‘Pssh, don’t look at me like that,’ she said, flapping a slender hand in my direction. ‘What I mean is, I don’t want that for you. Whatever else it might be, I do know loneliness can be very cruel. You can’t pick and choose when it visits and it often overstays its welcome, sometimes it stays so long you get used to it and forget to ask it to leave. I would hate for you to fall into that trap.’
I blinked back a tear before she saw and sniffed subtly into my mug. I definitely wasn’t the cleverest one at this table.
‘I promise, I won’t,’ I said. ‘All that stuff I said at lunch, that applies to you too. You could still find someone else?’
‘Of course I could, do you know how many men have tried?’ Nan looked pleased as punch. ‘And not just men. Can’t say I wasn’t curious when Miranda from the WI invited me on that ladies-only Greek cruise last summer.’
‘Wow, OK,’ I said, blinking. ‘You do you.’
She stirred her drink with a little silver teaspoon, a misty look in her pale blue eyes. ‘I’m happy with my lot. You read about all these people falling in love at a hundred years old, running off with a fancy man half their age, but who can be doing with all that faff? It’s not for me.’
‘Sometimes the faff is worth it though,’ I said, keeping my voice light. ‘Don’t you think Grandad would’ve wanted you to have someone to keep you company?’
‘No he bloody wouldn’t!’ she guffawed, breaking the quiet spell that had settled over the kitchen. ‘He’d want me still in my widow’s black, wailing at the edge of a cliff and cursing the gods for taking him away. He alwayssaid if he went first, I couldn’t remarry unless they were richer, cleverer or better-looking than him and I always said that would never happen because that man didn’t exist. I’m very happy to have been proven right. They broke the mould when they made your grandad.’
She patted my hand and let her gaze wander off, her eyes glazing over as they went, reliving fragments of a life well lived. I pinched a strand of damp hair that had escaped from my topknot and pushed it back behind my ear before she could do it for me. She looked so happy. I wanted that. To sit in the kitchen with my grandchildren on Christmas Day, remembering a life full of joy. Dangerously close to tearing up again, I turned to look out the window and watched the last few clouds melt away, leaving a perfect inky blue sky dotted with diamond stars and a near full moon. It was almost impossible to see the night sky from my flat in London and not only because of the smog and light pollution. The only window that didn’t face the alley where the bins lived was directly opposite the flat of a man who liked to stay up all night screaming at video games and really quite frequently playing with himself. Manny came over once and tried to keep count but gave up by 10 p.m. I mostly kept the curtains drawn.
‘Here.’ I turned back to see Nan hiding something in her hand. ‘I’ve got one last Christmas present for you.’
A shaft of moonlight fell through the window and sliced the table in two as she uncurled her fingers.
There it was.
The silver sixpence.
‘Is that the sixpence from the pudding?’ I asked, sitting on my hands, too afraid to touch it. How could such a tiny, inconspicuous thing cause me so much trouble?
‘It is.’ She placed the coin on the table, pushing it towards me with her index finger.
‘So you made the wish?’
‘No,’ Nan replied. ‘I didn’t want to waste it. Couldn’t think of a single thing I might ask for that would make my life better than it already is.’
‘But if you didn’t make a wish then why …’ My voice faded away and the sixpence winked at me in the silvery moonlight until I made myself pick it up. ‘You could wish for anything,’ I said. ‘You could wish for more time with Grandad.’
‘Oh, Gwen, love.’ Nan’s sad smile reappeared as she stood up slowly. ‘Wishes are for the future, not the past. What’s done is done and we all have to live with it, that’s how life goes. Besides, I cannot imagine going through Brexit with your grandad. He would have gone mad, we’d be having a second Bonfire Night in his honour. And think of the man with an iPhone? Jesus, Mary and the donkey, it would have been the end of our marriage. I’d never have been able to watchPointlessin peace and I do like that Richard Osman. He writes books now, you know?’
‘You really didn’t make a wish?’ I asked again, cradling the sixpence in my palm very, very carefully. ‘Nothing at all?’
‘I did not make a wish,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s all yours.’