Page 8 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, counted to five slowly and then picked up the walkie-talkie. “Hey, Mum, are you there? Second breakfast is almost ready.”

A crackling sound followed and then Bella’s voice. “Fred, darling! I didn’t know you’d arrived. I’ll be right in.”

—

Bella tidied the patterned papers into a neat pile and took a steadying breath before exiting the workshop.

Outside, the sun was making short work of last night’s frost. A spider’s web suspended between the skeleton arms of the apple tree glistened with dewy diamonds.

From here the roar of waves crashing against the shore far below was muffled to a sound like brushes on a snare drum.

This was a wild, rugged place to live, despite their cultivations.

The cliff edge was a sheer drop down to rocks lying in wait with their jagged jaws and flinty teeth, hoping for some broken-hearted damsel to hurl herself onto them.

Should one ever fall…or jump, there was no hope at all of survival.

She would never have done it. But in that first year after the loss of her mother, when she’d been abandoned by her baby’s father and then rejected by her own, she had taken a strange sort of comfort in the knowledge that, should she ever choose to jump, the end would be quick and final.

It was Fred, her tiny miracle, who gave her the strength to keep those intrusive thoughts at bay.

Perhaps now her daughter would allow her to return the favor.

The smell of bacon wafted out from the open kitchen window and Bella’s stomach growled.

She could hear snatches of voices; mostly the deep, resonating tone of Aggie, who managed to command most conversations, but below it the softer pitch of her daughter’s laugh.

Her heart gave a leap at the sound and her apprehension melted away, leaving her smiling as she pushed open the door.

Aggie and Cam bustled about, purposely becoming far too busy to spare a glance for Bella or her daughter.

Fred stood near one of the dressers, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Bella could see the tension in her neck, could sense the pressure of the emotions she held back—as though by keeping them contained she could deny they existed.

Bella took a step forward. “Hey, Fred.” She smiled and let herself be led by what her daughter needed from her.

“Hi, Mum.” Fred gave a tight smile.

“How about a hug?” Bella asked, casually opening her arms.

Bella stepped a little closer, and Fred did too, until they were close enough to embrace awkwardly. She could feel her daughter’s pain scraping over her skin. That was motherhood, she supposed: a connection so absolute with your child that their pain seeped into your own bloodstream via osmosis.

She breathed her daughter in and held her tighter, and Fred softened just a little.

She wouldn’t offer maxims or proverbs. Fred didn’t respond well to platitudes about positives springing from negatives, or all things happening for a reason; such sentiments, designed to buck people up, only made her angry.

Instead, quietly and without fuss, Bella would give her a safe space in which to feel sad, to mourn the things that hadn’t worked out, and when she was done, she would offer her daughter the framework she needed to pull herself back up to standing.

They were miles apart in so many ways, but in this they were alike, resilient in the face of adversity.

“I’m a failure…” Fred’s voice was little more than a whisper, but it held all the sorrow of a thousand tears and Bella’s heart felt every one.

“ You are wonderful. And you didn’t fail; you were failed by a faceless corporation who couldn’t see your brilliance, and a man with a fragile ego who held you down to make himself feel taller.”

“You will rise,” said Aunt Aggie. “I’ve seen it in the tea leaves.”

“We’ve made charms, charged the crystals and burned sage; you are now under the protection of the Hallow-Hart women, present and past,” added Aunt Cam.

“Back in the fold,” said Aggie.

Fred only shrugged.

Instinctively, Bella held her closer still, and this time Fred rested her full weight against her, letting her mother’s embrace hold her up.

Even after three years, Bella’s anger toward Tim was an inferno, though she kept her fury locked inside her rib cage; it served no one to bombard Fred with her own outrage.

The invisible scars he’d left on her daughter had indelibly reshaped Fred’s view of herself and how she approached the world, and it made Bella want to obliterate him.

Hell hath no fury like a mother whose daughter has been scorned.

Marriage was Fred’s kryptonite. To her it represented social acceptance, inclusion, respectability, all the things she’d craved the most. Growing up, she had always strived to be “normal”; nothing was so important to Fred as fitting in.

Bella felt that she was responsible for that on some level, their household being far from normal.

Fred’s desperation for a traditional suburban life had made her vulnerable to a man like Tim who offered all of the above for the kingly price of her total submission.

