Page 29 of So This is Christmas

SOPHIE

Sophie stood by the big Christmas tree next to the brasserie, wondering where on earth Jennie had got to and how long until she came back. One minute she had been right there admiring the present she’d bought for Walter, the next she was gone.

Jennie emerged eventually and joined Sophie by the tree. ‘Sorry about that, I remembered something I had to do…’ But she didn’t elaborate on why she’d abruptly ended their exchange and run off.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Of course.’ Jennie sounded falsely bright and Sophie could tell her smile was put on.

Sophie couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room any more. ‘Look, Jennie, I know you don’t trust me. I can’t change that with a click of my fingers. But I’d really like it if you gave me a chance. Please say if I’ve overstepped with the gift for Walter?’

She looked drawn, sad, when she shook her head and said, ‘The gift is lovely.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Very sure.’ Her eyes darted to the side of the foyer, then she turned as if she were waiting for something to pounce. ‘That woman who came in here… before I left. Did she speak to you?’

Sophie frowned. ‘What woman?’

‘Red coat, black scarf, grey hair. British.’

‘Oh yes, I did notice her – her coat was so bright, pillar-box red. Wait, how did you know she was Bri?—’

‘What did she want?’

‘I’m not sure. She went to the reception desk and then she left.’

Sophie wondered whether the woman was an unhappy customer Jennie would rather avoid. She was about to ask the question when the receptionist came over.

‘There was a lady looking for you,’ she told Jennie, handing over a little card with something written on it.

Jennie took the card and stared at it.

Sophie watched Jennie, her shoulders slumped, her hand trembling.

When Hans from the brasserie came out, Sophie took control. ‘We’re coming in for coffees,’ she said quickly. Jennie might not like her but she obviously needed a moment and Sophie couldn’t help herself, she wanted to help.

Hans led them into the brasserie and with a beaming smile he told them to take any table. Sophie asked for two Melange coffees, which she remembered from before.

Jennie didn’t say a word while they waited and Sophie didn’t push her. But once the coffees came Sophie broke the silence. ‘Do you know the woman in the red coat who came in earlier?’

‘You could say that.’ Jennie stirred the coffee in front of her and kept her eyes on the liquid.

‘Is she a guest? Someone who isn’t happy with the hotel?’

‘She’s my mother.’ Jennie looked at Sophie then. ‘I haven’t seen or heard from her in almost sixteen years.’

‘Wow.’ She’d known there was a story behind why Jennie came to the Wynters and this had to be it.

‘Yeah, wow.’

‘That’s a long time to not have any contact.’ She sipped the coffee and waited for Jennie to do the same. ‘I know a bit when it comes to difficult relationships with a mother.’

Jennie looked directly at her. ‘Did your mother go from loving you to hating you? Did your mother drive you to run away from home and live on the streets?’

Sophie hadn’t had much of a relationship with her mother for a long time, but this was obviously something very different.

‘My mother never did those things, no. But she was what I would best describe as absent. She was there physically, she looked after me, but there wasn’t a whole lot of emotion between us.

She never showed much love. My dad left when I was so small I don’t remember him, and I have no idea whether that’s what broke her.

’ She shrugged. ‘It still hurts. Mum passed away with dementia. Sometimes I wonder if there was something going on with her brain, her personality long before then. It’s sometimes the only way I can comfort myself and not feel like it was my fault she didn’t love me the way she should. ’

Jennie paused before saying, ‘I’m really sorry, Sophie.’

‘It is what it is… or rather it was what it was. I can’t change it.’ She waited for Jennie to say more but she didn’t. ‘You can talk to me, if you’d like. I’m not the monster you think I am. I’m not out to trick anyone. But if you don’t want to, we’ll drink our coffees and I’ll leave.’

For a while Jennie remained silent, but she did start drinking her coffee and eventually she began to talk.

‘I had a brother,’ she said.

‘Had?’ Sophie asked.

‘He died.’

Sophie reached out and put her hand over Jennie’s but Jennie retracted hers.

‘He died and it was all my fault,’ said Jennie, her gaze fixed on the wooden table. ‘It was a car accident and I was driving.’ She pushed away the remains of her coffee. ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘Just me.’

