Chapter 2

2

TEN DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS

Lena stares at Tommy and waits. She is waiting for his top lip to quiver, as it does when he’s winding her up and trying to trap in a laugh.

Surely this is a joke. Tommy has always been a prankster – she’d fallen in love with that daft, larky side of him – and this is a good one.

So the old elm crashed through Mum and Dad’s kitchen roof and now they’re coming to us for Christmas!

Hahaha! Hilarious. Any second now, laughter will burst out of him and she’ll play-wrestle him in mock-fury. Don’t you ever do that to me again!

But Tommy still isn’t laughing. And something hard and cold seems to clamp itself around Lena’s chest as she registers his chalk-pale face, the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

‘Tommy, please tell me this is a joke?’

‘Of course it’s not.’ He looks down, frowning, his usually bouncy demeanour somewhat flattened. ‘The whole kitchen roof’s got to come off. They could’ve been killed, you know. If they’d been in the kitchen?—’

‘I don’t mean the tree part,’ she says quickly.

‘It’s going to cost tens of thousands?—’

‘Yes, and I’m really sorry about that. I meant the Christmas part, Tommy. Your mum and dad just announcing they’re coming to us for Christmas Day, like it’s a fait accompli. You’re not serious, are you?’

He runs a hand over his abundant dark hair, swept back and flecked a little with silver. At fifty-one – a year older than Lena – Tommy looks startlingly youthful, considering he loves his red wine and the occasional illicit cigarette in the garden. In the genes, she reckoned when they started dating. The Huntley family goes back generations, as does Lena’s of course; everyone’s does. But whereas Lena considers her family to be very ordinary – she grew up in a tiny terraced house in Manchester – Tommy’s family aren’t ordinary at all. His family home, High Elms out in Berkshire, has a walled garden and a lake, and its bedrooms are named according to their colours: the yellow room, the blue room and so on. Lena’s eyes boggled when she first saw the place.

‘Sorry. I’m not joking, darling,’ he murmurs now.

Lena stares at him across the kitchen. ‘And you’re okay with this, are you?’

Tommy’s mouth twists. ‘No. No, of course I’m not. It’s completely bonkers. It’ll be hell.’ He closes his eyes and exhales, seeming so distraught that she can’t find it in herself to be angry with him. It’s not his fault that the elm toppled. Not his fault that his over-privileged parents believe they have the right to do whatever they want, without considering anyone else. Lena knows in her heart that Tommy is a good, kind man, and he’d never want to cause her any stress.

Four years ago, Lena had been out at a Vietnamese restaurant with Shelley and Pearl, her closest friends. They’d all been a bit tipsy when one of the men at the next table overheard something Lena had said, and there’d been a flurry of banter between the two tables.

After dinner, the groups had merged and they’d all clattered off together for a drink. And that had been that. Mutual attraction between Lena and the six-foot-three Tommy with brilliant blue eyes and a broad lopsided smile. He reminded her of those foppy heroes from Merchant Ivory films. She’d never met anyone like him before. Two years on, he moved into her somewhat compact two-bedroom flat in a 1960s block in Hackney. Not because her place was ‘better’ than his, but because Tommy was living in a commuter town and, much as she loved him, she wasn’t prepared to give up the place she loved. Or, for that matter, London. Lena doesn’t think she’ll ever be ready for a life in the Shires.

‘And they’ve literally got nowhere else to go?’ she asks now, incredulous.

Tommy shakes his head. ‘You know what they’re like.’

‘Um… yeah.’ Lena does know.

‘Cantankerous old buggers have fallen out with pretty much every living relative,’ he adds. ‘I’d dig up a dead one if I could.’

‘Hmm.’ Lena’s mouth compresses into a flattened line. ‘What about a hotel? Couldn’t they go out for Christmas dinner?’

‘Flat refusal. Mum hates hotel catering.’ He mimics her strident tones: ‘“I’m not going to some grim carvery where the bird’s been drying out under a heat lamp as if it’s had a shampoo and set!”’

Lena sniggers. She doesn’t mention the fact that her own parents love the Sunday carvery at their local pub. ‘They wouldn’t have to do that,’ she points out. ‘They could go somewhere really swanky?—’

‘Mum says absolutely no way. Anyway, Dad’s tried. Anywhere decent was booked up months ago, apparently.’ He looks at her in his cheeky way, trying to defuse things with humour. ‘I did suggest they tried Nando’s in Slough’ – Lena splutters at this – ‘but that was a no go. And it was all, “Don’t you want us, Tommy? D’you realise what we’re going through, with the house?”’

Lena nods as a thought occurs to her, accompanied by a tiny glimmer of hope. ‘This means we can’t have our wedding there.’ At High Elms, she means. Not if the kitchen is lacking a roof.

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ he insists.

‘But what if it isn’t? Sounds like they’re under enough stress as it is,’ she says, trying to keep her tone light. What a shame, she decides privately, that they’ll have to come up with an alternative plan. Tommy proposed on Lena’s fiftieth birthday in July. After her divorce, she’d never imagined wanting to get married again, but here she was, saying yes because Tommy is wonderful and she loves him and would trust him with her life. His mother insisting that they have the wedding reception at High Elms is less wonderful, but Tommy was railroaded. ‘It means a lot to her and it’s only one day, darling.’ And so, reluctantly, Lena agreed.

‘They’ve already organised the contractors to start work,’ he tells her now. ‘They’ll easily be finished by April. All done and dusted and back to normal again.’

