Work Text:
25 December, 2010
When Jane opens her eyes she knows the day is going to be pretty shit.
She supposes she should try to be happier, because it’s Christmas and that’s what normal, well-adjusted people do on Christmas, be happy, but since when has that ever been an option for her?
It’s the pressure in her head, partly. Stormclouds that had bedevilled her on and off for most of her life, but they hadn’t persisted this bad for this long before. Thunder clapping in her head and making her beg for a few more minutes of unconsciousness, like it had been since… that night… in October.
She’d had long bad periods like this before. After every child, for one. After Olly was born was the worst - Julio begged her to see an actual therapist, not just to swallow the fluoxetine the GP prescribed her for postpartum depression before shuffling her out the door. Rain lashed against her temples from the inside and even though she promised she’d never be like that she would snap at Charlie and Tori. Tori would scowl in that preadolescent way and Charlie would look like she’d struck him and she would hate herself either way. She was supposed to be better than this. Not like Mum and Dad.
It had never been this bad, though. The pressure that slowly increased throughout the day until she went to bed every night with a headache. Squalls that rose up in her mind that grew so powerful she had to stop what she was doing for a couple minutes, leaving the sink on while doing the washing up or staring at the excel spreadsheet on her computer until the numbers and letters no longer made any sense.
The voice, ever-present, that whispered every waking moment
Yourfaultyourfaultyourfaultyourfaultyourfault
Quiet, barely perceptible at times, then louder, growing in power and intensity, and when the right reminder hit - the empty bed in Charlie’s room, the drive to the psychiatric hospital, the dried blood in the grout of the tiles in the bathroom that won’t come out all the way no matter how hard she scrubs, the voice is deafening, has a power all of its own that she can feel in her teeth, rages and cracks and rumbles until she can hear nothing else.
So she’d been having a time of it. The past few weeks had been pretty bad. But things were supposed to be better now, right? Charlie was back, he hadn’t relapsed, he was eating, everything would be going back to normal.
So why did she wake up with the feeling that today was going to be shit?
She hadn’t slept very well to begin with, because she’d spent a good portion of the night lying awake focusing on her breathing. It happens from time to time, usually when she’s stressed - she’ll be in bed and she’ll get the notion that if she’s not actively focusing on her breathing then she’ll stop breathing and suffocate to death, and then the children will be without a mother and Charlie will spiral again and Tori as well probably and Olly will be traumatised and probably get into alcohol or drugs or something as a teenager and never mind how hard Julio would take it -
Sorry. Her mind sometimes just goes places like that.
The children are all in Tori’s room. Olly is playing that annoying card that her sister Wendy sent that plays “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” over and over again - she’s long ago vowed that in the increasingly unlikely event her sister ever has kids she’ll be the aunt who gifts the most annoying, loudest, brightest toys she can find out of sheer pent-up schadenfreude - and Charlie and Tori are chatting.
This is normal. The feeling is wrong. Everything is going to be fine. Things are getting better.
She keeps this mantra up as she makes her way downstairs. Julio is already in the kitchen making breakfast (she seldom ever actually cooks, having once set a pot on fire when she set it down on the hob and forgot about it until the water inside it had all boiled away. Her parents never miss an opportunity to needle her over the fact that Julio does most of the cooking.)
Her husband looks up from the sizzling bacon on the frying pan to greet her with a “happy christmas” and a peck on the cheek. His eyes linger on her a second longer than usual, though, his grasp on her arm hesitating, before he follows it up with a whispered “you okay?”
“Fine,” she insists, and she almost believes it when she says it.
Julio’s expression tells her he doesn’t believe her, but he doesn’t push. He never does, knowing that doing so usually only makes her hide inside herself all the more fervently. It was a long-learnt habit, one that dates all the way back to when Nancy and Richard Driscoll would see something the matter with her and push and push and cajole with the usual refrain of “I don’t know why you won’t just tell us what’s going on,” or the “sweetheart, we just want what’s best for you.” Never mind the fact that when she did open up it was always brushed aside, diminished, ridiculed, or otherwise invalidated, and that’s if it wasn’t directly used against her.
