Chapter 1
‘I’m just saying, Christmas is going to be a disaster.’
Mirren tried to smile down the end of the phone at her mother’s anguished tones. She looked around the office, but she needn’t have worried about being overheard; there was nobody there. On Mondays and Fridays, the whole place mysteriously emptied out. Mirren didn’t mind. When the office was empty, it meant far fewer well-meaning colleagues giving head-tilty glances about how awful it was that Mirren’s boyfriend had called it off and wouldn’t return her flat deposit or the money she’d put down on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday everyone thought would result in a ring, including Mirren and, worse, Mirren’s mother.
So as far as Mirren was concerned, whatever this latest disaster was, it couldn’t be worse than what had already happened this year, thank you very much. She smoothed her hand over her unruly chestnut curls and took a deep breath.
‘Mum, you always think Christmas is going to be a disaster.’
‘Yes, but sometimes it is.’
‘It’s not. Sometimes the turkey gets burned and nobody really cares because everyone’s a bit drunk and then everyone remembers it as being funny.’
‘MIRREN, that was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER.’
‘It was fun,’ protested Mirren weakly. ‘And memorable!’
‘Well, that is NOT going to be happening again.’
Christmas was a big deal to Mirren’s mother, Nora. You would never of course imply, Mirren and her two brothers agreed, that their mother liked to make Christmas all about her by making a huge massive fuss of it, having a mild tantrum about 2ish requiring everyone to apologise and feed her sherry and do soothing, before repeating the cycle at teatime, but it had certainly happened before. The trick was to never ever mention the phrase ‘it’s just a big roast, isn’t it?’ anywhere within earshot.
‘Well, it won’t be a disaster. Let Hayley and Carl do the cooking.’
Letting the two sensible people her brothers had married take over was by far the best plan. Both of her brothers marrying the calmest humans on Earth might be seen as some sort of psychologist’s dream. Mind you, she’d thought Rob was calm. Turned out he was just busy plotting ways to get rid of her, with what felt like maximum devastation to her finances.
‘WHAT? But I always—’
‘Help, I meant help, I didn’t mean do it all.’
‘What’s wrong with my cooking?’
‘Oh my God, Mum, how can I get out of this conversation?’
‘Anyway, it’s not ... Seriously, what’s wrong with my cooking? Anyway. That’s not the real disaster. It’s poor, poor Violet.’
Mirren’s heart went cold.
‘Great-aunt Violet?’
‘Yes.’
‘A disaster how? What’s happened to her? How come you didn’t start with this?!’
Her beloved Great-aunt Violet had been old when Mirren was a child and Mirren was thirty now, so that must make her very, very super old.
Mirren’s mother made a noise through her nose that she knew very well.
‘I don’t know. She won’t talk to me, she’s hardly answering the phone. I think there’s something up with her but she won’t answer her WhatsApp messages.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t,’ said Mirren. ‘You know how vain she is about her glasses.’
‘Is she?’ said Nora absently. ‘I’d go round but, darling, you know she prefers you ... and I’m so busy.’
Since she’d retired, Mirren’s mother had become an indefatigable volunteer for things. She liked to interfere and send around grumpy Facebook messages and considered this to be ‘working for the community’, even though quite a lot of it appeared to be about banning dogs from things and getting up petitions to keep children out of communal gardens or stopping low-income housing developments. She would get very huffy if anyone suggested this might not actually be a real job.
‘Of course,’ Mirren said. ‘I’ll go today.’
‘On a Friday night?’ said her mother, sounding, as usual, disappointed. ‘No hot dates? Early Christmas parties?’