Lena bites her lip. ‘Okay. But I’m still not sure about Christmas with them, Tommy.’ She glances around the living room that she’d furnished quickly and cheaply after her marriage breakup. She’d walked away from all of the mutually owned furniture that she and her ex had saved for over the years. The thought of living with any of that stuff – of seeing that chair, that lamp, every day of her life – repulsed her. Instead, determined to start afresh, Lena had dashed to IKEA and sourced a fair few pieces second-hand on Gumtree. She’d found the bookshelf abandoned in the street and dragged it in and given it a lick of jaunty turquoise paint. ‘Hardly High Elms, is it?’ she remarked once, soon after she and Tommy had got together.

‘No, thank God,’ he told her.

Now Lena opens the sliding door that leads onto a tiny balcony overlooking another sixties block. Their neighbours are lovely and there are fantastic little family restaurants nearby. Both Lena and Tommy love living here. But she can only imagine what his parents will think of the place. They have never suggested visiting before, and Lena can’t understand why they’re so intent on spending Christmas here.

Tommy comes out and takes her hand, beckoning her back in. ‘We can make it work, can’t we? Just for Christmas Day and the one night? They could have our room, and you and me could squeeze into the box room…’ A hopeful smile. ‘It’ll be cosy, you and me all snuggled in together?—’

‘It’s not the sleeping arrangements I’m worried about,’ Lena cuts in. It’s all of it , she thinks, although she doesn’t say this.

‘I know, sweetie,’ Tommy murmurs. ‘But we can evict them on Boxing Day. Fuck it, I’ll drive them home myself?—’

‘It’s not that I don’t want them here,’ she says firmly. No, actually, it is! Both she and Tommy are divorced – his was a lot more amicable than hers – and they have cherished the low-pressure Christmases they’ve created together. These past two years they have cosied up here, in Lena’s flat, with wonderful food and wine and wall-to-wall movies. Lena’s parents haven’t minded her staying in London. She has four siblings and a gaggle of nephews and nieces so there’s always plenty of activity going on in their Manchester home. And Tommy’s daughter Daisy has spent them with her mother.

Besides, Tommy’s parents have given no indication that they actually like her. ‘So where are you from, Lena?’ William, his father, barked at her the first time she visited High Elms.

‘Manchester,’ she replied, ‘but I moved to London when I was twen?—’

‘No, I mean originally. ’ William’s gaze bored into her forehead over the silver candlesticks.

‘Um, I was born in Manchester,’ she said pleasantly, while Tommy patted his clammy forehead with a napkin and tried to veer them down an alternative path.

‘Dad, I was thinking we could take Lena on the forest walk tomorrow. What d’you think?—’

‘I mean, where were your parents from?’ William boomed.

‘Well, my dad’s from Bangladesh,’ Lena explained in a perfectly level tone, ‘and he met my mum, who’s from Yorkshire, when he moved to England in the sixties.’

‘ Ahhh ,’ William said, apparently satisfied that he had managed to finally drag the correct information from her.

Then later, over after-dinner drinks, Tommy’s mother started on her. ‘So you don’t have any children ?’ In the tone of, ‘So I hear you don’t wear any knickers ?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Lena’s reserves of pleasantness were dwindling rapidly.

‘Mum, I hear you’re thinking of renovating the summer house!’ Tommy announced.

Ignoring this, Annabelle peered expectantly at Lena, as if awaiting an explanation. Lena toyed with telling this pinch-faced woman the truth. That she and her ex-husband had tried to get pregnant, and when nothing had happened he had been unwilling to try IVF, so she’d had to let it go. And how it had turned out that the fertility issues were on her side, as throughout all of the trying and sheer desolation whenever her period arrived, he’d been shagging someone else. Clearly, Max’s sperm had been plentiful and upwardly mobile as, before Lena had discovered what was going on, his lover had had a baby.

‘We have four,’ Annabelle boasted.

Well done! Lena wanted to applaud her. How fantastically clever of you!

‘Mum, Lena knows all about our family,’ Tommy said in a pained voice.

‘All boys,’ Annabelle trilled. ‘Quite the little team!’

‘Yes, I bet.’ Lena eyed her almost empty wine glass, willing it to magically refill.

‘…Been wonderful seeing them all grow up,’ Annabelle went on, sipping her Chablis. Yes, so I’ve heard. Each one of them packed off to boarding school at seven years old. ‘All excellent at sports!’ Amazing really, as Tommy hated school sports due to that pervy teacher who’d make the boys line up and hold out their rugby shorts to check they weren’t wearing pants underneath… ‘We’re so very, very proud,’ Annabelle drawled, waggling her glass, which William beetled over to refill.

Then the talk turned to Catherine, Tommy’s ex-wife – who had of course managed to produce a child – and of whom Annabelle is clearly very fond. ‘How is Catherine, Tommy?’ she asked, throwing Lena a quick look.

Lena turns away from Tommy now and looks down onto their street. It’s a crisp, bright Sunday morning and across the road, a young couple are carrying a Christmas tree into their block. ‘Darling, I’m so bloody sorry, I can’t tell you.’ Tommy stands behind her and wraps his arms around her waist, trying to coax her round to face him. But she isn’t in the mood for hugs now. Lena disentangles herself and escapes to their bedroom where she grabs her phone, brings up the group chat with Shelley and Pearl, and types a message.

Lena

Just found out Tommy’s parents are coming here for Christmas!

Shelley

WHAT?!

Pearl

That’s crazy! What’s going on?

Lena

Tree fell down. Loads of damage to the family pile. You could call it a natural disaster.

Shelley

Or an act of God?

Lena

Maybe it’s punishment for me shoplifting a packet of Jelly Tots from the newsagent’s in 1982?

Shelley

You can’t allow this Leen. You’ve got to put your foot down.

Lena

No choice seemingly. Too early to start drinking?

Shelley

Never.

Lena

Hope we’re still on for Tuesday night girls. PLEASE SAY YES!