So Julio has learnt to be patient. Let Jane come to him.
The pounding of feet heralds 7:30, and Olly sprinting down the stairs to the Christmas tree. Charlie and Tori follow at a more sedate pace.
Olly turns as she enters the room. “Mum, can we open our presents now?” he asks with a face-splitting grin that shows off a missing tooth.
She actually manages a genuine smile this time. “You may,” she says.
Julio enters the room behind her with his phone in hand, filming as Oliver tears into the wrapping paper with abandon. Tori sits down next to him and very matter-of-factly rips apart the dancing Father Christmases that cover a box that Jane is pretty sure is from Charlie. Her middle child kneels on the other side of his sister and carefully and delicately tears at the wrapping paper, taking care to peel the sellotape off the paper and preserve most of it. Even when he was little he did it that way - Jane only now realises it might have been connected to his OCD. The past few weeks she’s been poring over every memory she has of Charlie, debating what was or wasn’t an OCD symptom and whether or not she should feel guilty that she didn’t catch it earlier. She usually errs on the side of “yes it was,” and “yes you should.”
Her youngest ends up with a collection of toy tractors from Father Christmas and from various aunts and uncles, along with Mario Kart for the Nintendo Wii. The latter is abandoned, however, as Oliver carefully lines up his tractors to examine them and decide which one he should play with first. Jane tenses at this, keeping a weather eye on him and wondering whether she should be worried about Oliver having the same disease as his brother, when he decisively picks the largest tractor, drives it around, and proceeds to make it jump over the line of smaller ones like a monster truck. He gives it the full accompaniment of sound effects as he does so.
Julio laughs appreciatively as he opens his gift from Charlie, containing two Metamorphosises (Metamorphoses?) one by Ovid and the other by Franz Kafka. He’s also gifted his sister a new laptop case with Wednesday Adams on it, and she’s given him a bluetooth speaker for his room.
Something unpleasant turns in Jane’s stomach about that. She resolves that whenever Nick is over and she hears the speaker playing she’ll take care to check in on them more often. She’s fully aware of what sounds that kind of speaker was frequently used to cover up. She’d… mostly come to believe Charlie when he assured her that he and Nick weren’t having sex, but the worry was familiar enough and it was hard to shake. Not as if she had no experience with older high school boyfriends, either, much as Julio assured her that Nick was nothing like Peter, her high school boyfriend who cheated on her all through sixth form and gaslit her into thinking she was jealous and clingy.
Breakfast is eaten amidst the disorder as usual. Jane tries not to make it too obvious that she’s keeping an eye on Charlie’s plate. From time to time he catches her, and each time his expression goes blank, like he’s trying not to be irritated. She does, however, notice him manage a piece of toast and two slices of bacon, along with one of the nutrition shakes their GP had recommended, so she considers it so far so good. She’s starting to actually believe today might go off without any issue.
She spends the rest of the day getting the house ready. The wrapping paper is discarded and stuffed into the bin, the kitchen and dining room tables are aligned and an appropriately festive tablecloth is draped over them both, the house is tidied and the washing up from breakfast is done, presents are distributed to everyone’s respective rooms (she only has to tell Olly three times to put his tractors away,) and the house is as spotless as a house with two teenagers and a seven-year-old will ever be. It won’t save her from comments from her parents or her sister, but it’ll limit the ammunition they have available.
By noon she's changed into her dress and ready to face the incoming relatives. She’d told her family a time that was as late as she could plausibly get away with, and told Julio’s family a time about an hour earlier.
As it turns out she needn't have bothered. Julio's family arrives half an hour late, and her parents, as usual, decide that schedules are more like guidelines, and arrive forty minutes early.
