Crappy Christmas
Authors: Rebecca Hillary
Crappy Christmas
By
Rebecca Hillary
Copyright © 2015
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
rebeccahillary.co.uk
When you think about all the Christmases you have when you’re a child, all the magic and mystery of it all, you have to wonder when exactly it turns into the worst time of the year. Sometimes it’s having kids, sometimes it’s losing your job, and sometimes it’s just because absolutely everything that can go wrong does. Sort of like “Merry Murphy’s Law, loser!”
Carrie Smith had it all; two adorable but extremely annoying children, a gorgeous husband with a drinking problem, and she’d just been made redundant from the company she’d worked for since she left school. Thirty-five years old and no qualifications other than a couple of A-levels, and no money to get any qualifications she would need because her husband had a drinking problem and couldn’t hold down a job. Working at the corner store was only enough to keep food on the table, and her redundancy pay wasn’t going to last forever.
“How’s the job hunt going, honey?” Simon was so sweet in the morning, before he got a drink in him and turned into a gibbering idiot.
“It would be a lot easier if I wasn’t already working.” Carrie pulled the boys’ bowls from the table and dropped them into the washing up bowl. “Would it really be such a hardship for you to not have a drink a couple of days a week? Just enough for you to get a couple of shifts at the sports centre.”
“Why would I want to do that? If I was working at the sports centre, I wouldn’t have time to spend with the boys.”
“You’re barely spending time with them now, Si.”
“You’re a real downer sometimes, you know that?” Simon pushed his own bowl away and slammed his fist down on the table. “I take it I’m taking the boys to school?”
“Don’t bother. I’ll take them and then head to work. Just do me a favour and at least look like you’re making an effort. Tidy the house up a bit.”
“Whatever.”
Carrie gazed at her husband from across the kitchen and sighed. He was still attractive, if a little rough around the edges, but he had an attitude hat often made her cringe. He hadn’t always been like that. He’d been made redundant two years previously and taken to drinking heavily when he couldn’t walk straight into another job. He’d had a few jobs in the meantime, but his drinking meant that he never passed the probationary period. Getting repeatedly canned before even finishing a trial at the job meant that he was more inclined to drink, so everything had snowballed.
“I’ll get something in for dinner from work if you like. Save you having to cook.” She managed a half-smile, if only to diffuse the stress-level in the room before the boys got back downstairs.
“If you like.” He shrugged noncommittally, but as he turned away she could see a smile cross his face as well.
“Come on boys!” Carrie shouted up the stairs. “I’ve got to get a move on so I’m not late for work!”
The twins almost fell over each other in their haste to get downstairs, but still rushed into the kitchen to give their dad a big hug apiece before they left. Carrie rounded them up and pushed them out to the car, grabbing their bags from the hallway as she passed, almost without thinking. Dropping them off at school was quick and painless, and she was at work five minutes before the start of her shift, so she had time to make herself a cup of coffee.
“You’re looking well, Carrie.” Tom leaned against the counter as Carrie served the old woman who lived at the end of her road, Mrs Cowling. “And you too, Mrs Cowling. How’s Mr Cowling this morning?”
“His hip’s playing him up, but he’s not one to complain.” It seems the Cowlings were never ones to complain about anything. Their only son had died a year ago, and they didn’t even complain then. “It’s the Christmas do at the bingo tonight, so that should cheer him up. You should come along, Carrie. It would do you good to get out of the house.”
“I’ll certainly think about it, Mrs Cowling.” Carrie smiled at the old woman. “How much is the jackpot up to this week?”
“Just over two thousand, I think. Make a good Christmas for your boys, I’d say.”
“That it would, Mrs Cowling. Mind how you go.” Carrie watched as Tom opened the door and Mrs Cowling shuffled off out and up the street.
“I mean it, Carrie, you’re looking well. There’s almost a glow about you. You’re not pregnant are you?”
