A Christmas Wish

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  A Christmas Wish

  Amanda Prowse

  Poppy raised her hands behind her head and slipped her shoulder-length hair into a pink scrunchie she had found nestling at the bottom of her handbag. She squeezed out a blob of fluorescent cleaning fluid and wiped down the work surface in the kitchen. Her tongue poked from the side of her mouth, as it always did when she was concentrating. Flipping over the sponge, she used the scourer to shift a little bump of spinach that had dried hard after making a break for freedom from the colander. What had Peg said? ‘Don’t eat it, Maxy, it’s not real food, it’s like grass!’

  She cast her eye over the sitting room, torn between enjoying the festive decorations and bits of tat that the kids had adorned her usually clutter-free surfaces with and the desire to put them away and give everything a good dust. They were going away but had as always put up a small Christmas tree in the window, a concession that the kids loved. Poppy pretended not to notice that the foil-wrapped chocolate decorations that hung from every branch were deflated and slightly crumpled, having been niftily emptied of their melting bounty. Peg must have engineered the heist, no doubt with Max roped in to spread the blame. She would find the right time to reveal her shock and horror that they had been robbed of the twelve sugary gifts. She smiled.

  Poppy took pride in keeping her little house neat and clean. A strict routine meant that clothes were washed, dried, ironed and returned neatly to drawers just in time for when they were needed next. A daily whizz with the Hoover, swish of the mop and flick of a duster meant their home rarely lapsed below show-house standard. The order in which she lived was proof of her success, having achieved all that she had dreamed of for her and Martin. She never wanted her children to experience the gut-wrenching embarrassment of wearing dirty clothes to school, going to class with the wrong PE kit and not being able to invite anyone home as the house was cluttered and filthy.

  The tiny kitchen in the flat she had grown up in encapsulated all that had been wrong with her grubby life: cupboard doors bloated with damp and hanging off their hinges, and sticky shelves bare of food but stacked with pill bottles containing cures and suppressants for everything from constipation to hallucinations. The dull metal sink full of dirty, tea-stained cups and old fish and chip wrappers; and the blackened, encrusted grill sitting in its base amid a thick layer of soft, opaque bacon fat. Poppy could still smell the kitchen of her youth, even now. It was the sour odour of frying, grime and mould.

  Standing back, she smiled at her sparkling work surfaces and gleaming cooker. ‘You could eat your bleedin’ dinner off that floor, girl!’ She heard her nan’s words, even now, after all these years, making her laugh, giving advice.

  ‘Mum?’ Peg shouted and banged her palm on the table. Making sure she was heard the second time.

  ‘Sorry, love, I was miles away. What?’ Poppy leant on the back of the chair at the square pine table in the kitchen where Peg was toiling over her homework. A task, as Poppy had pointed out on numerous occasions that would take half as long if Peg would only speak less and write more.

  ‘What’s the difference between a wish and a prayer?’ Peg asked. Her head cocked to one side as she twisted a pencil inside her dark blonde locks, her feet in their white socks kicking against the table leg.

  ‘Is this your homework?’ Poppy asked, thinking it a tad deep for primary year three.

  ‘No!’ Peg sighed. ‘My homework is writing a page about why you mustn’t punch someone, even if they are a boy and even if they are bigger than you.’ Peg kept her eyes downcast.

  ‘Let me think. A wish and a prayer? That’s a very good question.’ Poppy pulled out the chair and sat opposite her daughter. This required some thinking. She hitched up the long sleeves of her T-shirt and placed her freckly forearms flat along the surface. ‘I guess the main difference is that a prayer is specifically aimed at God, meaning you believe there is a God and that he or she is powerful enough to answer your prayers. Whereas a wish is more general, like throwing what you want out into the universe and hoping that something good might come back.’

  Peg considered this, tapping the pencil on her teeth. ‘I’m not sure I believe in God.’

  ‘Well, you are only eight, you have a lot of time to figure that stuff out.’ Poppy smiled. ‘Plus you could always hedge your bets and do both.’

  ‘Am I allowed to do that?’ Peg sat forward, wide-eyed. This sounded like a plan.

