‘I’m here, I’m here! I’m awake. OK.’
She was so tired she felt sick, but as Jemima snuggled up next to her Hannah leant down and smelled her hair. All soft and warm and sleepy like when she was a baby. Her warm little pyjama-clad body pressed up close to Hannah, the grin splitting her face in two as she pulled chocolates and light-up pens and crayons out of her stocking made Hannah remember the last five Christmases that had gone by. And think how different each one had been. The early years when Jemima just shook the Christmas tree and all the decorations fell off, while Hannah was still in the shocked new parent daze, to now when she stood and stared wide-eyed at the Christmas lights in the street, cried at Santa in John Lewis, petted reindeer at the farm, and sang loud and out of tune as an octopus in the bizarre nursery nativity, making Hannah shed a little tear and Dylan stand up and clap while other parents ssh’d him. They were a little unit now. The epicentre. The two of them tightly bound with her relatives added on like pompoms.
‘Wakey wakey!’ Her brother barged in holding a tray with four cups of tea and a packet of chocolate digestives.
Tony followed behind, looking a bit sheepish in his satin smoking-jacket dressing gown. ‘Hello, Hannah,’ he said, clearly embarrassed to be in her bedroom.
‘Move over, squirt, make room for us all.’ Dylan shovelled Jemima over, making her giggle, and plonked himself down on the bed. Tony took the armchair in the corner, crossing his legs out in front of him and resting them on the corner of the bed. Robyn came in a couple of minutes later, her hair all askew, her glasses on wonky, complaining about how early it was. ‘Any why don’t we have stockings any more? It seems really unfair,’ she said, curling up at the end of the bed.
‘Because we’re forty,’ Dylan said, incredulous.
‘Yeah but I like a stocking and it’s Christmas. There shouldn’t be an age limit on a stocking.’
Jemima looked up from where she was unwrapping the foil off a chocolate Santa and said a little warily, as if she didn’t quite mean it, ‘You can share my stocking, Aunty Robyn.’
Robyn tipped her head and smiled. ‘Thank you, Jem, that’s very kind. But that’s all yours and you should enjoy it. I will have a chocolate coin though.’
Hannah sat back against her big white cushion and took a sip of the piping hot tea her brother had made.
As she looked at the mug, almost surprised that her cup-of-tea wish had been so easily granted, she realised that the actual idea of someone else coming into this set-up was unthinkable. Who could they be that she would allow them to sit here as part of this precious Christmas morning?
The door bashed open again as her parents appeared. ‘What a lovely scene. All my family together.’ Clarice put her hand up to her chest and smiled. ‘This is the reason I had you all.’
‘Except for Hannah, because she was a mistake.’ Dylan laughed around his chocolate digestive.
‘She was not a mistake,’ Clarice said with a scowl. ‘She was the perfect surprise.’
Hannah rolled her eyes. Ten years younger than her twin siblings, there was no doubting she had been quite a massive mistake – surprise – whatever they wanted to call it. But actually it was her parents’ decision to keep her, even though she had so clearly been a mistake, that had been the main deciding factor in her decision to keep Jemima. That if they had decided to get rid of their mistake, then she wouldn’t have been born.
Hannah had been so close to not having Jemima – to not have to sit with all her family and say, I’m pregnant and the father is some gorgeous bloke I met on holiday who seems to have lied about his phone number and I never knew his surname.
But she did have her. And she had sat with all her family, at the kitchen table of their big, old crumbling Victorian family house, and said exactly that. But she had ended with, I think I’m going to keep the baby and I’m going to need loads of help.
Hence why she now lived in a newly converted flat on the top floor of their house that used to be a junk storeroom, and had absolutely no idea how she would live a day without them all.
‘So,’ said Clarice, settling herself down on the sofa to the right of Hannah’s bed. ‘Here are your stockings,’ she said, pointing to Frank who revealed them from behind his back like a magician.
‘No way!’ Dylan was aghast.
Robyn looked delightedly smug as Frank handed them each a red felt stocking.
Jemima narrowed her little eyes and said, ‘Does that mean I’ll get my chocolate coin back?’
As Robyn tipped her stocking upside down and chucked Jemima a chocolate coin from the contents, Hannah reached her hand into her little red stocking, feeling the same childish excitement that she used to as a kid. Inside was an assortment of small packages all wrapped up with ribbon and a handful of chocolate coins in the toe. She got to the bottom expecting the usual tangerine, but found instead that this year it was apple and held it up with a bemused frown.
‘Dylan ate all the satsumas,’ her mum said with a shrug.
‘Doesn’t Santa bring his own satsumas?’ Jemima asked and they all paused, looking panicked to one another for an answer.
It was Clarice who leant forward and said, ‘Yes he does, darling, but because this lot are really far too old for stockings and he’s making an exception giving them to them in the first place, he asks us to supply our own fruit.’
Jemima nodded, her mouth full of chocolate Santa. ‘That’s understandable,’ she said.
‘Yes. Except then Dylan ate it,’ Clarice continued, with a glare Dylan’s way. But Dylan was paying no attention whatsoever and was happily ripping through the paper on his stocking presents.
Hannah, on the other hand, had laid all hers out in front of her and, as she listened to her mum and Jemima’s exchange, was deliberating on which present to pick first. Eventually she went for the square one – the heaviest – and instantly smiled as she unwrapped it.
In her hands was a simple wooden picture frame and in it the picture of her degree show dress that had featured in the style supplement of a national newspaper.
The press photographers had only been at the end of year show because one of the other graduates had a film star dad who called in favours from his A-list actress buddies to model his daughter’s clothes. But nestled in among those shots was Hannah’s graduation show-stopper. The dress that had launched all of this. That had been seen by Annie and inspired the phone call that had taken Hannah back to Cherry Pie Island and led to the wedding dress commission. It still made Hannah catch her breath to see it, her dream, all those brutally gruelling years later, fully realised.
‘You’re not crying, are you?’ her mum said, looking worried.
Hannah shook her head.
‘She is,’ Jemima whispered.
‘I’m not, I promise,’ Hannah said, wiping her eyes with the duvet cover. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘Tired and emotional.’ Her brother sighed.
Hannah got out of bed and gave her mum a hug. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered in her ear. ‘Thank you for helping me get this far. I owe you everything.’
Her mum pushed her back and held her by the shoulders. ‘It’s been our pleasure, Hannah. You owe us nothing. It’s your life now. You’re there. You’re on your way.’
Hannah nodded, wiped her eyes again. ‘It’s scary though.’
‘It’s exciting.’ Her mum smiled.
‘It’s snowing!’ her brother shouted.
‘Really?’ Robyn and Jemima jumped up.
‘No, just kidding.’ Dylan laughed. ‘Just