Meg nodded. This was true. ‘What are your plans for the next week or so?’
‘Plans?’ Lorna laughed. ‘Blimey, girl, who makes plans? Not me.’ She sniffed. ‘Truth is, I’m going through a bit of a rough patch, Meggy. I wasn’t going to mention, not with us having such a lovely time, but as I said, me and Don have split up. My fault, but what can you do? You can’t turn the clock back, can you?’
‘No, you can’t.’
Although I often wish I could. Back to before I agreed to go to New York, back to before Bill died and back to before you put me into care.
‘He’s chucked me out, bastard.’ She reached for another cigarette. ‘Takes the word of some bloke in the pub over me!’ Lorna jabbed at her chest. ‘Mind you, the bloke wasn’t lying. But even so.’ She gave a wry laugh.
Meg leant forward and placed her hand on Lorna’s arm. ‘You can stay for as long as you need to, Mum. We can have Christmas together, just the two of us. Would you like that?’
There was a pause before she responded and Meg held her breath.
Would she like that?
‘I’d like that more than anything, love.’
‘We can just stay at home. I’ll cook a lovely turkey and we can eat it on our laps and watch rubbish on the telly.’ Meg couldn’t help thinking that her Christmas had been salvaged.
‘That sounds perfect, just what the doctor ordered.’ Lorna smiled.
Meg beamed back. It did sound perfect.
Lorna wasn’t done. Her words, when they came, though a little slurred were not unconsidered. ‘I do sometimes think of all them Christmas days with you lot spread to the four winds. Didn’t know where you all were. I used to just go back to bed and sleep till it was all over. I struggled back then, Meggy. I had a lot of demons.’
Meg nodded, she understood. And the wonderful thing was that it wasn’t too late to forgive and forget.
‘I get it, Mum. And I think about it a lot, especially at this time of the year. It can’t have been easy for you.’
‘It wasn’t,’ Lorna confirmed, reaching into her bag for her lighter.
Meg wriggled on the sofa to get comfy. ‘I remember me and Liam going through the catalogue one year. I don’t know how old we were, but we were little. We sat in our pyjamas and went through every section, picking out all the toys and things we wanted Santa to bring us. We made a list with little descriptions. Pages and pages of it.’ She smiled at the memory of the two of them meticulously copying the reference numbers and chosen colours with a stubby pencil gripped between their fingers. ‘We both knew we weren’t going to get any of it, but it was brilliant to pretend. I kept that list under my pillow for a long while and every night I read it before I fell asleep.’ She recalled packing the list into her carrier bag along with her clean pyjamas. ‘By the time Christmas came, I didn’t need any of the stuff on that list because I’d played with it all in my head for hours and hours. It’s funny, isn’t it, the things you remember?’
Lorna nodded as she sipped her wine.
Meg looked at her own glass and swilled the contents from side to side. ‘I used to wait for you to come and get me and take me to the seaside.’ She felt her cheeks flush at this very private confession.
‘The seaside? Why the bloody hell the seaside?’ Lorna laughed.
Meg shrugged. ‘Don’t know, really. I thought we’d have a lovely day out, just the two of us.’ She twisted the stem between her fingers.
‘As you said, Meggy, it’s never too late. We could go to the seaside if ya like?’ Lorna sat forward and sparked the flint, then puffed blue-tinged smoke into the atmosphere.
‘Could we?’ Meg was conscious of how eager she was, her eyes wide and her muscles tense.
‘Yeah!’ Lorna waved her cigarette in the air. ‘We can do anything we want, we’re free spirits, right? No bloody Don or bloody Yank telling us what we can or can’t do.’
Meg nodded. Maybe things did happen for a reason, maybe this was why she was here alone on December the nineteenth; it was fate’s way of placing her at home, ready to receive her mum, ready to make things good. ‘When shall we go?’ She was as excited as her six-year-old self, but without the flip-flops under the bed.
Lorna considered this. ‘How about Boxing Day or the day after? Depends on the trains.’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘We can go to Southend, walk along the pier, go and have a nice fry-up in a café. A proper café, mind, where a bacon sarnie costs less than one of your fancy cups of coffee!’
‘We could go to the cinema and get popcorn!’ Meg gushed. This was another activity on her wish list of things to do with her mum.
‘The cinema it is. The cinema in Southend, we’ll make a right old day of it.’ Lorna nodded, drowsily.