  ‘Absolutely! I think that if there is a God, they wouldn’t mind you sending out a wish along with a prayer; and if there isn’t, then you are safe, aren’t you?’ Poppy thought about the times in her life when she had done exactly that, though she couldn’t be sure that either had been answered.

  ‘Mum, you are a genius!’

  ‘Yes I am. And I need you to put your books away, gather all your bits and bobs into your rucksack ready for tomorrow and clear the table. Aunty Jo is coming round to babysit soon and I want the house tidy.’ Poppy winked, stood from the table and went to plump the cushions in the adjoining open-plan sitting room.

  Peg rolled her eyes, reminding Poppy of herself. ‘I will in a minute. But I’ve got to do my wish and prayer first!’

  ‘Oh I see. You are doing that right now?’

  ‘Ye-s!’ Peg managed to give the word two syllables, showing her disdain.

  ‘Can’t you do it in your head while you do your chores?’ Poppy asked casually.

  ‘No, Mum, I can’t! This is important and I would actually like you to leave the room.’

  ‘Oh right, okay.’ Poppy nipped into the hallway that ran from the front door to the kitchen and listened at the door as Peg placed her elbows on the table and her forehead against her clasped hands.

  ‘Hello, God and universe, it’s Peg Cricket here. I shouldn’t have punched Elliot in the face, I’m sorry about that, but he said I loved Jake and I don’t love Jake, I love Noah. Anyway, I just wanted to ask you for one thing.’ Peg took a deep breath. ‘Can you send my daddy home?’

  Poppy laid her head against the doorframe and swallowed the tears that threatened. She only allowed herself to cry in the bath or shower and never in front of the kids.

  Peg wasn’t done. ‘It’s just that I really miss him. He’s a soldier and he’s working away, fixing all the cars and tanks for people that do the fighting and stuff, and I haven’t seen him for a long time. Please don’t tell my mummy, but I can’t quite remember what he looks like, not in real life. I’ve got photos of him, but it’s not the same. Anyway, that’s it, I don’t want anything else, I just want him to come home, please. Thank you.’ She was silent for a second. ‘Although if having two things isn’t against the rules, I’d like One Direction to come and sing at my school and pick me to go on the stage with them, but that really is it. Unless I can have three and if that is possible, I would like a pet guinea pig called Toffee. Oh and amen, just in case, thanks. Bye.’

  Poppy watched as her little girl placed her books, pencil case and woolly gloves into her multi-coloured school backpack.

  ‘You can come in now, Mum!’ she shouted.

  Poppy sloped into the kitchen and reached for the cloth to give the table a onceover.

  ‘How quickly do prayers and wishes get answered?’ Peg looked her mum squarely in the eyes. Her tone matter of fact, certain, as if she was asking how long the post might take to arrive or what time the next bus was due.

  ‘Ooh, I don’t know. I think it depends.’

  ‘Depends on what?’

  ‘Well…’ Poppy considered this. ‘Ho
w many other prayers and wishes need answering. It’s probably like Argos: at quiet times, the man out the back brings your stuff through very quickly, but at Christmas when he’s flat out and people are going crazy trying to get all their shopping done, it can take ages!’

  ‘Are you getting any of our presents from Argos this year?’

  ‘Ah, it’s not me that gets your presents, is it, silly billy! It’s Father Christmas!’

  Peg stopped in the hallway, hitched her bag up onto her shoulder and turned to her mum. ‘Purr-lease! Who do you think you are talking to – Max?’ Peg screwed her face up. ‘I know there is no Santa Claus. Jade McKeever told me. Her older sister told her and she’s thirteen and has got four bras. I know that it’s mummies and daddies that get all the presents. But don’t worry, I won’t tell Max until he’s at least five.’

  Poppy nodded, grateful that she wasn’t going to give her baby brother the devastating facts just yet. At two, he deserved to enjoy the magic a little longer than his streetwise sister. Poppy pondered the fact that Peg had received this information from a freshly minted teen that owned one bra more than she did.

  ‘Will my wish and prayer work, Mum?’

  ‘I hope so, little darlin’.’

