The 12 Christmases of You & Me Read online

  I’m still here, in this strange memory-lane dream. It’s the evening now and I’m sitting in my new bedroom, surrounded by boxes and bulging bin liners, cross-legged on the bed that hasn’t been made up yet. But this isn’t like a regular dream where you find yourself jumping from time and place without noticing the changes; I’ve experienced every minute of Moving Day all over again, from the first cup of tea Mum made us all drink ceremoniously in the bare, echoey kitchen before she clapped her hands and sent us all off to work on transferring our worldly goods from the van outside to our new home, to this moment right now where I’m sitting on the bare mattress while Tina kneels behind me, her hairbrush in hand.

  Dropping the brush on the bed, Tina gathers up my hair into a high ponytail. She’s propped a mirror on top of the chest of drawers and I see her shake her head before my hair tumbles back down to my shoulders. These days, I dye my hair a deep mocha, but right now it’s back to its natural tawny shade.

  ‘What do you want?’ Tina peers at my reflection as she brushes her fingers through my bland hair.

  What I want is to wake up, because I’m exhausted, which is the exact opposite of what I expect from a night’s sleep. I’ve lugged boxes and furniture all day and let me tell you, dream furniture is just as heavy as real-life furniture.

  ‘All those little plaits like Whigfield?’ I shrug. It doesn’t really matter how my sister styles my hair. It isn’t real and I’m not actually going to the Christmas disco at the local youth club. I’ve been there, done that, and got the evidence in my photo album. But if dream-Lily is sporting her ridiculous Lego-man hair, it’s only fair that I play along while I’m here too.

  Tina sings Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’ as she divides my hair into four sections and I find myself joining in, surprised that I can still remember the lyrics, though perhaps I shouldn’t be as I played the song on a loop on my Walkman when it was released.

  ‘I can’t believe my little sister has a better social life than me.’ Tina has plaited my hair and is now sweeping a fawn-coloured lipstick across my lips after creating a smoky effect on my eyelids that makes my brown eyes pop. She wanted to have a go at my eyebrows with her tweezers, but I declined; years of over-plucking have left me with patchy brows that I have to painstakingly pencil in every morning, so I’m making the most of the natural, slightly bushy look.

  ‘You could come with us.’ I blot my lips on the tissue Tina is holding out. She didn’t go to the disco with us in the real version of this day, but then I don’t think I’d invited her. I hadn’t wanted to go along myself; I’d been too wrapped up in the misery of leaving my old home and friends behind, but Mum had pounced when Lily mentioned the disco as we tried to wriggle the sofa through the door into the living room. Originally, I’d thought it sounded lame and had said as much, but Mum was having none of it and made me go anyway. In the dream, however, I decide to go along with it, because why not? I ended up having a really good time and made two best friends for life. Or at least they were supposed to be for life. I haven’t seen or spoken to Jonas for a couple of years now. If I’m honest, I’m a bit apprehensive about seeing him at Lily’s wedding in a few weeks. I miss him, even if I can’t bring myself to tell him so.

  ‘Nah, you’re alright.’ Tina declines my invitation with a shrug as she shoves her make-up back into her cosmetic bag. ‘I’m going to see if I can get served in that pub around the corner. Don’t. Tell. Mum.’

  ‘Won’t say a word. I promise.’ I hop off the bed (fourteen-year-old dream-me is much more nimble than the almost-forty-year-old version) and head downstairs, where I find Dad unpacking a box in the living room, creating a pile of crap around his ankles in a frenzied manner while Mum chides him for making a mess.

  ‘What’s up?’ I perch on the arm of the sofa as Dad continues to ransack the box.

  ‘I can’t find the lottery ticket and the draw’s in an hour.’ Out comes a porcelain Victorian girl carrying a basket of apples, which Dad dumps on the pile at his feet. Mum tsks and picks it up, checking for damage before placing it carefully on the empty mantelpiece. ‘You never know, this could be the winning ticket, and it’d be my luck that I’d lost the darn thing.’

  It isn’t the winning ticket. I’d have remembered that quite clearly.

  ‘I don’t know why you can’t keep it in your wallet.’ Mum gives another tsk. ‘It’s been the same routine every week since the draws started – an hour before and it’s Fran, where did I put the lottery ticket? As though I’d know! And it’s never in the same place twice. Last week you left it in the glove compartment. The week before it was in the vegetable rack. The vegetable rack!’ Mum shakes her head and sighs. ‘It isn’t as though we’re going to win, anyway. People like us don’t win the lottery.’

