Make My Wish Come True

Juliet folded her arms and looked at her. ‘If you have to …?’

Okay, that hadn’t come out right. ‘I meant, if you need me.’

The haughty look on her sister’s face told her she needed Gemma about as much as she needed a hole in the head. The realisation hit Gemma like a bullet to the chest. No wonder she avoided coming here. Juliet wasn’t interested in creating some balance in their relationship, and this … This was just another point-scoring exercise, with Gemma cast as the loser right from the outset.

Well, this time Gemma had some ammunition of her own to throw. ‘You know why I stay away? You really want to know?’

‘Enlighten me, o wise one …’

That sarcastic, supercilious tone Juliet often used on her, and only her, got right up her nose. ‘Because even if I do the right thing, I do it the wrong way. Even if I try, I haven’t tried hard enough. It’s exhausting being your sister! I can’t be the person you want me to be, because the person you want me to be is you! I’m not you, Juliet. And, guess what, I don’t want to be!’

Uh-oh. Maybe she’d gone a little too far with that one, because Juliet went very, very pink in the face and she seemed to be struggling to form a coherent sentence. Gemma’s eyes widened as Juliet marched right up to her and poked one beautifully French-polished nail in her chest.

‘Well, maybe I wish I could be as selfish as you are! Maybe I wish I could bugger off to the Caribbean and leave Christmas to someone else for once. God knows, I deserve it!’

As Gemma stared back at Juliet, her brain and mouth empty of words, she realised how much older her sister looked. How much more tired. There were new lines round her eyes and her highlights hadn’t been touched up in months. She hadn’t noticed earlier, because Juliet always looked so polished, and she supposed she always expected her to be that way, but looking at her now was like looking at one of those paintings made of dots – from a distance it all looked so put together and pretty, but close up it was a bit of a mess.

This wasn’t just some usual Juliet rant about family responsibility. Something was wrong. Something was really wrong. And it looked as if it had been building up for months and no one – not even Juliet – had noticed it.

Gemma had never really believed in bolts of inspiration from on high, but that’s what happened to her in the following seconds. A blinding moment of clarity.

‘Maybe you should,’ she said.

‘Maybe I should what?’

She looked Juliet straight in the eye. ‘Bugger off and leave Christmas to someone else for once.’

Juliet stared at her. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘You’re right,’ Gemma said, standing up and meeting her sister at eye level. ‘You always have to do it. Maybe it’s time someone took over.’

Juliet’s mouth twitched and Gemma couldn’t tell if she was going to laugh or cry. ‘And how – excepting angelic intervention – would that happen?’ she said, with more than a touch of desperation in her tone.

‘Take my plane tickets and go to St Lucia for a fortnight.’

Juliet stared at her sister. ‘Have you had an aneurysm or something? I can’t just drop everything, leave my kids behind and flit off to the Caribbean for a fortnight.’

Gemma stared right back at her. ‘Yes, you can.’

She shook her head. ‘No.’ And then she shook it some more. ‘That’s the kind of thing you do, Gemma. It’s not me. I can’t. And what would I do about Christmas? I’ve already invited everyone! I can’t cancel on them less than a fortnight before the big day. Who’ll cook the dinner and everything?’

‘I will,’ Gemma said, looking deadly serious. ‘We’ll swap. You can have my Christmas and I’ll do yours.’

That’s when Juliet began to laugh. And not just tittering giggles; she threw her head back and bellowed her amusement out until her lungs were sore and her eyes were streaming. The kids, who’d very sensibly been hiding out in the living room since the two sisters’ return, came running to see what all the hilarity was about. When Juliet opened her eyes, she found them all standing in the kitchen staring at her. Violet, in particular, looked a little worried. She was clutching on to Polly, who wasn’t fazed at all, just curious. The boys were young enough to join in and laugh along with her, without really knowing what the joke was about.

She took a steadying breath and smiled at them.

‘What’s up, Mum?’ Vi said, her expression watchful.

Juliet sighed. ‘Nothing. Auntie Gemma just said something really, really funny, that’s all.’

‘It wasn’t a joke,’ Gemma mumbled.