Meg laughed, loudly and without restraint. She was happy. She was finally going to the seaside with her mum.
‘I love you, Mum.’ It took every ounce of her courage to say the words out loud. Looking up, Meg smiled at Lorna, who, with her head tilted back against the cushions and mouth open, slumbered like a baby. She removed the smouldering cigarette from between her mum’s fingers and stubbed it out in the water glass, along with the others.
Meg woke the next morning with a headache throbbing behind her temples. She wandered into the kitchen and ran a long glass of water. Lorna was already on the sofa, scrolling through the channels and enjoying her second or third cigarette of the day, if the additional stubs in her empty glass were anything to go by. The smell of lingering tobacco smoke made Meg retch. Despite the chill of the December morning, she walked over to the balcony doors and opened them a crack, mindful today more than ever that this was Milly and Pru’s flat. Although she knew the flat was hers for her lifetime – yet more proof of just how loved she was by the Plum cousins – she still didn’t want anyone, including her own mother, not appreciating it.
‘Blimey, what are we, bloody penguins? It’s freezing with that door open!’ Lorna balanced the cigarette on her bottom lip and squinted to avoid the smoke as she thrust her arms into a cardigan she’d found in the spare-room wardrobe.
‘I just thought some fresh air in here might be nice.’ Meg bent to retrieve the glasses and empty wine bottles that littered the table from the previous evening. Her headache intensified a notch as she handled the bottles; the sharp crack of glass against glass a reminder of how much they had drunk.
‘Fresh air is what you want in the summer, not in the bloody middle of winter.’ Lorna feigned a shiver.
‘Did you sleep all right?’ Meg was already mentally locating extra blankets in case her mum had been too cold in the night.
‘Who wouldn’t in a room like that?’ Lorna laughed. ‘It’s the flashiest place I’ve ever slept, Meggy. I opened a cupboard door and walked into a bloody marble bathroom! How the other half live, eh?’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘I felt like Kim Kardashian.’
Meg laughed, thinking how Pru would wince at her interiors being compared to theirs.
‘So, I was thinking, if we’re going to have our little Christmas here, just the two of us, why don’t we jazz the place up a bit? It needs a bit of Christmasifying, don’t you think?’
Meg looked at the luxurious furnishings and heavy drapes. Lorna was right; it could be any time of the year, there was certainly nothing to suggest it was Christmas. She thought of Elene and Salvatore, who had made the effort with their rather gaudy tree in the reception of the Inn on 11th. Her heart twisted at the memory of Edd; how she had arrived at her rented room with him in tow and the night they had spent, a blissful night, skin to skin under the counterpane. She never had found out what his most treasured thing was after his baseball shirt and his dad’s badge. Not that it mattered, not now.
‘Yes, let’s do it! I was going to get a tree and bits and bobs for when Lucas gets home, but you’re right, we should do it now.’
‘Tell you what, love. You have your shower and wake up a bit and I’ll go out, get us a tree and pick up a nice breakfast, what do you say?’ Lorna stood and Meg noticed for the first time that she was fully dressed.
‘Oh, okay!’ This was new to her; the mum of her childhood had never taken control, been proactive or considered the purchase of a ‘nice breakfast’. She rather liked it. She liked it a lot; it was proof that people could change.
Lorna rifled in her bag and turned to her daughter. ‘Couldn’t lend us a few quid, could you, Meggy? Don owes me some money, said he’d settle up when he got some cash from his daughter who owes him, but I’m a bit strapped till then.’ She looked her daughter in the eye.
‘Yes of course. Tell you what, take my card. I
want
to pay for the tree; it’s Lucas’s tree after all.’ She tore a corner from an envelope on the mantelpiece and wrote the PIN number on it. ‘Here you go.’
Lorna placed them into her purse. ‘What shall I get us? What do you fancy to eat?’
‘Oh, anything. Bacon, eggs, I don’t really mind. I definitely need something to soak up all that wine! You can always see if there is anything you fancy in the bakery downstairs – we
are
the best in London!’
‘They’ve got you brainwashed, my girl. Mind you, I reckon I wouldn’t mind a bit of brainwashing if it got me a bedroom like that.’ Lorna jerked her head in the direction of the spare room.
Meg’s phone buzzed. She gathered it to her chest and swiped the screen, erasing Edd’s latest text with the brush of a fingertip.
‘I’ll be off then.’ Lorna buttoned up the cardigan.