‘My brother would’ve been thirty-three now.

’ Jennie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘My mother blamed me for the accident. Legally it wasn’t my fault but that never mattered to her.

I was behind the wheel and she told me I’d killed him.

I’ve wondered so many times what I could’ve done differently that day, how my actions might have saved his life rather than taken it away.

‘I tried to hold us together as a family after my brother died but then my dad passed away not that long after the accident.’ She harrumphed as if all of this was hard to believe for her, never mind anyone else.

‘That was another accusation that came my way – my mother said my dad died of a broken heart and I assumed she meant that that was my fault too. I ran away after that. I couldn’t cope with trying to hold her – us – up any longer, not when she looked at me the way she did, when she said those things.

I stayed with friends on and off before I went to London.

I thought it would be straightforward and for a while it was okay.

I found work, I found a room to rent. Then I lost the job, lost the place where I was living and I spiralled after that. ’

‘Is that when you met the Wynters?’ Sophie asked, trying to take it all in, attempting to process what Jennie was saying.

‘I’d been on the streets a few weeks and one night I found a doorway to sleep in.

In the early hours of the morning the door opened and I literally fell inside.

I was about to leap up and run for my life, convinced I’d be yelled at or hauled to my feet and maybe worse, beaten by a tough-nut hotelier who didn’t want disrepute brought to his establishment.

But when I looked up into the kindest eyes I’ve ever known, when I sat up and the person who had opened the door got down to my level, I knew my life was going to be different from then on. ’

‘Greta?’ Sophie asked.

‘Greta,’ Jennie repeated. ‘She took me inside, to a washroom where she let me get clean and brush my teeth. She gave me a pair of trousers and a tunic, the uniform worn by some of the staff, to put on and she washed my dirty clothes. Then she sat me at the side of the kitchen and organised some food. She was running the hotel at the time and I assumed she’d feed me, hand me back my own clothes and send me on my way, perhaps with a tenner in hand. ’

‘But she didn’t.’ Sophie might not know Greta but from what she’d learned about the Wynters since she got to Vienna and from what Bea had told her, sending someone on their way just wasn’t the sort of thing the Wynters did.

‘She talked to me for a long time before she found me a room at a nearby hostel. She helped me apply for jobs, she let me use her address to do so, and I got lucky. I found some work and soon after that I started working at the same hotel she and Walter managed. I got to know both of them. They welcomed me into their lives and I’ve honestly never been so grateful to anyone in my entire life for what they did.

If they hadn’t stepped in, I hate to think what might have happened to me. ’

‘I can’t pretend to know what that was like for you,’ Sophie began, ‘but I definitely know how difficult family relationships can be. I know how much of an impact they can have on the rest of our lives.’

‘I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s easy to forget other people have problems too.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Sophie. ‘My mum was who she was.’

‘It still can’t have been easy.’

‘It wasn’t. I’d always longed for siblings, for a mum and dad who were there for me unconditionally, a family who did the things normal families did.

When my son was born I was determined to give him the things I’d never had.

He lost his dad but he had me, all of me, and I’m sure he’s never had cause to doubt my love for him.

It’s just me and Hayden now. That’s my family. ’

‘Did Bea know much about your home life?’

‘I think she knew pretty much everything.’ All her secrets. ‘We became closer as time went on and my story gradually came out. We talked a lot about it, particularly at Christmas. She was a good listener.’

‘Much like Greta. May I ask, why over Christmas?’

Sophie wasn’t used to talking about it, not with a stranger.

She’d confided in Martin and Bea but Jennie had admitted her own vulnerabilities by divulging her truths, and it felt right for Sophie to admit hers.

‘My mother didn’t really do Christmas. My dad walked out just before Christmas one year so perhaps that’s what did it.

Or maybe it was exactly how she said, that Christmas was commercialism and she didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

She didn’t even try when I was little, though.

I had no stocking, no gifts under the tree…

Well, there was no tree in the first place.

She was a good mother in many ways – I never went hungry, I always had a safe place to live – but Christmas was just one example of the lack of joy under our roof. ’

‘It must have made you angry at her.’