Yes, Nan was that drunk, she asked Cameron for a twirl around the living room in the space between mince pies and the cheeseboard. He obliged. He was surprisingly debonair. I’m glad Nan didn’t reach down for the ass grab.
‘I’d love to meet your brother. Where is he today?’
‘He works… abroad, so we don’t see him so much. His name is…’ Crap, why can’t I think of a name? The alcohol and the cold slow my brain down. I see Father Christmas waving at me from the window. ‘Nick. Little Nicky. Nicholas.’
He laughs under his breath at me repeating my brother’s fake name three times.
‘Thank you for letting me be a part of this today. I really needed it.’
‘I’m glad. I’m really sorry about the cheese?’ I tell him.
‘The actual cheese or all the decorations?’
One of my father’s greatest festive achievements is being able to source the smelliest and largest wedges of blue cheese in the land, the sort that make the dog look over his shoulder to check where that smell’s coming from.
‘All of it,’ I reply. ‘Also, my mum likes to play songs on repeat. You’ll have Bublé in your head until February now.’
‘I don’t think I’ll mind.’
As he speaks, he gets closer to me and there’s that warm, familiar feeling of his proximity, an arm touching mine, but also his breath getting perilously near to my skin. He smells sweet and minty like a candy cane. I’m drunk and I could very well lick him at this moment. Oh, Cameron. What the hell is this? Also, what the hell are my family doing, because not only is Nan behind an upstairs curtain but I can see Mum peeking out from behind the Christmas tree and Dad waving from the kitchen.
‘We have an audience, I’m afraid,’ I whisper.
‘Oh, I’d be disappointed if we didn’t. Can I call you tomorrow? Maybe the next day?’
‘Any time.’
‘Are we doing this then? For the people in the front row?’ he asks.
‘Doing what?’
But before I have time to approve, he grabs me, dipping me to one side and giving me a drunken Christmas kiss, backlit by chasing icicle lights and a disco snowman. I hear clapping. I bet that’s Nan. Am I swooning? Of course I am. I swing my neck back, laughing, but I’m also glad I don’t fall over. He returns me upright and kisses me on the forehead. Stay. Don’t leave. I want to unwrap you. To fall asleep next to you.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he whispers into my ear, before walking over to his car, waving as he goes but also laden with at least two weeks’ worth of leftovers that Mum packed for him in Tupperware.
As I re-enter the house, I lean back onto the door to relive the moment, to have had him near, inhaling deeply.
‘I like him, Josie,’ a voice says, coming down the stairs. Nan comes over and hooks her arm into mine. ‘Did I overdo it at lunch?’
‘Yes. A showgirl, seriously? You know what showgirls do, right? Have you not seen the film from the nineties?’
Nan laughs, so hard that I can see that her teeth are a bit loose. ‘Oooh, you naughty thing. No, I was the respectable sort. I’d wear feathers out my backside and just stand near magicians and stuff,’ she says, striking a pose.
I giggle as we make our way into the living room to find Mum with a box of chocolates open, rifling through to bagsy her favourite strawberry creams.
‘Look at you two, having a little kissy on the doorstep,’ Mum jokes, a tad too much sherry in her veins.
‘Thanks, everyone, for looking by the way,’ I announce to the room.
‘It’s our right, this is our house, you are our girl,’ Dad says, carrying in yet another tray of mince pies and teas. ‘He is a nice kid, Josie. I like him a lot.’
Mum nods and reaches for my hand.
‘I have a question then,’ Nan says, taking a large noisy sip on her tea before settling into an armchair. ‘Why all the lies and deception? I like being a showgirl of some notoriety, but there’s only so far we can take this, right? This can’t be fair on the lad.’
I sit there in silence. I’ve kept this going for two months now and the truth is, she’s right. The longer we leave this, the weirder it will be, the guiltier I will feel, the stranger we will look. But there just doesn’t seem to be a right moment. Every time I try to, fate intervenes. My dad collapses at the tennis club, I have sex with him in a car, I dodge it and talk about something else.
‘I’ll tell him in the new year. It’s just a hard subject to talk about, that’s all.’
