Chapter 37

37

What a morning Joel’s had. First – without any consultation – all of those hastily re-wrapped presents were torn open in a ramshackle fashion, with no sense of occasion and no grandparents present to enjoy the spectacle. Then he’d asked, ‘Could you peel a few spuds for me, Marth?’ She’d glared at him as if he’d told her to eat the turkey’s giblets for breakfast.

Now Joel’s parents, Ken and Kathleen, are here in their best clothes. For Ken this means ‘slacks’ and a rather cardboard-looking blue shirt, still bearing the creases from the packaging. Meanwhile, Kathleen looks overheated in a violently flowered dress and a purple cardigan buttoned up to the neck. She is already in full flow about stabbings in schools.

‘They’re taking knives into classrooms now,’ she says festively. ‘They’ve having to put in metal detectors at the entrances.’

‘Even round our way it’s getting bad,’ his father announces. ‘An elderly couple were found tied up and gagged in their house, did you hear?’

No, Joel didn’t hear. He’s been too occupied lately to pay any attention to the news. Now he is simultaneously checking that the turkey isn’t burning while carrots are bubbling on the hob. Is he too early with the carrots? He has no idea. Only that he has peeled so many vegetables this morning that a sharp pain is shooting up his wrist. He wishes his parents would bugger off to the living room where Martha and Fin are lying around like lords. When he caught Martha pouring herself a glass of champagne at 9.45 this morning he didn’t dare to comment.

As his mother describes how the intruders at the old couple’s house urinated into their fish tank, Joel decides he should make a start on the pigs in blankets and stuffing and gravy.

‘So, when are we doing presents?’ she asks.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mum. The kids have already opened theirs.’

‘Really?’ She looks aghast, and then sighs loudly and glances around the kitchen, as if only just registering that things are very different this year. ‘So Shelley’s stuck up there in Scotland, is she?’ As if she has only just remembered that he has a wife.

‘Yeah. Crazy isn’t it?’ He bobs down to check the turkey, burning his forearm on the scorching tin and yelping in pain. ‘Shit!’ He rams the tray back in.

‘Maybe you could’ve just got a chicken?’ his father offers.

‘Funny time of year to go away,’ his mum remarks, patting her hair, ‘if you ask me.’

I’m not asking you, Joel thinks, glaring at her. And also, what’s with the snail’s pace at drinking? His mum is still sipping the small sherry he pressed into her hands ninety minutes ago. Evaporation would be more effective. However, Joel’s parents are moderate people who like to spin out the single alcoholic drink they have all year. Stuff that, Joel decides. As far as he’s concerned there’s only one way to survive this day.

He will drink his way through it. He will get absolutely smashed and sod the consequences. And so, as culinary preparations continue with his parents still welded to the kitchen chairs, he slugs a half pint tumbler of red, and then another, feeling the alcohol coursing straight to his face and setting his cheeks on fire. Potatoes come out of the oven and go back in and come out again, several times over. How can he tell when things are ready? Joel’s approach to anything technical that’s not working properly is to turn it off and on again and hope for the best. But obviously that won’t work in this situation. ‘You look awfully red,’ his father remarks, crunching a crisp.

‘Yes, aren’t you hot in that polo neck?’ His mum frowns.

‘No, I’m fine.’ Sweat drips from Joel’s forehead onto the potato tray.

‘Have you had your blood pressure checked?’ she asks. And then, as if he is nine, ‘Why don’t you go and put a T-shirt on?’

‘ I’m capable of choosing my own clothes, thank you! ’ he barks, and she shrinks into the chair. ‘Sorry,’ Joel mutters. ‘There’s just quite a lot going on here right now.’ How does Shelley manage all of this by herself? ‘Look,’ he adds, ‘I think everything’s under control’ – like hell it is – ‘so why don’t we go through and do your presents?’

Reluctantly, as if transfixed by a particularly riveting episode of Hell’s Kitchen , Joel’s parents troupe after him to the living room where their grandchildren are currently sprawled. Joel’s father splutters again at the sorry state of the Christmas tree. ‘Been at the sherry, has it?’

‘It fell over,’ Joel says flatly. ‘Sit down. Eat some nuts. I’ll just nip upstairs and fetch your gifts…’

Up he trots like a drunken pony, gripping his tumbler of vicious red wine and slugging it on the hoof. He takes a moment on the landing to check his phone in case Carmel has wished him a happy Christmas. Still not a peep from her. He messaged her again this morning, keeping it cool. Have a lovely day babe , he wrote, realising that he didn’t know who she was planning to spend it with. The unnamed man, perhaps? Or are they too new for that? Forget that for now, Joel decides as he locates his parents’ presents neatly stacked at the bottom of Shelley’s wardrobe. He lays out the sweater for his dad, plus some spy novels – an entire series by the look of it – plus soft leather gloves and a definitely non-moulting scarf for his mum. All chosen and bought by Shelley because he never has any idea of what to buy them. They’re just two quiet people living in a pebble-dashed semi-detached house in the direst of suburbs. So how can he possibly know what they’d like?