A little hiccup of laughter escaped from Juliet’s lips. ‘I know.’

Gemma put her hands on her hips. ‘I could cook Christmas dinner!’

The expression on her face reminded Juliet of when Gemma had been around two and Juliet seven, and Gemma had refused to wear nappies any more because her big sister didn’t. As always, she’d got her way, and, as always, everyone else had been clearing up the messes for weeks afterwards.

‘It requires not only cooking skills, but organisation and strategic planning,’ Juliet warned. ‘You can’t just get up in the morning and wing it, you know.’

Her sister glowered at her. ‘You have no idea what I do all day when I’m at work, do you? Logistics is my thing. It’s what I do best.’

Juliet did her hardest not to start laughing again. And failed.

The younger kids wandered off now the fun was over and it looked like another spat was brewing. Only Violet stayed to hear the whole thing out. ‘Why are you talking about Auntie Gemma cooking Christmas dinner?’ she asked. ‘You’re not going away, are you?’

That sobered Juliet up pretty quick. ‘No, darling. I’m not.’ She’d thought Vi had been the least upset of all her children when she’d had to break the news they weren’t going to be seeing their father over the Christmas holidays, but maybe she’d allowed herself to be fooled by a bit of teenage bravado. She walked over and hugged her eldest, and Violet even let her. ‘Gemma just made a joke about me going on her beach holiday and her staying here to look after you all. It wasn’t anything serious.’

Gemma huffed out a breath. ‘I said it wasn’t a joke! I was trying to be nice.’

‘You are nice, Auntie Gemma,’ Vi said, peeling one arm away from her mother and inviting her aunt to hug her from the other side. Gemma rolled her eyes, but she didn’t turn her niece down. So Juliet and Gemma stayed like that for a few moments, joined by a fifteen-year-old and almost touching, but as soon as Violet released them, she and Juliet retreated to opposite corners of the kitchen, eyeing each other like boxers in a ring.

Juliet kept staring at Gemma, but used a soothing voice on her daughter. ‘Can you go and check what the boys are up to, Vi? It’s gone awfully quiet, and that usually means trouble.’

Violet looked nervously between her aunt and her mother, then left to check on her brothers.

Gemma lifted her chin. ‘I meant what I said. The offer still stands.’

Juliet shook her head. It felt heavy on her shoulders. ‘I know you did,’ she said wearily, ‘and that’s the saddest thing of all. Because if you really knew me, if you really understood one tiny thing about me, you’d know that I’d never abandon my kids at Christmas.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Juliet woke up with her face stuck to something smooth and flat. And moist. She poked a finger at the edge of her mouth and discovered she’d been drooling. She blinked a couple of times and tried to make sense of her surroundings. The hard thing beneath her cheek was the kitchen table. The overhead light was on and its harsh glare made her want to close her eyes again, but she pushed her body up with her hands so she was sitting up straight and looked around. A heap of satiny fabric and tinsel lay strewn on the table in front of her.

Oh, yes. Polly’s angel costume.

The last thing she remembered was rubbing her eyes and telling herself just another ten minutes and then she’d crawl upstairs to bed, set the alarm for five thirty and then get up and finish it off in the morning.

She twisted her head to look at the clock on the wall. Ten past two. She moved her jaw, loosening it a little. She was exhausted, but that was hardly surprising. She’d always been pleased all of her children had wanted music lessons, but now she was starting to wonder if it had been such a good idea. Not only was there the inevitable ferrying of her brood to and from those lessons, but Christmas brought a flurry of rehearsals, dress rehearsals and finally the ear-splitting performances themselves.

And then there was the baking, the standing behind trestle tables and handing out glasses of wine poured from boxes that she always seemed to get roped into. She was on the PTA of both her children’s schools, and they didn’t even bother asking if she was going to organise the refreshments each year any more. They just assumed she’d take charge, pull together a rota of willing – and not-so-willing – helpers, wave a magic wand and, hey presto, wine and mince pies, orange squash and Santa-shaped cookies would appear from nowhere.

She linked her hands, straightened her arms above her head and stretched to loosen out the kinks in her spine, before yawning wide and long, and then she stared at the mass of half-finished angel costume on the table in front of her.