  Jo knocked as she entered the narrow porch, her gold earrings and bangles jangling as she did so. Poppy let her in and tried to hide her slight irritation as her friend and next-door neighbour dumped her cardigan and slumped down on the newly plumped and brushed sofa without acknowledging the perfect state of the furnishings. Jo flicked her dark hair extensions over the back of the sofa and dabbed at her lower lip, checking her lip liner hadn’t bled into the gloss. It hadn’t and still sat in a perfect line that matched the ones drawn over the space where her eyebrows used to reside. Jo was pretty, but her rather elaborate make-up masked her natural beauty, meaning you only saw the harsh lines and bright colours of artifice and not what lurked beneath. It fascinated Poppy, who only owned three items of make-up and was uncertain what to do with them.

  ‘All right, Poppy? Blimey, what a day.’ Jo was a Londoner like her. ‘I went into Salisbury and it was absolutely heaving. I was elbow to elbow in Marks and Sparks, trying to buy socks and pants for Danny’s stocking. I know he’s going to be away, but I’m going to do the house up anyway. I’ll fling up a bit of tinsel and watch any old crap on the telly. We’ll have fake Christmas day when he gets back in January. People were going crazy today, shoving stuff into baskets, barging their way through. I wanted to get on the tannoy and remind them it’s just a couple of days of Christmas holidays and not the end of the bloody world. Honestly, the way they were going mad for food made me feel a bit sick. They’re only shut for a day or so, no one is going to go hungry, are they?’

  Poppy shook her head and sighed. It was always this way with Jo. Until she had vented her spleen and aired the backlog of all that she had encountered since they’d last met, there was no room for Poppy to comment. To try and interject meant a jarring of sentences and a clash of words, with no one getting heard.

  ‘Anyway, when I got back, I’d only gone and missed a call from him. I couldn’t believe it, bloody typical! He left a message saying he’d call back so I sat waiting for over an hour, you know what it’s like, you don’t want them to miss their slot. I was dying for the loo, but I didn’t go. I thought knowing my luck I’d be on the bog when he called and I’d miss it. When he finally got through, it was patchy and there were people mucking about in the background, which really got my goat. They clearly didn’t give a shite, larking around, but it was my chance to speak to him and I don’t know when he’ll call again, you know what it’s like. It was a rubbish line. He sounded like his head was underwater and not just in Afbloodyghanistan.’

  Poppy flicked her head towards the door and open-tread staircase, hoping Peg was out of earshot. Although she herself had grown up with swearing and easy banter as the norm, she had changed since she had become a mum and these days was conscious of everything that left her mouth, knowing how easily it could find its way into her children’s ears. Jo didn’t have kids and Poppy assumed this was why she was so cavalier with her language. Poppy pointed upstairs and gave a wide, false grin.

  Jo snickered. ‘Oh sorry, love, I forgot! Anyway, we spent a couple of minutes arguing because I could hear a woman’s voice laughing and it really wound me up and then I put the phone down on him. So that was productive. Might have been better off if I had been on the bog and missed it.’

  ‘Oh, mate, that’s tough. Those phone calls are a mixed blessing, aren’t they? You want to hear their voice and know that everything is okay, but you’re under pressure to have this perfect, lovey-dovey phone call because you think you should, when really you just want to shout at them and say how lonely you are and angry that they are not here!’

  Poppy knew that a woman’s voice in the background would not bother her a jot. Martin loved her and she him; they were an item, unshakeable and this had always been the case. Her theory was that if he were going to be unfaithful or hurt her in any way, he wouldn’t have to go to Afbloodyghanistan or any other dark, dusty place to do it. Each and every communication that she got from him filled her with unimaginable joy, from the odd brief email to the hurried, stolen phone calls; each second got stored away in her head to be endlessly replayed in the early hours when sleep evaded her. They were always the same words, stuttered, rushed and with an irritating delay, his voice, taut with emotion: ‘I love you, Poppy Day, I love you and I… I miss you. Tell the kids I love them, I miss them too. Not much longer.’

  ‘You can’t be lonely!’ Jo’s words focused her. ‘You’ve got Peg and Max, you’re too busy to be lonely.’

