She shook her head. I said, “You can if you want, you know. Just say the word and we’ll go find ourselves a nice DVD full of fairy princesses and a bucket of popcorn bigger than your head.”
No giggle; she didn’t even look up at me. Instead she hoisted her backpack more firmly onto her shoulders and tugged at my hand, and we stepped off the curb into that strange pale-gold light.
Ma went all out, trying to get that afternoon right. She had baked herself into a frenzy-every surface was piled with gingerbread squares and jam tarts-assembled the troops bright and early, and sent Shay and Trevor and Gavin out to buy a Christmas tree that was several feet too wide for the front room. When Holly and I arrived, Bing was on the radio, Carmel’s kids were arranged prettily around the tree hanging ornaments, everyone had a steaming mug of cocoa and even Da had been installed on the sofa with a blanket over his knees, looking patriarchal and a lot like sober. It was like walking into an ad from the 1950s. The whole grotesque charade was obviously doomed-everyone looked wretched, and Darren was getting a wall-eyed stare that told me he was inches from exploding-but I understood what Ma was trying to do. It would have gone to my heart, if only she had been able to resist taking a quick sidestep into her usual MO and telling me that I was after getting awful wrinkly around the eyes and I’d have a face like tripe on me in no time.
The one I couldn’t take my eyes off was Shay. He looked like he was running a low-grade fever: restless and high-colored, with new hollows under his cheekbones and a dangerous glitter in his eyes. What caught my attention, though, was what he was doing. He was sprawled in an armchair, jiggling one knee hard and having a fast-paced, in-depth conversation about golf with Trevor. People do change, but as far as I knew, Shay despised golf only marginally less than he despised Trevor. The only reason he would voluntarily get tangled up with both at once was out of desperation. Shay-and I felt this counted as useful information-was in bad shape.
We worked our way grimly through Ma’s full ornament stash-never come between a mammy and her ornaments. I managed to ask Holly privately, under cover of “Santa Baby,” “You having an OK time?”
She said, valiantly, “Amazing,” and ducked back into the clump of cousins before I could ask any more questions. The kid picked up the native customs fast. I started mentally rehearsing the debriefing session.
Once Ma was satisfied that the tack alert level had reached Orange, Gavin and Trevor brought the kids down to Smithfield to see the Christmas Village. “Walk off that gingerbread,” Gavin explained, patting his stomach.
“There was nothing wrong with that gingerbread,” Ma snapped. “If you’re after getting fat, Gavin Keogh, it’s not my cooking that done it.” Gav mumbled something and shot Jackie an agonized look. He was being tactful, in a large hairy way: trying to give us some family togetherness time, at this difficult moment. Carmel bundled the kids into coats and scarves and woolly hats-Holly went right into the lineup between Donna and Ashley, like she was one of Carmel’s own-and off they went. I watched from the front-room window as the gaggle of them headed down the street. Holly, arm-linked with Donna so tight they looked like Siamese twins, didn’t look up to wave.
Family time didn’t work out quite the way Gav had planned: we all slumped in front of the telly, not talking, until Ma recovered from the ornament blitzkrieg and dragged Carmel into the kitchen to do things with baked goods and plastic wrap. I said quietly to Jackie, before she could get nabbed, “Come for a smoke.”
She gave me a wary look, like a kid who knows she’s earned a clatter when her ma gets her alone. I said, “Take it like a woman, babe. The sooner you get it over with…”
Outside it was cold and clear and still, the sky over the rooftops just deepening from thin blue-white to lilac. Jackie thumped down in her spot at the bottom of the steps, in a tangle of long legs and purple patent-leather boots, and held out a hand. “Give us a smoke, before you start giving out. Gav’s after taking ours with him.”
“So tell me,” I said pleasantly, once I had lit her smoke and one for myself. “What the fuck were you and Olivia thinking?”
Jackie’s chin was arranged all ready for an argument, and for a disturbing second she was the spitting image of Holly. “I thought it’d be great for Holly to get to know this lot. I’d say Olivia thought the same. And we weren’t wrong there, were we? Did you see her with Donna?”
“Yeah, I did. They’re cute together. I also saw her bleeding devastated over Kevin. Crying so hard she could barely breathe. That was less cute.”