She just needed to finish tacking the tinsel round the hem, then make a halo out of a mangled coat hanger and more sparkly stuff and it’d be done. Of course, it should have been finished weeks ago, all ready to go, and it would have been – if she’d known about it. But at teatime, while stuffing her face with pasta and home-made tomato sauce, Polly had enquired loudly where her angel costume was.

‘What angel costume?’ Juliet had replied, her heart racing and an icy sensation washing over her.

‘The one for the carol concert,’ Polly had said and turned her attention to twirling tagliatelle round her fork. ‘Miss Barker gave us all a slip to take home with what we had to wear.’

Juliet stopped washing up and raced to where Polly had thrown her book bag in the hall when she’d come in from school. A quick search revealed two reading books, a host of drawings, an empty crisp packet and a pair of dirty socks. No slip. ‘There’s nothing there, Polls!’ she yelled and marched back into the kitchen, bag in hand as proof.

Polly had shrugged and slurped the last tail of pasta up into her mouth with a smack. ‘Oh,’ she said, totally unfazed. ‘It must still be in the drawer under my desk. Sorry. But I need to be an angel when I sing my solo at the concert tomorrow.’

Juliet had closed her eyes and counted to ten. And then twenty. When, oh when, would these schools learn that giving kids slips of paper to hand to their parents was a disaster waiting to happen? She really wanted to yell at someone, but she clenched her teeth and swallowed the feeling.

‘Never mind,’ she’d said, not as calmly as she’d have liked. ‘It’s fine. I’m sure we can do something with a pillowcase and a bit of tinsel.’

That was when her daughter’s ever-cool demeanour cracked. She stared back at Juliet in horror. ‘A pillowcase?’

Juliet nodded. ‘That’s all I can do at the last minute. The shops are shut and Violet has the dress rehearsal for her dance thing tonight.’

Polly’s eyes filled and her bottom lip wobbled while the edges of her mouth pulled down and out. She’d always made a strange rectangular shape like that when she cried, ever since she was a baby. Greg had always joked it made her look like a pillar box, but Juliet wasn’t finding it very funny as fat tears rolled down Polly’s cheeks and plopped onto her plate.

‘B – but Tegan has a Disney dress and Arabella’s grandma made her one from scratch, with real feathers on the wings and everything!’

Juliet crouched down by Polly’s chair and put her arm round her, ignoring the twins as they loudly and enthusiastically mimicked their sister’s wailing. ‘I’ll make it look really good, I promise. We’ll use the fancy pillowcases from the guest bedroom, the ones with frills on them.’

Polly crossed her arms and shook her head. ‘No. It won’t do! That’s not what I wanted. I need it to be perfect!’

That’s when Juliet had lost her only barely reined-in temper. Result? One tense-shouldered mother hunched over a sewing machine, and one tearful child who’d needed a few extra cuddles at bedtime. In the end she’d remembered the bridesmaid’s dress that Violet had worn for Greg’s sister’s wedding. Puff sleeves, a sash and full skirt in off-white silk. A few additions here and there and it would be wonderful.

She leaned back in her chair and pressed her hand over her mouth as she let out yet another gigantic yawn, then she pushed the chair away and sloped out of the kitchen and up the stairs to bed.

The alarm went off far too early the following morning, but Juliet didn’t have the time, or the energy, to argue with it. After dropping the kids off at their respective schools, she headed out of town to one of the nearby retail parks. Both boys wanted this year’s must-have toy – an action figure that did all sort of things Juliet couldn’t even remember, and didn’t really want to – but the Internet company she’d ordered them from had emailed her to say they only had one left in stock.

None of the other big websites could promise to deliver it before Christmas, if they even had it in stock at all, and the companies that did ‘click and collect’ were all showing it was sold out on their websites. How could she give one boy their dream present and not the other? But she knew that many of those big retailers didn’t allow you to reserve on the website if there were only a couple left in store. Her only hope was to try any place that might stock it and hope they still had one left on the shelf that wasn’t showing up for reservation on the website.