Dad is grumbling about something, and Mum puts on a show of seeming apologetic. Emilio and Kathleen arrive shortly after them, followed by Antonio and Jules and their three girls. Then Wendy arrives and Jane makes a show of being civil despite her backhanded compliments about "how put together the house is, given the circumstances." She brings Aunt Mary and Uncle Luke (her cousins Penny and Calvin are both having Christmas with their own families) and not long after that Uncle Luke's brother Jonathan and Jonathan's "flatmate" Stephen arrive.
Jane sees Charlie greet Jonathan and Stephen politely, clearly not really knowing why they're here, and laments the fact that in this century they still put up this charade; it would have been lovely if Charlie could have had two elder gays in his life after he came out. After them is Sophia and Omar and baby Kai, who they've dressed in little reindeer ears and an elf onesie.
Dinner begins as soon as everyone's here. She quietly envies the fact that Julio has such an excuse to stay in the kitchen while she's left to the wolves. Within minutes of sitting down Dad is loudly demanding to know when Charlie's going to bring a girl home, and Jane anxiously glances in her son's direction. Luckily Rosanna and Clara are busy talking at him and Tori, so she's pretty sure he didn't hear.
It gets even worse when he decides to opine loudly about "that one dyke who's leading the Scottish Tories" which leads to the news that "they're letting poufters serve in the military" in America.
"It's the principle of the thing" he says, waving a glass of port, "you can't expect a normal man to keep himself under control surrounded by naked ladies, but here they are letting benders in surrounded by men. I mean it's probably a damn feast for them, but it's just asking for trouble."
Every instinct she has tells her to take her glass of pinot and throw it in Dad’s face. She has that instinct quite a lot, actually, but this is different. This is her child, his grandchild, who he’s talking about like that, whether he knows it or not. But reacting with anything other than her usual “paternal placation mode” would risk outing Charlie, and after everything he had to deal with at school she would never put him through that again. Not even with family. Certainly not her family.
“Daddy,” Wendy chides, “You can’t say those things.” Of course Wendy gets to push back. Wendy could do whatever she wanted, always the same, Wendy could do no wrong in Mum and Dad’s eyes. Wendy never got told she was too surly, too quiet, you’re never going to meet a good man like that, put that book away and be social, Jane, act like you’re a part of this family for once.
Mum never hit Wendy.
She feels Julio’s hand on her knee. How does he always know? She focuses on that feeling, lets it ground her, puts a stop to the runaway train of thought that was making her grip the stem of her wine glass almost hard enough to snap it.
Julio gets up to check on Charlie. They had discussed this, and decided that the best way to get through the dinner would be if Julio were the one to do this, and that he should direct his questions at the whole table rather than just Charlie. She tries to not make it obvious that she’s looking their way, pretending to listen to Ant prattle on about workplace drama at whichever posh firm he works for - something about Linda from HR keeping a secret file of employees she thinks are fit. When she first met him when she ran away to Mojacar Ant and Julio looked about as similar as Charlie and Olly probably will once Olly hits his teenage growth spurt. Oh god, Olly. This has probably all been traumatising for him. He’ll probably end up having some problem or another down the line and she’ll fuck things up like she did with Charlie and maybe they won’t be so lucky and -
“Everything’s good,” Julio murmurs in her ear. She hadn’t noticed his approach. He steals a peck on her cheek and sits back down.
Anyway, the point is Julio and Ant used to look a lot alike, but now Ant is a good bit heavier than Julio, which she doesn’t totally understand because Jules is tiny and waif-like. As he continues to prattle on, Jane thinks, rather unkindly, that he looks bloated and a bit sweaty.
So according to her husband Charlie is doing fine. She allows herself the luxury of a quiet sigh of relief. This is good. Things will be fine. Charlie will be able to escape for a bit and go to Nick’s, and Sarah has always seemed so natural when it comes to emotions and that sort of thing, and she’s passed that trait onto her son. Charlie will be in good hands and get a bit of a respite from the relatives, and everything will be okay.
