Page 10 of So This is Christmas

Jennie did her best to function, to look after them both. She cooked their meals, she made sure her mother had food in front of her in her bedroom. She couldn’t make her eat it but she could at least make it an option for her.

Neighbours began to talk, to ask Jennie questions. She felt their scrutiny.

Jennie eventually called the doctor and he came out to see Gwendoline. He prescribed her some pills and Jennie hoped they’d work, but nothing seemed to change.

So Jennie carried on.

And then one day when she took her mother a cooked breakfast in her bedroom in the hope that she’d eat something, her mother looked her in the eye for the first time since Donovan died.

Gwendoline’s coldness hit as she wailed, ‘You took him from me, my boy. You took my boy away!’

‘I… I…’

‘And you broke your dad’s heart.’

Jennie had rushed out of the bedroom and into her own where she’d closed the door and leant against it.

The tears had come in a way they hadn’t for months.

She raced to the bathroom and vomited until she had nothing left in her tummy, then she hovered outside her mother’s bedroom, listening to her sobs.

She’d wanted to knock, to go in, but instead she’d turned and gone back to her own room.

Over the following weeks, Jennie had waited for her mum to talk to her, to maybe apologise for what she’d said. But no apology or attempt at conversation ever came. Jennie continued to cook for her mother and take her food. She still ran the house.

The doctor visited twice more, the neighbours nudged one another in the street, and eventually Jennie couldn’t take it any more.

She was broken. She packed a big backpack and went to a friend’s house where she stayed for one night.

She stayed with another friend on the second night but the town was full of memories, full of Donovan and her dad, full of their lives before the accident.

She went to London. People did that – plenty of friends at school had gone to university and ended up working in England’s capital.

There was opportunity there, space, a lot of people who didn’t know her.

London was where she could start putting herself back together without Donovan, without her dad and without her mum who might still be alive but was lost to her.

In London she stayed in hostels, she found work in a nightclub, she picked up daytime work in a café, she did various cleaning jobs. But her outgoings began to overtake her income and when she lost her job she was in trouble.

She had no work, nowhere to live, and what had seemed like the only thing she could do suddenly felt as though it had so many barriers that she was going to have to go back to the home where there was no love left any more. No dad, no brother, just an empty shell of a mother.

She called the phone at home. Five times. But her mother never answered.

On some days she wondered whether Gwendoline was even still alive. Or had her grief drowned her completely and she’d ended it all?

Jennie couldn’t blame her.

She could only blame herself. For everything.

She lost count of how many days or weeks she’d been living on the streets, in an old sleeping bag, curled into shop doorways or on the periphery of a park, sometimes with other homeless people which made her feel safer, sometimes facing the terror of being utterly alone.

One day she sought shelter from heavy rains in the downstairs porchway over a back entrance to some building she couldn’t identify, and that was where Greta had found her.

The porchway had been at the rear of a small hotel where Greta worked and that day and for seven days afterwards Jennie showed up at the same time – she’d used the clock on a nearby pub to make sure – and Greta gave her a meal.

On the seventh day Greta sat her down at a small table in a broom cupboard away from the kitchens, and as Jennie hungrily tucked in to the burger and a salad filled with more freshness and colourful ingredients than she’d had in months – tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes – she knew she couldn’t be dishonest with this woman whose heart could stretch over oceans, it was so big.

Greta had a kindness that Jennie could never take advantage of and so she told her everything.

Greta had held her after she told her story, let her cry, stroked her hair, and for the first time in a long while Jennie had felt something strangely like comfort.

After that, Greta had enlisted her husband Walter’s help.

They’d taken Jennie into their home, they’d trusted her, they arranged work for her at the hotel, washing dishes in the kitchen.

Greta and Walter had been pivotal in helping Jennie turn her life around when she’d almost given up.

With their help, Jennie slowly began to like herself again rather than hate herself for the part she’d played in what had happened to Donovan.

She’d carried those cruel words, the guilt over Donovan’s death and her father’s, the accusations from her mother, with her every day since she’d left home, but she’d shoved her feelings deep down enough that she could function.

And now, Gwendoline had found her. She had her phone number. After all this time she was popping up in Jennie’s life when it had taken Jennie years to find herself.

How could it possibly be a good thing?

* * *

At the end of the day, she turned off her computer, ready to leave.

She was exhausted and already thinking of getting back to her place and lying on the sofa when she remembered the plan she and Nick had to go to his parents’ apartment and get the holiday decorations up.

Her feet ached and she longed for a hot bath and some time out, but she wouldn’t let him down.

Besides, she couldn’t bear to see the apartment filled with so much love and comfort bereft of festive cheer any longer.

She changed her heels for a pair of fur-lined boots, pulled on her long woollen coat, wrapped a cream scarf around her neck and scooped her long, curly, ebony hair out from beneath the wool before pulling on a cream hat.

The days weren’t so cold yet but the mornings were, and so were the evenings.

As soon as the sun disappeared – if it had even bothered to make much of an appearance that day – you felt the chill the moment you ventured outside.

She took a deep breath of Viennese air as she left the cosiness of the hotel foyer and made her way down the concrete steps.

The lights of the city glimmered all around, the roofs of the little huts at the nearby Christmas market twinkled against the night sky, crowds milled while others weaved along the street.

She was settled. She was happy. She was still unsure of herself and her place in the world, but she’d found a sense of peace she didn’t want anything to shatter.

And yet, that was what was happening because as she started the walk in the direction of the Wynters’ apartment, all she could hear on repeat in her head was her mother’s voice saying those awful words all those years ago – the way she’d looked right through her as she delivered the blame with venom.

Jennie wished she couldn’t remember any of it.