  Poppy felt sorry for Jo, who filled her days with shopping and watching re-runs of American shows on the television. She had confided in Poppy after too much wine one night that she had desperately wanted to be a mum. But after years of monthly disappointments, she and Danny had decided to distract themselves by saving for a cruise every other year. Poppy mollified her friend with tales of sleepless nights, the expense and lack of spontaneity. She never confided that her greatest moment had been seeing the tiny, white-wrapped bundle handed to her husband in the delivery suite, watching his eyes glaze as he searched for the words, her heart swelling as he said, ‘Look what we did! She’s… she’s so beautiful.’

  Jo filled the void that kids would have occupied by cramming her wardrobe with new tops, all rather similar in shade and design, and stuffing her bathroom cabinet with toiletries that could keep her clean for a lifetime.

  ‘True, they keep me busy, Jo, but it’s not the same as having Mart home, someone to cosy up with.’ She smiled at the thought of it.

  ‘Urgh, pass the bucket. You’re like a lovesick teenager! I thought it would have worn off by now. How long have you two been together?’

  Since we were fourteen, more than half of my life, and he was my best friend long before that. She heard Mart’s voice loud and clear, as if he was standing by her side and as if it was yesterday. ‘I promise you, Poppy, that I will always be your best friend. It’s like we are joined together by invisible strings that join your heart to mine and if you need me, you just have to pull them and I’ll come to you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, a long time. He always says he’d have got less for murder!’ Poppy felt the need to play down their commitment and happiness, aware that Jo and Danny didn’t seem to have what they did, but also not wanting to put it out into the universe, as if they shared a precious secret.

  Peg ran down the stairs, arriving with her little vanity case full of nail varnish in garish colours and several sparkly lipsticks in various shades of pink.

  ‘Hello, darling, I was wondering how long I would have to wait for my makeover!’ Jo waved her bare nails at Peg. She had, as usual, come prepared.

  ‘I’ll just get set up.’ Peg smiled, eager as a puppy. ‘But we can’t take too long, I have to practise my lines.’

  ‘Lines?’

  ‘Bi
g day tomorrow, end of term school play!’ Poppy grinned.

  ‘Oh fab! What are you in the play?’ Jo sat forward.

  ‘I am sheep number six!’ Peg nodded.

  ‘Sheep number six, eh? That’s always been my favourite sheep.’

  Poppy watched as Peg removed the little glass bottles from the case and lined them up on the edge of the coffee table.

  ‘What colour would you like today, madam?’ Peg adopted her posh, lady-manicurist voice.

  ‘Oh I don’t really know! I think I’ll leave it up to you.’ Jo matched her, sounding affected and formal.

  ‘Are you going to a special party or a function?’ Peg enquired.

  Poppy laughed as she reached for her coat from the rack of pegs on the wall in the hallway.

  ‘Actually, yes I am! My husband is taking me out for a very posh dinner at the flashiest restaurant in town!’

  Peg put her hand to her chest. ‘Oh how lovely, is it the Harvester?’

  Poppy smiled. It was the one place Peg had celebrated family birthdays and anniversaries.

  ‘Why, yes it is!’ Jo replied.

  ‘I have been there,’ Peg gushed. ‘They have lovely ice cream!’

  ‘Why, thank you for the recommendation, although I am trying to watch my figure.’ Jo smiled.

  ‘Don’t worry about that! You are only a little bit fat, not really fat like some people. It’s only your tummy and your bottom that are wobbly and you can always cover them up with a longer top!’

  Poppy felt her cheeks flare and was rendered speechless. Jo didn’t flinch.

  Peg continued. ‘I think today we need to do stripes, in pink, purple and blue!’ She nodded as she selected the three colours of choice.

  Jo looked over her shoulder at Poppy and mouthed ‘HELP!’

  ‘Right, you two, have a lovely evening,’ Poppy offered, relieved the awkward moment had passed. There was a fine line between encouraging Peg never to tell a lie and letting her pursue her own brand of honesty, often funny sometimes brutal.

  ‘We will!’ Peg waved without looking up.