On reflection, Jane thinks that she would be uneasy about anyone Charlie dates. Tori too, but she doesn’t seem to have the inclination, and it’s different with gay people. Jonathan and Stephen have been a part of her life for as long as she can remember (she realised they were a couple when she was about Tori’s age) and have always had to hide themselves. She doesn’t know how Jonathan put up with Dad’s constant comments about “when are you going to find a bird, Jonny, eh?” and “Janey, is it me or does Steve seem a bit bent? Must be a hell of a thing to be flatmates with a poufter.”
Nick is probably the best-case scenario, however. He’s kind and gentle and he seems to have an instinct that she lacks for Charlie’s moods and troubles. She’s not looking forward to dealing with the fallout when he goes off to university and wants to be back on the market, as it were, but they’ll cross that bridge when they get there. The point is that Nick being Charlie’s first boyfriend/first kiss/first etc is probably the best that could be hoped for, and she genuinely likes him. He’s good with Olly, which is a plus, and he’s respectful and well-mannered, not at all like the lad he appears to be. And Charlie was smitten with him enough to join the rugby team.
Most importantly, of course, he's stuck by Charlie this whole time, visited him in hospital along with them, proven that he's devoted to her son. She can't think of anyone she knows who would have done that when she was their age.
The rest of the dinner progresses smoothly. Dad gets tired of complaining about gays and moves on to Polish people ("taking all the bloody jobs out there and still living off the taxpayer, the lot of them!")
After dessert is served and Dad gets into an argument with Emilio over whether Britain should stay in the EU, Jane has the opportunity to retreat into the kitchen to do the washing up. More specifically, Jane has the opportunity to retreat into the kitchen and not have to deal with her family for an hour… or maybe even longer. After all there is quite a lot of washing up to do.
She's taking her time with the task, moving at a rather sedate pace and allowing them water to tune out the drone of conversation when a distinctly worse-for-wear Charlie wanders into the kitchen.
Shit.
Much as she struggles to read her children sometimes, it doesn't take a savant to put together what probably happened: the topic of his hospitalisation came up and he's been subjected to whatever probably well-meaning interrogation the relatives came up with. Much as she loves her brother-in-law (because she hopes that’s who it was; god forbid her parents had anything to say about it) Ant has a huge fucking mouth that has plenty of room for both feet.
The kernel of an idea forms in her head.
“Charlie,” she says, “If you’re not doing anything you can help with the washing up.” There. Give him the perfect excuse to share her hiding spot and get half an hour or so of peace and quiet.
“Fine,” he says dully. He wordlessly picks up a plate that she’d washed and starts drying. Jane hates the defeated, lifeless expression on his face.
It has, at times, been brought to her attention that she may not be the most communicative of parents. The therapist at the inpatient center where Charlie was admitted said as much in that clinical, diplomatic manner that therapists use to critique one’s parenting. She had to admit they had a point. When he and Tori were younger “what’s wrong?” would yield a fairly straightforward, if rambling and stream-of-consciousness, explanation of the problem. Now that same phrase gains her only a shrug and a muttered “nothing.” Nothing in her own upbringing had taught her how to push without seeming to do so - quite the opposite. If Nancy Driscoll wanted to know something she was relentless and immune to argument, and then she used what she found as ammunition rather than attempt to actually resolve the issue.
“Is something the matter?” she asks, hoping to a god she only seldom believes in that she’s doing this right.
“It’s fine,” Charlie says totally unconvincingly. He picks up another plate and begins drying.
“It doesn’t sound fine,” Jane replies truthfully.
Charlie scowls at the plate as if it insulted his family. “It’s not like anyone’s asked before.”
“Charlie I’m asking now,” Jane retorts. She puts the bowl she’s been washing obsessively for the past few minutes down. “I don’t understand how you expect us to help you if you don’t talk about what’s wrong.”
“Why do I need to talk about what’s wrong when everybody does that for me already,” he snaps. He braces himself against the countertop.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jane asks, half irate and half genuinely concerned.
