Gemma huffed out a breath. ‘I said it wasn’t a joke! I was trying to be nice.’
‘You are nice, Auntie Gemma,’ Vi said, peeling one arm away from her mother and inviting her aunt to hug her from the other side. Gemma rolled her eyes, but she didn’t turn her niece down. So Juliet and Gemma stayed like that for a few moments, joined by a fifteen-year-old and almost touching, but as soon as Violet released them, she and Juliet retreated to opposite corners of the kitchen, eyeing each other like boxers in a ring.
Juliet kept staring at Gemma, but used a soothing voice on her daughter. ‘Can you go and check what the boys are up to, Vi? It’s gone awfully quiet, and that usually means trouble.’
Violet looked nervously between her aunt and her mother, then left to check on her brothers.
Gemma lifted her chin. ‘I meant what I said. The offer still stands.’
Juliet shook her head. It felt heavy on her shoulders. ‘I know you did,’ she said wearily, ‘and that’s the saddest thing of all. Because if you really knew me, if you really understood one tiny thing about me, you’d know that I’d never abandon my kids at Christmas.’
Juliet woke up with her face stuck to something smooth and flat. And moist. She poked a finger at the edge of her mouth and discovered she’d been drooling. She blinked a couple of times and tried to make sense of her surroundings. The hard thing beneath her cheek was the kitchen table. The overhead light was on and its harsh glare made her want to close her eyes again, but she pushed her body up with her hands so she was sitting up straight and looked around. A heap of satiny fabric and tinsel lay strewn on the table in front of her.
Oh, yes. Polly’s angel costume.
The last thing she remembered was rubbing her eyes and telling herself just another ten minutes and then she’d crawl upstairs to bed, set the alarm for five thirty and then get up and finish it off in the morning.
She twisted her head to look at the clock on the wall. Ten past two. She moved her jaw, loosening it a little. She was exhausted, but that was hardly surprising. She’d always been pleased all of her children had wanted music lessons, but now she was starting to wonder if it had been such a good idea. Not only was there the inevitable ferrying of her brood to and from those lessons, but Christmas brought a flurry of rehearsals, dress rehearsals and finally the ear-splitting performances themselves.
And then there was the baking, the standing behind trestle tables and handing out glasses of wine poured from boxes that she always seemed to get roped into. She was on the PTA of both her children’s schools, and they didn’t even bother asking if she was going to organise the refreshments each year any more. They just assumed she’d take charge, pull together a rota of willing – and not-so-willing – helpers, wave a magic wand and, hey presto, wine and mince pies, orange squash and Santa-shaped cookies would appear from nowhere.
She linked her hands, straightened her arms above her head and stretched to loosen out the kinks in her spine, before yawning wide and long, and then she stared at the mass of half-finished angel costume on the table in front of her.
She just needed to finish tacking the tinsel round the hem, then make a halo out of a mangled coat hanger and more sparkly stuff and it’d be done. Of course, it should have been finished weeks ago, all ready to go, and it would have been – if she’d known about it. But at teatime, while stuffing her face with pasta and home-made tomato sauce, Polly had enquired loudly where her angel costume was.
‘What angel costume?’ Juliet had replied, her heart racing and an icy sensation washing over her.
‘The one for the carol concert,’ Polly had said and turned her attention to twirling tagliatelle round her fork. ‘Miss Barker gave us all a slip to take home with what we had to wear.’
Juliet stopped washing up and raced to where Polly had thrown her book bag in the hall when she’d come in from school. A quick search revealed two reading books, a host of drawings, an empty crisp packet and a pair of dirty socks. No slip. ‘There’s nothing there, Polls!’ she yelled and marched back into the kitchen, bag in hand as proof.
Polly had shrugged and slurped the last tail of pasta up into her mouth with a smack. ‘Oh,’ she said, totally unfazed. ‘It must still be in the drawer under my desk. Sorry. But I need to be an angel when I sing my solo at the concert tomorrow.’
Juliet had closed her eyes and counted to ten. And then twenty. When, oh when, would these schools learn that giving kids slips of paper to hand to their parents was a disaster waiting to happen? She really wanted to yell at someone, but she clenched her teeth and swallowed the feeling.
‘Never mind,’ she’d said, not as calmly as she’d have liked. ‘It’s fine. I’m sure we can do something with a pillowcase and a bit of tinsel.’
That was when her daughter’s ever-cool demeanour cracked. She stared back at Juliet in horror. ‘A pillowcase?’
Juliet nodded. ‘That’s all I can do at the last minute. The shops are shut and Violet has the dress rehearsal for her dance thing tonight.’
Polly’s eyes filled and her bottom lip wobbled while the edges of her mouth pulled down and out. She’d always made a strange rectangular shape like that when she cried, ever since she was a baby. Greg had always joked it made her look like a pillar box, but Juliet wasn’t finding it very funny as fat tears rolled down Polly’s cheeks and plopped onto her plate.
‘B – but Tegan has a Disney dress and Arabella’s grandma made her one from scratch, with real feathers on the wings and everything!’
Juliet crouched down by Polly’s chair and put her arm round her, ignoring the twins as they loudly and enthusiastically mimicked their sister’s wailing. ‘I’ll make it look really good, I promise. We’ll use the fancy pillowcases from the guest bedroom, the ones with frills on them.’
Polly crossed her arms and shook her head. ‘No. It won’t do! That’s not what I wanted. I need it to be perfect!’
That’s when Juliet had lost her only barely reined-in temper. Result? One tense-shouldered mother hunched over a sewing machine, and one tearful child who’d needed a few extra cuddles at bedtime. In the end she’d remembered the bridesmaid’s dress that Violet had worn for Greg’s sister’s wedding. Puff sleeves, a sash and full skirt in off-white silk. A few additions here and there and it would be wonderful.
She leaned back in her chair and pressed her hand over her mouth as she let out yet another gigantic yawn, then she pushed the chair away and sloped out of the kitchen and up the stairs to bed.
The alarm went off far too early the following morning, but Juliet didn’t have the time, or the energy, to argue with it. After dropping the kids off at their respective schools, she headed out of town to one of the nearby retail parks. Both boys wanted this year’s must-have toy – an action figure that did all sort of things Juliet couldn’t even remember, and didn’t really want to – but the Internet company she’d ordered them from had emailed her to say they only had one left in stock.
None of the other big websites could promise to deliver it before Christmas, if they even had it in stock at all, and the companies that did ‘click and collect’ were all showing it was sold out on their websites. How could she give one boy their dream present and not the other? But she knew that many of those big retailers didn’t allow you