Carrie shook her head. It had been weeks since she and Simon had even spent a night in the same room, let alone the same bed, so it was nigh impossible for her to be pregnant. “It’s just the spirit of the season. Everybody has a glow about them at Christmas. It’s all that light reflected from all the tinsel that’s covering just about every surface.”
Tom laughed a deep belly laugh that made Carrie smile. She enjoyed working for Tom, even though it didn’t pay particularly well. She could work around the boys’ schedule and Tom was good looking in a paunchy sort of way, as well as being hilarious. If he only lost the extra weight he was carrying around his middle, Carrie would probably have him categorised as bed-worthy, but that was unlikely to change at Christmas, especially with all the mince pies he was sneaking when he thought she wasn’t looking.
Carrie’s shift ended far too soon, and she found herself rather disappointed that she had to go home. A quick tidy up and a casserole in the oven before picking up the boys from school, and then she would be able to enjoy a quiet evening with a good book and her thoughts. Despite the jackpot on offer at the bingo, home was where Carrie felt she should be, even if she was to be fantasising about being anywhere else in the world than her own private hell.
“Wow!”
“Aw, Carrie.” Simon’s face fell as Carrie walked through the door and saw what he had done. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it.”
She dropped the bag of groceries on the table in the kitchen and turned to face him with a mixture of joy, surprise and utter disappointment. “Simon, I love it, but we can’t afford to keep all these Christmas lights running. You know the boys will want them on all the time, and it’s just too expensive. You’ll have to take some of them down.”
“Carrie,” Simon slipped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder as he spoke softly in her ear. “I have a plan that will make all your money worries disappear.”
“Last time you said that, you gambled two ton on a hundred-to-one shot at Epsom.”
“It came fifth didn’t it?”
“Yes, but the bookies were only paying out up to fourth.”
“That’s beside the point.” Simon breathed against her neck, and Carrie was pleasantly relieved to smell peppermint rather than his usual afternoon liquid diet of Special Brew. “We have two rooms that nobody’s using, so when I was getting the decorations out of the attic, I decided to tidy them out and clean them up a bit.”
Carrie sighed as she leaned back against him. “You want me to bring strangers into the house right before Christmas?”
“That’s the beauty of it. I know someone who’s looking for a room to rent for a couple of months, and we have a room to spare. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding somebody for the oater room. I bet Tom would even let you put an ad in the window for free if you ask him nicely.” There was a slight edge in his tone that suggested he might know that Carrie had a slight crush on her boss, but if he did then he wasn’t letting on. “So, what do you say? It’ll just take a couple of hundred to get some new wardrobes in.”
“Fine.” Carrie turned and let Simon enclose her in a warm hug. At least he was making an effort. “But if we all get murdered in our sleep by the lodger, I will kill you.”
Another long day of work at the corner store, another long day of daydreaming about a better life, and Carrie dove carefully home through the sleet and rising flood water. The boys were waiting by the door with happy smiles and hugs, and they couldn’t wait to drag her through into the living room where, they cheerfully announced, Simon had a surprise waiting for her. She shook them off and told them to go and wait for her, while she took off her coat and kicked her wellingtons onto the mat where they wouldn’t be dripping all over the hallway floor.
“You know, I’ve been thinking, Si. I’m not entirely sure that letting out the rooms is such a good idea.” She grabbed a towel from the radiator and dried off her hair. It was amazing how wet it was possible to get despite only being out in the rain for twenty minutes at the most. “Do you really think it’s such a good idea forcing the boys to get used to someone new in the house at this time of the year?”
“Not the best of times to be asking that, Carrie.” Simon’s voice held a note of ironic laughter, and Carrie took the towel from her head just in time to see a heavily pregnant young woman getting to her feet from off the couch.
“Simon, you shouldn’t make pregnant women sit on there,” Carrie told him, fumbling for a more suitable response to the situation. “The cushions are terrible. You could have at least given her your chair.”
“Never thought of that.” Simon winced as he realised his mistake. “Belle, I’m sorry. You should sit over here.”