Bella had wanted to batter him with one of the many framed achievements that covered the walls of his study every time she visited them in London and saw the light in Fred’s eyes had dimmed a little more.

She didn’t want her daughter to be with a man like that, but what could she do?

Forcibly removing her wasn’t a viable option, and sharing her opinions about him with Fred only served to push her daughter closer to him, and gave credence to Tim’s obvious contempt for her.

The only thing to be done was to hope that Fred would eventually see him for what he was…

and be there for her when she did. It hadn’t been an easy wait.

“Right! Grub’s up,” said Aunt Aggie.

Fred took the opportunity to pull away from her mum, rearranging her jumper and her features. She hadn’t expected to need that hug quite so much, the rush of emotions had taken her by surprise. God knows, they’d butted heads over the years, but apparently nobody’s hugs worked like her mum’s.

Bella took the plates to the table and placed one before Fred.

Already on the table were three small ramekins, one of coarse sea salt, one black pepper and one of dried chili flakes.

Fred lifted the lid of her sandwich and sprinkled chili flakes over the caramelized scallops, then she took a bite, smoke and ocean exploding in her mouth.

For a moment nobody spoke as they settled into their second breakfast, until Aunt Aggie, wiping dribbled butter off her chin with the back of her hand, piped up. “So, I hear you took part in Krampus Night with young Ryan.”

“Ha,” Fred replied around a mouthful of sandwich. “The words ‘took part in’ suggest I had a choice. Who told you?”

Cam looked to the ceiling and counted down on her fingers. “First the milkman, then Carl the postman, then I think it was Deidra. On the phone?” She looked at Aggie.

“No, before Deidra we had a notification on the Pine Bluff Jezebels WhatsApp group,” said Aunt Aggie.

“Right,” said Fred.

“Ryan has grown into a very handsome man,” said Aunt Aggie, winking exaggeratedly.

“Has he? I hadn’t noticed.” Fred feigned nonchalance. Of course she’d noticed. She’d been hopelessly in love with him, back when they were teenagers, and he had—in no uncertain terms—made it clear that her feelings were not reciprocated. A girl doesn’t forget that kind of spurning.

“You could do worse than Ryan Frost,” said Aunt Cam.

Fred rolled her eyes. “I’ve been here less than an hour and already you’re trying to set me up. Help me out here, Mum.”

Bella shrugged. “He is a lovely chap.”

“Oh, you’re no help,” Fred snapped good-naturedly. Oh, it was nice to be home, she’d missed this; she’d never admit it, of course, but this easy way of being together was like a balm, and she wanted to swim in it and drink it all in.

“He did have a hard time, bless him,” said Aunt Cam.

“And yet, through it all, he managed to remain a nice person. Unlike Tim, who had the house and the job and the leather patches on his jacket elbows, and was an emotionally challenged fuckwit,” Aunt Aggie declared, spooning sugar into a fresh cup of coffee.

Fred spluttered into her own mug. “How long have you wanted to say that?”

“Since the day I met him,” Aggie returned, without hesitation.

“Well, I have learned my lesson. No more fuckwits for me.”

“Amen to that,” said Bella, mopping up the melted butter on her plate with her crust. “Don’t let a little frog-turd like him make you squeamish about relationships, if that’s what you want.”

Fred felt a surge of affection for her mum. She’d given Bella hell over her lifestyle choices when she was younger, and yet her mum had only ever been supportive of Fred’s daydreams of matrimony.

“Sweet Goddess, no! With the right person it’s a joy. Just ask my old ball and chain over there,” said Aggie, grinning.

“I’ll ball and chain you,” Cam retorted, winking.

“Oh god, please stop,” said Fred.

“I like to pop a little binding hex on Tim during each full moon,” said Cam. “It doesn’t hurt him, but any negative feelings he might push out into the universe are bound at source and unable to reach you. He has no power over you now other than what you allow him to have.”

“Thank you?”

“You’re welcome.”

“And we’ve been working on a little something to help you banish the negative energies clinging to your aura since the redundancy,” added Aunt Aggie. “Once they’ve gone, you’ll feel like a new woman.”

The aunts believed in and respected the mysterious power of the universe and Mother Earth, and they manifested on the moon a lot!

Fred wasn’t sure she believed in all the things they did, but equally she’d never found enough evidence to disprove them either.

And their stinging nettle soup could cure a cold quicker than any pharmaceutical remedy.