“Everybody always talks about what’s wrong,” Charlie says, “it’s all anybody’s been able to talk about for weeks is what’s wrong with me.” He turns to face her.
The pain at the back of her head has returned and Jane’s mouth runs ahead of her sense for one critical second.
“Do you want us to talk about it or do you not want us to talk about it?” she asks sharply. “You’re being very immature.”
“How am I being immature?” he asks incredulously.
“You’re acting like a baby who wants everyone’s attention all the time.” She winces internally the moment it leaves her mouth. Shit. Fuck. Shitbuggerfuckinggoddammitfuckingcunt.
“I don’t want everyone’s attention,” Charlie insists, “That’s the f- that’s the problem.”
Jane rips her washing up gloves off and faces her son.
“Look,” she says, “We all understand that this is a difficult Christmas for you, but you could at least recognise that we’re trying our best.” Another thunderclap against her temple. Jolts of pain from the back of her head down her neck.
“Trying your best?” he asks incredulously, “what do you want, a fucking congratulation certificate?”
“Language,” Jane snaps reflexively.
Her son barrels on. “Half the time you refuse to acknowledge I have a fucking mental illness, and half the time you try as hard as possible to make me feel like I’m the last person you ever wanted as a child!”
“Get out!” Jane snaps. Her chest heaves. She points for the door. “Just get out.”
Her son says nothing. He about-faces and stalks out of the kitchen.
For fuck’s sake.
Why does she manage to fuck everything up? Is it unreasonable for her to just once know the right thing to say to her children, is that too much to ask?
A voice in the back of her head that sounds an awful lot like Mum tells her she’ll never manage. All she’ll ever do is hurt her children, and they’ll grow up to resent and hate her.
If Charlie even grows up at all, an even more insidious voice says.
Ice grips her veins at this thought. She’s fucked everything up and now Charlie’s going to have a relapse and this time nobody will be there in time and he’ll probably jump into the river between theirs and Nicks and Oliver will be devastated and Tori will blame her and -
It takes a great deal of effort to stop this train of thought, and by now her head is pounding. She would very much like to go upstairs, curl into a ball, and shut out the world.
There’s shouting in the hallway. It sounds like Charlie and Tori are arguing. Then the door slams and Tori stalks into the room. The look on her face is one Jane recognises, mostly because it’s one she’s worn plenty of times.
“You know I really am trying,” she murmurs, more to herself than for Tori. Even to her own ears it sounds inadequate and self-pitying. Tori says nothing, just turns around and exits the kitchen.
After a few more minutes of the washing up she sees a shadow she recognises intimately in the doorway. She can’t face Mum now. Not after everything that’s happened.
She takes her gloves off and abandons the washing up for now. She brushes past her mother before she has a chance to speak and retreats upstairs. Then she closes the door to her bedroom behind her and sits down on the bed.
She doesn’t cry. Richard and Nancy Driscoll were very much parents of the “I’ll give you something to cry about” variety.
This winter has been the fucking worst.
Ever since that night in September when Charlie came home with Nick in tow, pulled out a slip of A4 paper, and told them that he had an eating disorder and that he was struggling with his mental health, she’d felt like she was struggling and failing to keep her head above water, submerging every time a wave hit. Their GP, CAMHS, the school, nobody seemed to have the slightest interest in helping her child. The earliest a therapist could see Charlie was January - fucking January. She knew the school would be of no help - they’d never even lifted a finger when she and Julio marched into the heads office and demanded to know what they were doing about Charlie being bullied after he was outed. When they were told that it was just “adolescent banter,” Jane fantasised for a brief moment about pulling out a gun, shooting the headmaster, and then shooting herself.
That day when she opened the shoebox underneath Charlie’s bed and found his secret was even worse. There were X-acto knives kept clean and the first aid kit and the plasters and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and it was all horribly familiar.
After all, she had one just like it when she was his age.
Ancient scars that were still just barely visible in the right light itched, and she realised with a swooping of dread that one of her children had inherited her worst secret.