Still slurping his wine, Joel chastises himself for forgetting to wrap these gifts. He was too busy re-wrapping everything else, and now he realises there’s no Christmas paper left. So he storms upwards into his studio, but all there is here is plain white copier paper and even Joel knows that won’t do. Defeated, he carries the unwrapped gifts downstairs and presents them, steeped in shame, as both his mum and dad try to appear pleased. ‘Thank Shelley for us, won’t you love?’ His mum raises a small smile and Martha shoots him a frosty look from the sofa. Then Joel is thrown back into kitchen duties, stirring and carving and lifting searing hot trays from the oven. There’s the table to lay and he hasn’t chilled the wine or made any stuffing. There’s none of Shelley’s famous home-made cranberry sauce either – this isn’t his fault! – but sod it. With his life crumbling around him, and his kids currently in bitcoin-blackmail mode, it hardly matters that they won’t be dolloping what’s basically jam on their turkey.

A little wobbly on his feet now, Joel dumps everything on the unadorned kitchen table and calls his family through. There are no crackers (was he meant to buy crackers?) and the potatoes have cooled, inexplicably, within seconds of being brought out of the oven. Yet a single chipolata incinerates his dad’s mouth.

‘Well, this is nice, isn’t it?’ Joel hoists his tumbler and forces a smile.

‘Yes, it is,’ his mother manages. ‘The carrots are lovely…’

Joel glares down at them. They’re okay, he reckons. But who gets excited about carrots? The turkey has the texture of an old horsehair-stuffed mattress and the scorching sausages are virtually raw inside. And gallingly, after the many, many hours of intense preparation, the whole meal is devoured in what feels like about eight minutes. Without a single offer to help him, everyone surges back to the living room leaving a billion plates to wash and the kitchen destroyed.

It’s like sex with Carmel, Joel reflects as he launches into the massive clean-up operation. He doesn’t want a prize or even a burst of applause. Just some acknowledgement would be nice – that he tried his best. That he exists , even. That he is a real man with actual feelings.

Is this his life now, he wonders, as he wipes roast potato grease off the kitchen floor? Will he be beholden to his kids forever, and what will Shelley make of all this?

The day creaks on interminably with TV and snacks. His parents enjoy Monopoly, so they play that. But Martha keeps flashing him a look so Joel ‘forgets’ to charge her rent on Vine Street and at one point, as banker, he slips her an extra ￡500 note. Mercifully, at around eleven, his parents announce that they’re off to bed, and the kids slope away to their rooms. Finally Joel can pull off this wretched sweater and inspect his neck.

At last something good has happened. When he checks in the downstairs bathroom mirror he sees that the livid bruise has almost faded away. So by the time Shelley comes home it should be all gone.

Buoyed up by this, he strides to the kitchen and refills his wine glass, and then settles on the sofa, revelling in the calmness. Brazenly, and missing Shelley a little now, he fires off a text.

Joel

We survived it! Had a great day and Mum managed to spin out a single glass of sherry for nine hours. Must be a record huh? How are you?

Then, while he waits for a reply, he goes to Carmel’s Facebook page. He gazes at her profile picture and fiddles with his phone, seized by an urge to text her. What should he say? He doesn’t want to seem maudlin because actually, he’s feeling pretty sanguine now. If she’s dumped him for whatever reason then he’ll be cool with that. Maybe, Joel figures, he should turn over a new leaf and start to behave like a decent human being. Life would be a lot less stressful for one thing. And maybe, if they both made an effort and Shelley stopped wearing those nan-curtain pyjamas, they could resurrect some semblance of a sex life.

Joel drinks more wine and ponders on this. Then all in a rush, before he can overthink it, he types out a message:

Joel

Hey babe happy Christmas! Haven’t heard from you since our sleepover and wondering if all ok? You were magnificent that last time. Like a goddess on top of me. Understand if you want to cool it but I think we should talk as I’d like closure. xxx

He rereads his message and thinks yeah, that’s good. That’s pretty eloquent considering he’s sunk something in the region of two bottles of red wine over the course of the day. Then he wanders through to the kitchen figuring that he might guzzle some leftover roast potatoes to soak up the booze.

Funny, he muses as he shovels in the cold spuds, that leftovers are often the best part of Christmas dinner. Perhaps next year they should cook double the food so there’ll be acres of leftovers to keep them going for days? Joel decides he’ll suggest this when Shelley comes home. He’ll help of course. He won’t have her doing all that by herself.

Thrilled with his genius idea – to go leftovers crazy! – he strides back to the living room and grabs his phone, intending to share it with Shelley. His vision is a little squiffy as he frowns hard at the text he sent her just fifteen minutes ago. No, no, no. This isn’t right. He is sweating now and shaking too. He thinks he might actually throw up. It’s not the wine or the undercooked chipolatas or his usage of the word ‘closure’. It’s the fact that he was so wrapped up in getting the words right that he wasn’t paying full attention as he sent it.

With sickening horror Joel realises what he’s done. In his sozzled state, he didn’t send Carmel’s message to Carmel. He sent it to his wife.