She was there early enough to find a parking space and jump out, check Toy World, discover they didn’t have any but the branch in Maidstone might have, and jump back in her car within fifteen minutes. By the time she got to Maidstone, however, it was a different story. When she’d scoured the shelves, trying to see if one was stuck at the back or hidden behind something else in the wrong spot, and had come up empty, she queued up at customer services. Of course, the store only had one member of staff on duty, an unusually spotty and slow-witted junior who needed to ask his supervisor to do everything for him. Probably even wipe his nose.

She was second in the queue when she heard the woman in front of her ask exactly the same question she was going to ask, and receive a weary no, so when her turn came she and the junior sales assistant just stared at each other and then she mumbled, ‘Never mind,’ and walked out of the shop.

By the time she got to Bluewater she’d almost lost the will to live. Inside the shopping centre was Juliet’s definition of hell. The wide walkways were crammed with people jostling each other, the queues at the cash tills in every shop seemed to snake for miles and the jaunty music pumping from the speakers in the ceiling was making her want to pick up something sharp and attack someone with it. Seriously, if she heard ‘Happy Holidays’ one more time she was going to scream!

Both toy shops she trudged to had felt-tip-written signs pinned on the inside of the windows, firmly warning customers they were out of stock of Robotron Xtreme, and in a haze of disappointment, she wandered into John Lewis and sought to soothe herself with the sight of all those desirable home furnishings. And it worked. Enough for her mind to clear and realise they had a toy department on the top floor, anyway.

She quickly ran to an escalator and marched up it and onto the next one. She was marching through the pink and girly toy section when she pulled up short. There, stuffed among the Barbies and Hello Kittys was the holy grail – Robotron Xtreme! Obviously dumped in the wrong department by someone who’d changed their mind.

She silently prayed blessings on that fickle soul as she lunged for it and hugged it to her chest with both arms. She wasn’t about to let it go, even if rugby-tackled.

Once the toy was paid for and in a bag, she was heading back to the car, but the euphoria she’d felt at the moment of sale started to drain away. By the time she was driving back towards Tunbridge Wells she felt as if she was in trance. A quick check of the clock on the dashboard revealed that she didn’t have time to go home, so she sped straight to the boys’ and Polly’s school, hid the present in the boot before she picked them up, then headed off to fetch Vi.

The twins were even more ear-splittingly energetic than usual on the drive over, and then she remembered it had been the class party that day and, despite each parent providing both a healthy and a ‘treat’ donation for the food, she suspected her boys had consumed nothing but E-numbers and the poor teacher would now be faced with disposing of multiple pots of cherry tomatoes and trays of rapidly curling brown-bread sandwiches.

‘I’m hungry,’ Josh whined.

‘Me too,’ his brother added.

‘I’m going to cook tea as soon as we get in …’ Lord, forgive her – dubious frozen casserole from the back of the freezer. ‘So you’ll just have to wait until then.’

She was as good as her word, too. Within twenty minutes of walking through the front door, she was dishing up tough-looking meat, slicing chunks off a home-made loaf to go with it and calling the kids to the table. Vi, Polly and Josh appeared, but Jake was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where’s your brother?’ she asked all of them, but directing most of her attention to Violet, who she was attempting to train up as her second-in-command.

Violet looked heavenwards and crossed her arms. ‘How should I know? I try to steer clear of the runts as much as possible.’

Juliet didn’t have time to lecture her daughter on her attitude to her brothers at the moment; Polly had to be at the parish church by six thirty to get ready for the carol concert, which started at seven fifteen. And she’d also said she’d try to pop in to her neighbours’ mulled wine and mince pie evening once the younger ones were safely tucked up in bed. Since she’d only be a few doors away, she’d bribed Violet to babysit for the evening. She even considered the tenner her daughter had wangled out of her for doing it a bargain. When was the last time she’d put on a nice dress and talked to adults about adult things?

And Will was going to be there. She half-wanted to see if that twinge of something she wasn’t quite ready to name happened again. Not that she knew what she’d do about it if it did.