And, just for the most fleeting of moments, it was enough for her fingers to turn one blade over in her hands and yearn to press it down and drag it along her skin for a quick release.
She dropped it like it had turned red-hot, then, and dumped the whole thing out on Charlie’s bed so that he would know that she knew. She grabbed anything sharp she could find in his room and binned it. Then she hurried out of the room and locked herself in her bedroom until she could regain her composure.
That night, she sat up in bed, clutching her left arm with her right, nails digging into her skin so hard they nearly broke the skin. It didn’t count. Julio entered the room and shut the door behind him, then he sat down next to her, pulled her hand away, and pulled her into his arms.
How hadn’t she seen the signs? She knew what it was like; she should have known it was going on.
For 15 years the worst day of her life had been the day Charlie was born. It was late April, and the baby was due in late July, and all of a sudden she just had this feeling like something was horribly wrong. Then her contractions started and her water broke, and she was convinced they were going to have to explain to Tori one day that she’d almost had a little brother. Then they were in hospital staring at this emaciated-looking red thing with tubes coming out of it wearing tiniest nappy she’d ever seen. It was days before she could hold him, weeks in the NICU before they could take him home. After having a baby at 26 weeks she supposed that she and Julio could handle anything parenting threw at them.
Then that night in October happened.
It turns out that your child having a major mental health crisis and nearly dying as a result brings a sort of clarity. She found a version of herself she hadn’t yet encountered that night. She very calmly picked up the phone and started biting heads off at CAMHS until she finally got someone to listen. They found him a spot at a psychiatric hospital near Reading, and she and Julio began six weeks of regular trips up and down the M25.
She shakes herself out of her reverie. She has a party to host, and it’s Christmas, and for some godunknown reason she thought it would be a good idea to host Christmas like normal only weeks after Charlie got out of inpatient.
She mingles for a bit, pretending to pay attention to stories about Wendy’s latest boyfriend who she was certain was “the one,” like she’d been with every other of the parade of men she’d dated and then gotten bored with and discarded with little fanfare. A more petty person might point out that Mum and Dad have never pressured Wendy about getting married and giving them grandchildren. Jane is certainly not that petty, however.
Through all of this she operates on autopilot. Julio catches her eye. He knows something’s happened. He walks up to her and gives her a peck on the cheek, steering her away for a moment.
“Charlie’s gone a bit early, hasn’t he?” he asks cautiously.
“We had a disagreement,” she says clinically. Her face gives it away, though. Julio’s brow creases in concern.
“Do you want to step away for a bit?” he asks her. “I can handle the family for a bit.”
“I’m fine,” she replies tersely.
Julio is quiet for a moment.
“This was probably asking a lot of Charlie,” he acknowledges.
There it is - one more way that they’ve failed him.
“Yeah,” she admits.
Her grip tightens on Julio’s hand just for a moment. He looks down and cocks an eyebrow. She rests her head against his shoulder for just a moment. In their language, this means something like “I’m fine for now, but I’m probably going to fall apart later.”
Julio acknowledges the message. He kisses her on the forehead.
She pulls away after that, spotting Olly playing the kids’ new Mario Kart game on the Wii. Rosanna is playing with his curls and he’s batting her hand away with more irritation than a seven-year-old should display.
“Olly,” she says, “Do you need anything to drink?”
Olly shakes his head and turns to her.
“Where are Charlie and Tori?” he asks.
Truthfully in the state she was in Jane hadn’t even noticed Tori’s absence. Shows what kind of mother she is, she’s certain. Nevertheless, given how long Charlie’s been gone, it doesn’t take a detective to figure out where she’s gone.
“They’ve just gone out for a little bit,” she explains, sitting down on his right.
“Have they been kidnapped?” Olly asks matter-of-factly. Another thunderclap on the inside of her head as she ponders the effect Charlie’s hospitalisation must have had on Oliver.
“No, oh darling, no,” she reassures him.
“Where have they gone?” he asks.