‘Don’t get lost!’
‘Cheek! I know this city better than most and if I do get lost, I’ve always got a tongue in my head to ask directions. You always were a worrier, Meggy.’
I wonder why.
Meg smiled.
Two hours later and Meg was pacing the sitting room, wondering where her mum had got to. She trod the stairs, and walked into the bakery via the side door from the hallway. She heard Lorna’s voice before she saw her.
‘So you might want to watch your tone, matey. My daughter is practically the boss around here, after all.’
Meg darted forward to see Guy behind the counter, looking both mortified and furious.
‘Mum!’ she yelped. Embarrassment bent her double. Guy – her friend, her mentor and the biggest asset that Plum Patisserie had – deserved to be spoken to in any way other than this.
‘Oh hello, love. Was just trying to get hold of some cakes and he was trying to make me pay for them!’
‘I… I…’ Guy stuttered, speechless. It was never an issue; Meg could help herself to any baked goods she wanted and bar the odd croissant with her morning coffee or grabbing a loaf at the end of the day for Lucas, she never took advantage.
‘Meg, I…’ Guy tried again, looking from Lorna to his friend standing in front of him.
She rushed forward and placed her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Guy. It’s my fault. I told Mum to pop down and take what she needed. I should have come with her. She is going through a bit of a rough patch, she’s upset – aren’t you, Mum?’
‘Not so upset that I don’t know when someone is giving me a load of old flannel!’ She scowled. ‘I’ll wait outside. Think I need a fag.’ Lorna gathered up the two shopping bags from beside her feet and gave Guy a withering look as she stomped out of the bakery.
‘Have you always apologised for her?’ Guy turned to Meg as the door closed behind her mother.
She sighed and looped her hair behind her ears. ‘Pretty much.’
‘Well, maybe it’s time you stopped. She’s a grown woman.’
‘Yes she is, Guy. A grown woman who happens to be my mum and who I haven’t seen for a very, very long time. And I am very glad that she is back in my life, in our lives!’ She pictured her mum and Lucas strolling in the park, catching up on lost time.
Guy sighed and placed one hand on his hip; with the other he swept his brow. ‘I understand. But I didn’t know what to say to her, Meg…’ He avoided her gaze.
‘Well, no harm done. We only wanted a bit of breakfast, although it’s nearer lunchtime now!’ She laughed, trying to lighten the mood.
‘C’était plus que cela…’ He rubbed his chin. ‘It was a misunderstanding, I’m sure.’ He smiled at his friend.
Meg shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Thanks. She can be a bit blunt. It’s just what she’s like. But she’s quite harmless.’
Guy gave a tight-lipped smile but didn’t doubt for one second that Lorna could cause a lot of harm. ‘I’m glad you are having a nice time and it’s great that you’ve had some company – a good distraction, non? Is she leaving today?’ He hoped his question didn’t sound too loaded.
Meg avoided eye contact. ‘No. In fact we are going to spend Christmas here together.’
‘Oh.’ Guy frowned.
‘She and her partner Don have split up and he’s chucked her out, so she’s a bit stuck.’ Meg shrugged, still unable to look her friend in the eye.
‘Have you told Milly?’ Guy was direct and for the first time ever, Meg felt a flush of anger towards her loyal friend.
‘Have I told Milly what?’ She was aware her tone was quite sharp.
Guy decided not to press further. He took a deep breath. ‘I’m heading back to France tomorrow.’
‘Right.’ Meg hesitated. ‘I’d rather you didn’t tell Milly that I am back or that Lorna is here. I don’t want to spoil her break. She’d only fuss or cut the holiday short and I don’t want to be responsible for that.’
‘No, of course, I won’t say a word. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with me.’ He spoke quickly, echoing her thoughts.
‘Thank you, Guy. It’s lovely for me, being able to chat to my mum before we go to sleep and then seeing her when I wake up. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that.’
She was obviously excited and Guy felt happy that his friend was reconnecting with her mother. Not that it helped him warm to Lorna. He wasn’t surprised one iota that Don, whoever he was, had chucked her out. Guy had only spent a few minutes in her company and that was enough to make him want to do the same. He decided not to tell Meg that Lorna had asked for catering packs of ground coffee beans – six of them! – and had then snapped at him when he’d enquired what they were for. Instead, he held Meg’s shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Happy Christmas, Meg. If I don’t see you before I go, you have my number, so call if you need me.’