Chapter 8

8

FIVE DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS

The plane climbs through a thick duvet of cloud, emerging into clear blue above. On a paint chart it would be almost too blue, too intense to live with. But way up here it is perfect, a world away from bathroom hoggers and grumpy teenagers and the looming spectre of in-laws. Shelley, Lena and Pearl are installed in row twenty-one, as excitable as teenagers on a school trip, while still a little stunned that they are doing this. So close to Christmas too; it feels reckless and perhaps a little mad. They had bagged cheap flights to Glasgow and will pick up a hire car at the airport. It has all seemed ridiculously easy to arrange.

The bright winter sun has burnt off the three friends’ grievances even before drinks are served. Now Lena thanks the flight attendant as she hands her a wine, and looks at Pearl and Shelley. ‘This feels like a dream,’ she announces.

Pearl laughs. ‘It really does. So what was the reaction at home?’

‘Tommy was all for it,’ Lena replies. ‘Thought it was a great idea. Even offered to pay for my flight, as an extra Christmas treat, but I wouldn’t let him.’

‘He must feel bad about his parents descending for Christmas,’ Shelley remarks.

‘Oh, he does, definitely.’ She grins. ‘But I’ll be ready for them after this. So how was your lot?’

Shelley smiles. ‘The kids were all, “Yeah okay Mum.” You’d think I’d just said I was going upstairs. And Joel thought I was joking. Then it was, “You’re seriously going to leave us here with everything to deal with?”’

‘So he’s finally noticed Christmas is happening?’ Pearl teases.

‘Yep, that woke him up a bit. Started on about there being so much to do – as if Christmas is normally thrown together in the last few days. But it’s virtually all done,’ she adds firmly. ‘I mean, everything apart from dropping off cards to the neighbours and picking up the turkey and wrapping the last of the presents. And they’re for his mum and dad. That’s not too much to deal with, is it?’

‘Of course it’s not,’ Lena asserts.

‘It’s just, he hates wrapping, says he can’t manage the corners?—’

‘This is exactly why you should be here with us,’ Pearl announces.

‘Yeah.’ Shelley nods firmly. ‘But he did keep asking if I was “all right”…’

‘In a “have you lost your mind?” kind of way?’ Pearl sniggers and sips her coffee.

‘Exactly. Never mind the Christmas part. He reckons only a crazy person would go to the countryside of their own accord.’

‘I think “the countryside” doesn’t exactly convey it,’ Pearl adds. ‘This is the Highlands, remember. It’s not like a little jaunt around the leafy lanes of Kent…’ Of the three, she is the only one to have grown up in rural surroundings. Her Cheshire village consisted of a cluster of cottages dotted around a picture-perfect village green. Her family’s pink thatched cottage was the stuff of postcards, the epitome of the English country idyll. But Pearl had yearned to escape to London, and by twenty she had landed a junior job on the magazine where she met Shelley and Lena. Besotted by the world of make-up, Pearl had been thrilled to have access to the beauty halls of Selfridges and Liberty – even if she could only try out the testers. And quickly, her sleepy village upbringing faded from her mind. ‘It’s crazy that I’ve never been to Scotland,’ she adds. ‘You two have both been, right?’

Lena nods. ‘Me and Tommy had that weekend in Edinburgh. First time we’d been away together?—’

‘—When you spent the whole time in bed and staggered out at ten at night, desperately needing food?’ Pearl teases.

‘We saw the castle!’ she protests. ‘We went to a couple of comedy shows?—’

‘And I’ve been to Glasgow,’ Shelley cuts in, ‘that time Joel did a talk about magazine covers at the School of Art.’ He hadn’t really wanted her to come, she remembers now. ‘It’ll be cold and wet and there are gangs there.’ She’d looked at him incredulously. Shelley might have grown up in an unremarkable Essex town, holidaying at Butlins. But she knew that Glasgow was a modern cosmopolitan city. She’d been pregnant with Martha at the time and was feeling bovine-level cumbersome with her swollen feet and enormous boobs. When she’d shown him her new maternity bra he’d reeled back, horrified. ‘Fuck’s sake, Shell. What’s that? A contraceptive?’ What did he expect her to wear in her third trimester – an underwired half-cup in transparent lace? ‘Bring out the big guns,’ he’d muttered before loping away. It was ridiculous to worry that Joel would try to get off with an art student the minute he was out of her jurisdiction. However, she’d tagged along on the trip, feeling like an unwieldy accessory he’d have happily left behind in a coffee shop if he could have got away with it.

‘So, what d’you think it’ll be like up at Michael’s?’ Shelley asks Pearl now.

‘That’s the thing. I’ve no idea,’ Pearl admits. ‘Only what I’ve seen in photos.’

‘There’s a village though, right?’

‘I’m sure there must be. At least a few shops. I don’t know how he’d run a B there you go kids! Resentment on toast. Blame your mother. Shelley had made do with a sack of Kettle chips and that bottle of wine. The next night, aware of trying to atone for her sins, she’d rustled up a crowd-pleasing lasagne.

‘Things are going to change at home after this,’ she muses aloud. ‘It’s so weird, y’know. We’re not even properly away yet, and already I can see what an idiot I’ve been.’

‘You’re not an idiot,’ Pearl insists. ‘You just hold it all together at home. They’re going to realise that, while you’re away.’

‘It’ll do them good to fend for themselves,’ Lena adds.

‘Well, let’s see.’ Shelley smiles, hoping they’re right. Then as they descend towards Glasgow Airport, Joel and the kids shift away from the main centre of her brain. At the airport they stock up on thank you gifts for Michael, hoping that wine, chocolates and a bottle of Hebridean gin will feel adequate, considering his generosity in hosting them. By the time they pick up the hire car, Shelley’s crumb-strewn kitchen has melted from her consciousness and she can barely contain her excitement.

The Highlands! The images Shelley holds in her head have been informed by Hollywood movies and Netflix series, featuring crumbling castles and mist settling over shimmering lochs. Yes, there’d been that trip to Glasgow seventeen years ago when Joel had complained about ‘watery’ scrambled eggs at the hotel breakfast buffet and sampled too many single malt whiskies in the bar. But Shelley knows nothing of Scotland’s wilder side.

Gradually it begins to unfold magnificently as they head north. Pearl has offered to drive. Although it hasn’t been stated as such, she has fallen into the role of unofficial trip leader, with Michael being her not-actual-cousin.

‘So, what’s he like?’ Lena prompts her.

‘Honestly, I don’t really know much about him these days,’ Pearl admits. ‘But he sounded lovely on the phone, just as he always was. And he’s excited about us going up.’

‘Maybe he’ll be glad of the company,’ adds Shelley from the back seat. ‘You reckon he definitely lives on his own?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ Pearl replies. ‘Like I said, the Christmas cards just come from Michael now. He doesn’t have kids and he didn’t mention Rona or any other partner when we spoke.’

‘Will there be any B&B guests there?’ Lena asks.

‘Doubt it,’ Pearl says. ‘Not at this time of year. Who goes away the weekend before Christmas?’

She glances at Lena to her left, and Shelley in the rear-view mirror. There’s a beat’s silence before they all burst out in unison: ‘WE DO!’ And now they’re all laughing, a trio again just like when they were young and enjoyed virtually limitless freedom, if only they’d known it. When a product called The Miracle Filler hadn’t even been invented, let alone been considered as a viable solution for facial cracks.

In truth, all three know that it is a bit bonkers to absent themselves five days before Christmas. Yet at this precise moment each woman believes that it might possibly be the best thing she has ever done.