They’ve gotten away from me, which is probably for the best, she thinks. The less time they spend with her the better - that way she won’t damage them even further. What makes it worse is that she’s still certain they love her, little as she deserves their love. Soon enough olly will realise this as well.
She realises she hasn’t actually answered his question.
“Charlie was a bit upset earlier, so he went to Nick’s house,” she explains.
“Is it because of his mental illness?” Olly asks, once again frighteningly matter-of-fact.
It’s because I haven’t the faintest idea how to handle his mental illness without completely fucking things up, she thinks.
“Sort of, yes,” she answers. Olly ponders this for a moment.
“Oh,” he says. “Is he going to get better soon?”
She thought he was getting better. He seemed better. She and Julio had, in retrospect, bought into wishful thinking that the hospital stay would fix everything and they would get back a Charlie who was whole and healthy and happy. After all, as a child he wasn’t all that different from Olly, albeit a bit more shy and a bit more easily frightened.
For the first time in weeks it occurs to her that Charlie might have bought into the same wishful thinking himself. Maybe he didn’t ask them to sit out hosting Christmas this year because he wanted to believe that it was all over and that he was better now. It’s a strange feeling, absolving herself of just a smidge of guilt, so she quashes it immediately.
She sips her wine.
“It’s complicated, sweetheart,” she says, “It takes time, but I hope so.”
“Where’s Tori?” Olly asks, switching mental tracks with the alacrity of a seven-year-old.
“I think she’s gone to see if Charlie wants to come home yet,” she explains.
“Oh,” Olly replies.
It occurs to her that if there’s a time to start communicating with her children, now is as good a time as any.
She rests her chin on her hand. “I said some… not nice things to Charlie,” she admits.
To her surprise, Oliver responds to this by getting up and giving her a hug. Her eyes mist over.
He looks up at her, still clinging limpetlike.
“You could just say sorry,” he says, “That’s what you do when you say something bad, say sorry.”
If only it were that simple.
Unless maybe it is.
Coming to some sort of a decision, she looks down at Oliver again.
“You’re completely right,” she says fondly.
The front door opens and Olly leaps to his feet and sprints into the hallway. From the doorway to the living room Jane can see Charlie scoop Olly up like a baby, the three of them bantering as siblings. For a moment she allows herself to relax. Her children are right in front of them. They’re safe. They’re whole, mostly.
Charlie carries Olly into the lounge and sets him down. He takes Tori’s hand and drags her over to the Wii. She and Charlie stand there staring at one another, not unlike they’d been a few hours ago in the kitchen. Then Charlie steps forward, and for the second time today one of her children hugs her.
He has to bend over to bury his face in her shoulder now. She cups the back of his head.
“I’m sorry for the things I said,” she murmurs in his ear.
Charlie sniffs, and she realises that he’s crying, just a bit. There’s a flash in her head, but the rumble that follows does so only after a long moment, receding in the distance.
“I’m sorry for getting so upset,” he mumbles into her dress.
She shushes him. “No,” she murmurs, “It wasn’t fair for us to expect so much of you so soon.”
She holds onto him like that.
“I just want everything to be normal,” Charlie croaks, “I just want to be normal.”
Part of her never wants him to leave the safety of her arms. Part of her never has. Part of her aches that she can’t give him what he wants.
He straightens up, and she cups his face in her hands.
“To be honest I think you are,” she says, “I think everyone’s a bit fucked up in their own way, and some are better at hiding it than others, and some don’t bother, and everyone’s just flailing about trying to convince everyone they’s not bothered by anything. I think if we all understood how fucked up we all are we’d be a lot kinder to each other”
That makes him chuckle wetly. He straightens all the way up and moves to go to join his siblings.
“By the way,” she says, stopping him in his tracks, “would you mind telling me which of my relatives I'm going to be murdering tonight?”
“I think it started with Uncle Ant,” Charlie admits.
She smiles a piranha’s smile. “Thank you, darling,” she says sweetly. A hint of mirth creeps into Charlie’s eye as he sits down next to Olly on the floor.