  ‘We certainly do! That dental nurse from Wakefield won nearly nine hundred grand the other week.’ Dad pulls out the spiral notepad Mum liked to keep beside the phone and fans out the pages. ‘Imagine that, Fran. We could go on that cruise with nine hundred grand.’

  ‘You could go on a lot of cruises for nine hundred grand, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t encourage him.’ Mum looks sharply at me, her mouth falling open. ‘I said a little bit of make-up. Look at the state of you!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I think Tina’s done a brilliant job, and she’s only a few months into her hair and beauty course.

  ‘You look like one of those hookers, all dolled up like that. Come here.’ Mum’s striding towards me, tissue in hand. She licks the tissue and, before I can dodge out of the way, she’s dabbing at my mouth with the spitty tissue.

  ‘Mu-um! Gerroff!’ I totally forgot she did that to me, and dream-me is just as disgusted as the real me was back then. Batting her off, I back away from the slobbery ambush. ‘Eww. That is so gross!’ I swipe my hand across my mouth, doing Mum’s job for her as I’m left with a brown smear on the back of my hand. I’ll have to ask Tina to touch it up for me before I go out.

  ‘No.’ Dad is looking down into the empty box, shoulders slumped, jaw slack. ‘It isn’t in here. I could have sworn I put it with the phone pad. Maybe it’s in the Christmas decs box…’

  I’m suddenly struck by a memory of Dad triumphantly holding a lottery ticket aloft, beaming and crowing. It hadn’t been a winning ticket (not that Dad knew that at the time), but he’d been so pleased to have finally located it.

  ‘Why don’t you try the bread bin, Dad?’

  ‘The bread bin?’ Mum tsks again. ‘Why on earth would he put the lottery ticket in the bread bin?’ Still, she follows Dad into the kitchen and I hear Dad’s whoop of delight as I scurry up the stairs in search of Tina and her lipstick.

  The community centre is alive with pulsing music, hot bodies and flashing, multi-coloured fairy lights. ‘Cotton-Eye Joe’ is playing as Lily leads me inside, shrugging off her coat and handing it to the bored-looking kid manning the cloakroom. Underneath, she’s wearing an ankle-length black-and-white floral summer dress over a white T-shirt with a pair of white platform trainers. She’s wearing a jingling Santa hat, which at least hides most of the Lego-man hair. I’m wearing a pair of dungarees and a cropped T-shirt. It’s a look I’d never get away with these days so I’m enjoying revisiting my youthful figure.

  ‘Jonas says he probably won’t come.’ Lily takes my coat and hands it to the cloakroom attendant before pressing the ticket into my hand. ‘But we can still have a laugh without him. Shall we go and dance?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer. She simply grabs my hand and tugs me towards the middle of the room, where half a dozen teenagers are skipping around in circles, linking arms with a partner. I join in with gusto – why not? You’re only young twice, it seems – but have to stop when ‘Cotton-Eye Joe’ finishes and is replaced by a novelty song by the alien puppets from The Big Breakfast. I’d forgotten all about this monstrosity, but I will never criticise today’s chart music ever again. How can I when the music of my youth contains Zig and Zag’s ‘Them Girls, Them Girls’?

  �
��I need a drink.’ I have to shout it into Lily’s ear to be heard over the awful music, but she nods and we walk over to the hatch between the kitchen and the main space, dodging past the massive Christmas tree covered in handmade decorations from various groups that use the venue. Next year, my decoration will hang from one of the artificial branches – a silver star made from painted ice lolly sticks covered in glitter.

  ‘Jonas was supposed to be sneaking a bottle of voddie in with him.’ Lily sighs as she slumps against the counter at the hatch. ‘But he’s let us down. Two cokes, please.’

  Jonas will be here. It’s why my stomach is in knots – part apprehension, part giddiness. I know he’ll be here because this is where I met him, and my memory dream has been spot-on so far.

  ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to some people.’ Lily hands me the can of full-fat coke, which I wouldn’t dream of drinking today. She waves away my offer of money. ‘You can get the next ones. Hey, Paul!’