About fifty metres from the Wynter Hotel, Jennie passed a woman sitting on the edge of the footpath, a sleeping bag covering most of her body, pieces of cardboard leaning against the wall ready to shelter her against the elements.

Jennie zipped across to the market, bought a hot chocolate and took it back to the woman.

The woman thanked her and Jennie gave her some cash from her purse too.

She’d been that person once upon a time and understood how easily the rug could be pulled out from beneath you.

One minute you seemed to be on the right track and the next, you were derailed.

Greta and Walter had helped a lot of people over the years, people just like Jennie.

Some of them had been thankful, some of them had stayed in jobs they’d found thanks to Greta and Walter, and others had tried to take advantage.

Pragmatically, Greta had always said that she found her happiness in those she had managed to help and said a quiet prayer for those who hadn’t been as grateful.

Not long after they moved to North Yorkshire, Walter and Greta tried to help a young woman named Ruby.

Ruby reminded Jennie of herself and so she’d been as kind as Walter and Greta were being.

She would make Ruby a meal every day in the kitchen at the guest house, she’d talk to her, and Greta gave Ruby some work as a cleaner.

The Wynters thought Ruby was genuine, a lost soul who needed help, but one day Nick called Jennie to express his concerns.

‘Mum told me she’s going to give Ruby the tiny room at the cottage.’

‘She seems nice. I think she just needs a helping hand to get on her feet. And I’m here, I’ll look out for them.’

‘Mum says she lent her money.’

Jennie paused. ‘But she’s getting paid for her cleaning work.’

‘Exactly. And she’ll have a place to live for a while when she moves in.’

‘How much did Greta lend her?’

‘A couple of hundred quid. Ruby said it was a bad debt and that she was being hassled by someone. Have you seen anyone hanging around?’

‘I haven’t.’

‘I don’t want Mum and Dad at risk.’

‘Nor do I,’ she said.

‘Unless…’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless there is no debt, unless there isn’t anyone hassling her.’

She heard his worry in a sigh down the line. ‘I know I haven’t always trusted your motives, Jennie, I’m protective of my parents. But I trust you now. I trust you’ll keep an eye on them, on this Ruby, and let me know if anything untoward happens.’

She was so stunned at hearing him say that he trusted her that she didn’t speak.

‘Jennie, promise me?’

‘I promise.’

Jennie had kept an eye on Ruby as she’d said she would. She’d assumed all she would be doing was reporting back to Nick every now and then that everything was fine.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Jennie had seen Ruby taking money from Walter’s chest of drawers, she saw her pocket Greta’s watch from her dresser, and rather than confronting Ruby or telling Walter and Greta, she’d called Nick.

In that moment she felt a connection with him, a united front to do what was best for his parents, these wonderful people who had given her a world when hers had fallen apart.

Nick drove up to Yorkshire that very day and thank goodness, because Jennie had come home from the guest house to see Ruby entering the cottage with a man, presumably a boyfriend by the way he had his hand on her waist.

Nick had arrived ten minutes after Jennie and they went inside the cottage where they found Ruby and the man filling a couple of big rucksacks with whatever they could find – Walter’s tankard that he’d had since he was in his twenties, an expensive bracelet Greta had been given by her parents when she turned twenty-one, earrings left to Greta by her mother.

The pair had tried to make a run for it.

The boyfriend had pushed Jennie so violently that she’d lost her footing and ended up on the floor.

Nick had gone for him but he and Ruby were fast, they were out of there in seconds, and Nick came to help Jennie up off the floor.

‘We ought to call the police,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No.’ Her tears had started and wouldn’t stop. ‘How could Ruby do that? Walter and Greta have given her so much – a job, food, a place to live, their concern – and the thanks she gives is to steal. I don’t understand. Why?’

He put an arm around her. ‘I don’t understand it either. Some people are just bad, I suppose.’

From that moment on Nick had seen Jennie in a different light.

He saw how genuine she was, how much she loved Walter and Greta.

They began to talk on the phone more and more and when he visited, they’d spend time together, go to the local pub for a drink and a chat.

Slowly they’d fallen into a type of sibling relationship she wouldn’t be without.

The tiredness in her legs and feet eased a little as she walked from the hotel.

She’d been so excited to come here to this new, vibrant city, especially given Nick was here already, and when Walter and Greta moved back to Vienna as well, she’d been overjoyed.

The Wynters had shown her so much of the city, wonderful in all seasons, but every November and December, Vienna became something spectacular.

Walter and Greta, Jennie and Nick, had watched the big tree go up last year and the year before, with Walter filling her in on the tradition dating back to the fifties where every year a different province of Austria would send Vienna a tree for the season.

She’d loved that about the Wynters, that they wanted to share life’s experiences with her, that they regarded her as family and always made her feel as such.

When she reached the apartment and saw Nick’s car parked outside, she switched her phone to silent.

She didn’t need to be contactable, especially when it came to the woman who was supposed to have loved her unconditionally and had driven her away.

What she needed was to disappear inside the Wynters’ home and remind herself that she had people on her side, she was a part of something.

The scent of the fresh-cut tree Nick had sourced greeted her the second she went in the front door.

Walter had prepared glühwein and with carols playing in the background, they got to work.

A garland went across the mantlepiece of the fireplace, the delicate ornaments from years gone by came out for another year to go on the beautiful tree.

Jennie even etched some snowflakes on the windowpanes the way Greta had taught her on her first Christmas with the family.

This year was going to be different but even Walter seemed glad that the apartment was now ready for Christmas.

It was easy to forget her troubles when she was with the Wynters but when she left the apartment and stepped back outside into the winter chill, she checked her phone and she had three missed calls and a voicemail.

No mistaking it, the voicemail was from her mother and Jennie felt the whole world spin when she heard what Gwendoline had to say.

Her mother was here in Vienna.

And she wanted to see her.