The rest of the night passes more quickly. She discreetly pulls Ant aside and reads him the riot act with an expression that Julio says he’s seen Tori make from time to time. One wonders where she picked it up. Then her father declares that he’s tired and can they go home soon, and that starts the chain reaction of drunk relatives and sober drivers picking up their things and making their goodbyes. Clara shepherds a very drunk Ant and Jules and both of her sisters out the door.
Nobody seems to notice that her children are absent - she’s pretty sure they’re in Charlie’s room playing a board game. Normally she would drag them back out to say goodbye to everyone, but this year she leaves them be. If - and it is an if - they host Christmas again next year, they’ll be doing things differently. Charlie can be out to the whole family if he wants, and if Dad or Mum have a problem with it so help her she'll be a self-made orphan.
Julio has already gone to bed by the time she turns off the lights downstairs. All that’s left is the fairy lights on the Christmas tree. Those have always been her favourite part, the way the baubles and garland catch the light and scatter it in different colours, casting the room in a warm multicoloured glow. She stands there, illuminated only like that, before she finally pulls the plug, navigating her way to the stairs without tripping and breaking her neck on one of Olly’s tractors.
She peers in Charlie’s room on her way down the hall. All three of her children are asleep on Charlie’s twin bed, Tori’s arm hanging off the edge. Olly is asleep on Charlie’s chest, mouth open and drooling slightly onto a jumper she’s pretty sure is Nick’s.
Charlie looks the most relaxed she’s seen him in ages. His chest rises and falls, his arm curled around his little brother. His expression is placid, and she can just barely see the hint of a smile on his lips. Quietly she shuts the door and turns out the light.
Julio has changed into joggers and is sat up reading one of the Metamorphae Charlie got him. The Kafka one, she thinks.
“You’re still up,” she remarks. She sits down on the bed so that Julio can unzip her, and then pulls off her dress. She picks a nightgown out of the closet and slips it on, pulling the covers up and sliding under.
“I was waiting for you,” Julio explains.
“That was stupid,” she says, “thank you.”
He sets his book aside and lays down. Jane shuffles a bit so that she can rest her head on his chest. Warmth radiates off of him, which is probably a Spanish thing or something, because she and the children always run cold, even Oliver.
He turns off the light on the nightstand. The only light is the streetlamps in the window. Some of the dark clouds from earlier roll back in.
She lies there for a long moment with her head resting on Julio's bare chest.
"Happy Christmas," she murmurs.
"Happy Christmas, cariña ," Julio replies. She loves it when he calls her that. To be completely honest, listening to him speak Spanish just does things to her. It always has.
She lays there letting him play with her hair for a bit longer.
"Today was shit," she murmurs. Her face is wet, which she hates. She’s always been a silent crier.
"I know," he says. "It'll get better."
"They hate me," she says.
"They love you," he retorts, "you're all very stubborn and you all care deeply and that's why you fight."
"I say everything wrong and I make everything worse."
" Ay ," he chides, "don't talk about my wife like that."
She laughs quietly at this.
There was a day years ago, not long after she very impulsively made the horribly stupid decision to run away to a country where she didn’t speak the language and ended up accepting a churro from a shy local boy who turned out to be half-english, that she’d sat on the edge of the Spring family’s pool at their house in Mojacar and poured her soul out to said local boy. In hindsight it was petty uni-age drama, but it meant so much at the time.
By the time she was finished, they both were holding each other much like this, and she felt in the very core of her being that she’d found her person. Then she ran back to England, and it was only months later that she impulsively took a train to Cambridge and tried to track him down again. Tonight is a reminder why being impulsive isn’t always a bad thing.
“We should talk to Charlie tomorrow,” she says, “what we’re doing isn’t working.”
“Okay,” Julio agrees, “that’s what we’ll do. It’ll all turn out alright, cariña ”
He kisses her on the forehead.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you,” she replies.