  I’m introduced to Paul Granger, even though I know his life story due to sitting in front of him in maths for eighteen months – plus his tendency to overshare on Facebook. I know who he lost his virginity to (he really couldn’t keep it to himself. He bragged about it non-stop for several maths lessons. Poor Evie Lane was mortified that details of her private life were being passed around salaciously by the male population of Westgate High). I know that Paul failed most of his exams and ended up working at his uncle’s garage instead of sitting his A levels as he’d hoped he would, but five years ago he enrolled on an adult learning course and met his future husband. The wedding was beautiful, judging by the photos he’d plastered all over social media.

  ‘Maisie’s going to be starting at Westgate after Christmas.’

  ‘Nice one.’ Paul bobs his head up and down, though he’s barely glanced at me. I was probably offended originally, but not this time around. ‘Do you want to dance?’ He looks over his shoulder, where a few people have lingered on the dance floor. Thankfully, Zig and Zag have been replaced by Ace of Base.

  ‘Oh.’ Lily’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise but she quickly composes herself and shakes her head. ‘I’m showing Maisie around. I can’t abandon her on her first night.’ She hooks her arm through mine, and I feel a rush of affection for my best friend. I’m practically a stranger to her right now but her loyalty still shines through.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I unhook my arm and take a step back. ‘I need to go to the loo anyway. I’ll catch up with you in a bit.’ I turn, forgetting that I shouldn’t know my way around yet, and head straight for the loos, which are tucked away around a dark corner.

  The clasps on my dungarees are even trickier than I remembered, but I eventually manage to jiggle them open. I redo my lipstick in the blotchy mirror above the sink before pushing my way back out into the main space of the community centre. I realise I’ve left my unopened can of coke on the cistern and am about to go back when I spot him by the cloakroom. Aaron Dean. He’s wearing a white Nike jumper that’s about four sizes too big for his scrawny frame, and I can’t help smiling at how adorable he looks in his attempt to look cool. He looks like a lost little boy buried in that jumper and baggy jeans and I watch as he swaggers towards a group of lads hovering on the edge of the dance floor, his shoulder dipping hilariously low each time his right foot hits the ground.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  I realise I’m blocking the way to the loos and step aside, my eyes still on Aaron as he slaps his hands against his mates’ in turn. It’s the smell that catches my attention – leather and Lynx – and I turn just in time to see Jonas disappearing into the first door off the short corridor. It feels as though I’ve swallowed a giant rock and it’s settling uncomfortably in my stomach as the door swings shut behind him. That’s my best friend right there. Or former best friend, I guess, since we no longer speak and I’m pretty sure he hates me. But right now, Jonas has no idea what I’ll do in the future. Right now we have a clean sheet, even if it’s only for as long as I’m still sleeping.

  ‘Hey.’ I feel Lily’s arm thread through mine, and she grimaces as she glares back towards the dance floor. ‘Bloody Evie Lane. Look at the state of her.’

  I follow Lily’s gaze and see Evie grinding against Paul in a way no fourteen-year-old should. I feel a bit vomitty watching and have to turn away.

  ‘Never mind. Plenty more fish in the sea.’ God, I sound like an almost-forty-year-old. What would I have said back then? ‘There’s loads of totty in here.’ Is that right? Lily doesn’t look oddly at me – her eyes are still firmly trained on the grubby dancing – so I think I’ve got away with it.

  ‘I don’t even fancy Paul anyway.’ Tearing her eyes off the dance floor, she starts to guide me away from the loos. ‘Shall we go and meet some new people?’

  I want to stay and wait for Jonas, but I can’t tell Lily that, so I nod and allow myself to be led away. I’ll meet up with Jonas soon enough. I just hope I don’t wake up before then.

  FIVE

  I’m introduced to more people at the disco, and although I already know them, I do a decent job of feigning ignorance.

  ‘And this is Aaron.’

  I’m watching the dark corner intently in case Jonas emerges, but Lily’s latest introduction pulls my attention away, and I can’t help grinning when I find myself face to face with a teenage Aaron Dean. He looks even more ludicrous in the oversized jumper up close.

  ‘Yo.’ He actually says ‘yo’, and not in an ironic way, and gives a slow nod as he looks me up and down. ‘Call me Aaron D. And these are my homies, Pete Dogg and Kool C.’