She discovered Jake behind the sofa in the living room, surrounded by bits of gold foil. It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to work out that her hungry little man had raided the Christmas tree for the Belgian chocolate decorations she’d hung there earlier in the week and now was regretting it thoroughly. He looked up at her with big eyes, his complexion grey.

Oh, no!

Juliet knew that look. She picked her son up under the arms as he clamped his hand across his mouth and mumbled, ‘I don’t feel very well.’

Thankfully, they had a downstairs toilet. Not so thankfully, they only made it as far as the hall before the inevitable happened. The sound of regurgitated party food and liquid chocolate hitting the flagstone floor was not pleasant. Juliet swallowed her revulsion down and just kept running.

When the worst of it was over, she called Violet to keep an eye on him, then returned to the hall with a mop, bucket and disinfectant to clear up the mess. It was only then that she realised that the tiles had not been the only casualty of Jake’s greediness. Polly’s angel costume had been draped across the chair in the entrance way, and while it had been covered in dry-cleaner’s plastic, the hem had been peeping out of the bottom. Streaks of pinky brown sick were now congealing on the tacked-on tinsel.

Forgetting about the floor, she grabbed the dress and ran to the utility room with it. The only thing to do was to rip all the hard work she’d done last night off the watermarked silk before it stained. Perhaps a strand of clean tinsel tied around the waist would add the extra sparkle it needed now the hemline was plain?

There was a wail behind her from the entrance to the utility room, and she turned to find her youngest daughter there, tears streaming down her face. Juliet left the dress and pulled Polly into a firm hug. ‘It’s okay,’ she said calmly, even though she could feel her internal thermostat rising, even though voices inside her head were screaming about the time ticking away, the hall floor and the grey-looking child hunched over the toilet in the room next door. ‘I’m going to fix it, and it’ll be just as pretty, you wait and see. Now go and eat your dinner.’

Polly nodded tearfully and trotted off back to the kitchen. Juliet stared at the dress, her head pounding. What had she thought she could do to rescue it? Something to do with tinsel, but she couldn’t remember what. It didn’t matter, anyway, because she didn’t have time for that now.

She rushed next door and checked on Jake, who was looking a bit sorry for himself but hadn’t been sick again. Hopefully, now he’d let the pressure off his overloaded stomach, he’d be okay. She was pretty sure this was the result of too much chocolate, not the dreaded sickness bug that had been going around school.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked him, crouching down beside him and rubbing his back.

‘Bit better,’ he said mournfully.

She wiped his face and gently led him upstairs to brush his teeth, then brought him back downstairs and tucked him up on the sofa with a bucket next to him. Yes, her lovely upholstery was in danger there, but it was quicker to get to him if he needed her.

‘You just call me if you need me,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be right back. I’ve just got to go and check on Polly’s dress.’

The next fifteen minutes were spent running between Jake, the other children eating dinner in the kitchen and the utility room, to see if the sick stains were showing on the dress now the adornments had been removed. On one pass through the living room she stole a replacement strand of silver tinsel for Polly’s costume, then ran upstairs. She wouldn’t be needing her little black dress any more, but maybe she could smarten up what she had on for the carol concert. Higher heels and her silver cardigan ought to do it.

When she came back downstairs she went to find Violet. ‘You can be in charge while I run Polly to the church,’ she told her.

Violet crossed her arms. ‘I’m not clearing up if he’s sick.’

‘Fine,’ Juliet said, manhandling Polly out of her summer rain mac and into her winter coat – honestly, when would that child ever learn to dress for the appropriate season? ‘Then make sure he stays on the sofa and throws up in the bucket.’

Violet made a face and stomped off. Juliet grabbed the angel dress and her warmly wrapped-up child and headed for the car. She calculated she just about had time to drop Polly off, run back home to do her make-up – which would have to be a refreshing of what she already had on – brush her hair, find a pair of heels and then she could dash back to the church for the service, dragging Josh with her to give Violet some peace to look after Jake. And if he was looking perkier when she got back, maybe she’d pop into Mike and Sarah’s just to say Merry Christmas and drop off the nice bottle of wine she’d bought them. Surely one glass of mulled wine and twenty minutes of adult conversation wouldn’t be too much to ask?