“I’m fine, honestly.” The young woman smiled broadly and held out her hand to Carrie. “Sorry, I’m guessing Simon didn’t tell you I was going to be coming round?”
Carrie shook her head and looked at the empty cups on the coffee table. “Tea? Coffee?” She picked up the cups without waiting for a reply and hurried into the kitchen, achingly close to hyperventilating. She put the cups down in front of the kettle before she could drop them, which she knew was inevitable, and drew a tall glass of water from the sink. There were footsteps in the doorway and she turned to see Belle standing there, watching her with a nervous smile. “You want tea, right?” Carrie asked. “No caffeine when you’re pregnant.”
“Look, Carrie, I can tell Simon hasn’t told you anything about me, but I want you to know, I won’t make trouble. I just need a place to stay for a couple of months while my flat’s being sorted. There was a gas leak, and when the place was being looked over they found all sorts of problems. I know it’s short notice, but—”
“Hey, who am I to turn away a pregnant woman at Christmas?” Carrie shrugged. “It’s not like I can just tell you there’s no room at the inn, is there?”
“Since you’re the one paying the bills, I’d say it really is up to you.” Belle looked so young and so vulnerable that Carrie felt guilty for even joking about training her away.
“How old are you?” Carrie asked, flicking the switch on the kettle and gesturing for Belle to sit down at the table.
“I’m twenty.”
“And how, uh…”
“How did I meet Simon?” Belle offered. Carrie nodded dumbly, her head full of horror stories about how her husband could possibly have met someone so young and pretty. “We met at AA.” Belle’s expression changed to a mixture of guilt and self-loathing. “It was about a year ago. He said you were going through a bad patch, and that he should try to get clean for you and the boys.”
“So, she just came out with it. No prompting or anything.” Tom was busy adding yet more tinsel to the window display. “She just announced that she met your husband in the Temperance league?”
“Something like that.” Carrie laughed at the idea of her husband being involved in any demonstrations against alcoholism. “Obviously going to AA didn’t help him, because up until two days ago, he was still getting wasted every day.”
“Has he ever been clean? In the last two years, I mean.”
“Briefly, a few months ago. Not for long though.”
Tom jumped down from the step ladder and rounded the counter to give Carrie a tight hug. “I know you must have all sorts of things going through your head right now, but you probably shouldn’t jump to any conclusions. I highly doubt they did anything, so you shouldn’t think about them together.”
“Well, I wasn’t, but I am now.” Carrie half-heartedly pushed him away. “She says it was he junkie ex-boyfriend, and I can’t see why she would lie about something like that when she’s counting on me for somewhere to live…” Carrie dropped her shoulders as she realised how stupid that statement sounded out loud. “God, I’m such an idiot, aren’t I? Of course she’d lie if he’s told her I wouldn’t turn her away.”
“Want another hug?” Tom held his arms out and Carrie tucked herself away into his embrace. “It’s a completely crappy situation, but maybe it’s not an issue. There’s a slim chance it could still be her junkie ex.”
“Yeah.” Carrie was finding it hard to think of anything other than Belle and Simon together, doing all those little things that used to make her so happy, but now were resigned to once a month if she was lucky. “I mean, the only people who want to be around drunks are…” she trailed off without saying the words out loud - other drunks. She could feel tears pricking her eyes but she fought them back. Crying in front of Tom would solve nothing, and there was only so much pity she was willing to accept.
“You know, you and the boys are welcome to mine any time you like. I’ve got the space if you need to get away for a day or two.”
“And leave Simon with his little floozy?” Carrie ran her hands over her face, covertly wiping away the tears. “If he’s going to insist on her being there, I’m not going to make it easier for them.”
Tom pulled away from her as the door creaked open, and Carrie smiled at the customer who slopped a small puddle of water into the shop with her. “Good afternoon. Nice weather for it,” Tom quipped. “Don’t tell me. You need a mop and bucket?”