  Oh my. My lips are pressed together hard to stop the laughter from bubbling over. Homies? I’m overwhelmed with the urge to laugh right in their faces, so hard that I’m doubled over and slapping my thighs while struggling to breathe, but I somehow manage to control myself. I can’t for one second imagine that I was impressed by the wannabe gangsters in front of me, but I must have been, because I not only agreed to dance with the baggy-jumpered ‘Aaron D’ (how could I have forgotten he referred to himself as that?), but I kissed him on the dance floor. My first ever kiss. A moment I’ve carried around with me ever since. Because you don’t forget your first kiss, do you?

  ‘Where’s your other lady friend?’ Aaron has stopped scrutinising me now and has turned back to Lily. ‘Putting on his make-up in the bogs?’ He elbows his mate, Kool C (actual name Charles. Not so kool) in the ribs and sniggers. I’d forgotten fourteen-year-old Aaron was a bit of a turd and, knowing how he turned out in the end, I can’t help feeling disappointed in his younger self.

  ‘I didn’t know you cared about what Jonas gets up to in his free time.’ Lily smiles serenely at Aaron and tilts her head to one side. ‘That’s so sweet. He isn’t here tonight, but I’ll be sure to let him know you were asking about him.’

  ‘I wasn’t…’ Aaron splutters, but Lily has already grabbed my hand and is stalking towards the tuck shop hatch, where I buy us both a can of coke to replace the ones we’ve misplaced.

  ‘Everyone assumes Jonas is gay, just because he wears eyeliner and lippie, but he’s totally into girls. And I should know.’ Lily holds her hand up. ‘Not that we’ve ever got together or anything. We did kiss – once – but we were eleven and curious. It did nothing for either of us. But I’m his best friend. I know everything about him.’

  Apart from the fact he’s standing behind her, the eyebrow not covered by the Phantom mask raised and his ruby-red lips quirked.

  ‘Talking about me, Lily-Bobs?’ Jonas towers over Lily but he stoops to whisper in her ear, making her jump. Coke fizzes out of the can and froths onto the floor.

  ‘You came!’ Lily’s teeth are fully on display as she turns and beams at Jonas. She throws her arms around him and he hugs her back fiercely, her feet leaving the ground momentarily before he releases her gently, her platform trainers only just missing the coke puddle.

  ‘This is my new neighbour. Her family moved into Moira’s old house this morning.’ />
  ‘I hope you’ve managed to get rid of the smell of cat piss.’

  I’d totally forgotten those were the first words Jonas ever said to me. If I’d known how important he would become to me, I would have stored those words safely, however grim they were.

  ‘Ignore him.’ Lily pokes Jonas in the arm. ‘He didn’t like Moira.’

  Jonas flicks the bobble on Lily’s Santa hat, making it jingle. ‘She was a mean old hag.’

  ‘That’s true, but let’s forget about mean old Moira.’ Lily claps her hands together, beam back in place. ‘Maisie, this is my very best friend in the world, Jonas Brown. Jonas, this is Maisie McNamara. She’s going to be joining us at Westgate High after Christmas.’

  ‘Kon'nichiwa, Maisie.’ Jonas holds out his hand.

  ‘Hajimemashite.’ I take Jonas’s proffered hand, squeezing perhaps a bit too tight as I shake it. This is the first contact I’ve had with my best friend in years. I miss him. Every day. There’s a part of me, deep inside, that has been hollowed out since he left.

  ‘You speak Japanese?’ The exposed eyebrow is raised again, his lips twitching, preparing to launch a full-on beam should we share the language. But I shake my head and the eyebrow lowers again.

  ‘Just a few basics, really. Not much at all.’

  Jonas, who is fluent in Japanese, attempted to teach me over the years but I never got the hang of it.

  ‘Can we go and dance now? Because I was having a good time earlier until slutty Evie came and ruined it.’ Lily hooks an arm through Jonas’s and the other through mine before leading us towards the dance floor. ‘We can talk about why you’re wearing that bloody Phantom of the Opera mask later.’

  Fourteen-year-old Jonas is just as I remembered him being back then, clad in a pair of drainpipe black jeans, heavy Doc Marten boots and a red-and-black striped T-shirt underneath his leather jacket. His overgrown hair is sticking up at every angle possible and, though one eye is obscured by the inexplicable Phantom mask, the other is ringed in thick black kohl. I want to throw my arms around him, to hear the creak of his leather jacket and fill my nostrils with its heavy scent, but I can’t. Although this is a dream and none of this will matter as soon as I wake up, it feels very real and I don’t want to impair the memory of this evening.