Some people are not Christmas people. They find it too commercial, too mawkishly sentimental, too crass, too forced. The expense of half-thought-out gifts, or worse, the despair of the perfectly considered present received with less than appreciation. Rachel’s fit over the used Volvo 240 in high school comes to mind; my tepid reception to the hideous emerald and moonstone necklace from Julian’s mother’s collection falls into this category, too. (Probably, though I suspect Jules was just casting about for something spectacular and figured he might save a few quid by passing on some Fothergill family piece that no one cared much for, with reason.)

Christmas is about family, we are told. Christmas is about togetherness, about curling yourself in the embrace of those who birthed you, or married you, or whose blood runs even weakly in your body. It is a little dull perhaps, a little gluttonous definitely. It’s not a time for much deep thought, but about sensation, about memories of the far past as much as the immediate present of shoving handfuls of chocolate in your gob. Leave the crabby reflection on the bad old year about to pass for New Year’s Eve.

Alex is a Christmas person. All the tawdry, crappy, threadbare shite about the holiday. The British do it far, far better than we Americans ever could. Growing up, I don’t remember ever salivating over a glossy supermarket pamphlet with exquisite photography of perfectly roasted turkeys or steaming trays of Brussels sprouts, of gravy boats of something called bread sauce or page upon page of tiny, perfect appetizers one could just pop frozen in the oven to emerge in their puff pastry glory 15 minutes later. But Al did; even Julian has a similar memory. Who had canapés at Christmas? You gorged yourself on candy from your stocking while watching A Christmas Story on TBS, and at 5 p.m. Dad pushed a tray of baked ziti in the oven.

But Christmas was the one time of year Cora Carr tried for something a little more special than Dolmio sauce and pasta to feed Al and Fenn, and made the budget stretch to such delights as chipolatas and mini-salmon puffs and a bacon-wrapped crown of turkey, fresh from the chiller aisle of the Perth Marks & Spencer. A little more special overall. After John passed away, the remaining three Carrs would cut hundreds of stars and snowflakes from craft paper and painted them silver and gold, string them on kitchen twine and wrap them around curtain rods and stairwells, drape them over the Douglas fir Cora would have received as her bartered payment for one of her handmade cobalt blue pitchers. Ghost stories around the fire while chestnuts pipped! and popped! in the hearth. Uncle B would have handed over some extra cash under extreme pressure from his wife Delia, and there would be sensible jumpers along with paint pots and drawing paper and the comic books Alex wanted more than anything else.

So he tells me. But I had ideas for a new Carr Christmas, ones I’d begun to sketch out in the blankish late November Friday that would have been Black, had we not still been in pandemic times. My first Christmas as Alex’s wife — a day I’d started planning last year, as we spread the news that we were not only getting married, we were moving to Santa Monica and 2020 was going to be the Best Year Ever! Except we all know now that that was a load of old bollocks.

But if anything, this has been a year of making, well, maybe not lemonade, but bodging fairly pleasurable experiences in place of celebrations. Wedding for 250 becomes a wedding for 125 becomes a party of seven, and as joyous and scrumptious as it might have been with every hydrangea blossom and puff of tulle. While I missed restaurants and gigs and (more than anything else) trips to the cinema, my cooking had improved, I’d discovered a slew of new bands on Spotify and practically everything I wanted to watch — and a hell of a lot more — I could stream effortlessly, in the comfort of my new uniform of luxe loungewear. (Julian would die if he knew that I have adopted the aesthetic of a Calabasas housewife; I now divide my wardrobe into “indoor” and “outdoor” casual, including bras.)

And on Thanksgiving, I’d sketched how I wanted the holiday to unfold:

Christmas Eve: following de Mornay family tradition, we’d watch White Christmas and wash down chicken tacos with a bottle of decent champagne (though it had been Martinelli’s for Rach and me until the age of 16). Several hands of gin rummy, then lights off in the living room. I’d tuck both feet beneath me on the sofa and float away to some boy chorister singing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” the lights of the tree seeming to crackle in the boughs as my chest rose and fell and my perspective changed, slightly, slightly.

Christmas Day: Carnal embrace, for starters. I’d never tell Alex this (no more secrets doesn’t apply to everything) but Julian had made it a rule that Christmas Day always should start with sex. “It’s a present to ourselves, darling. What is Christmas but the story of creation, of humanity meeting the divine? Sex is the closest you or I will ever reach to rapture.” He always was full of rubbish like this, quasi-religious apologies for his basest desires, but it wasn’t until the very end that I’d turn down this sort of Christmas mass in bed. A shared shower, then presents — I’d asked for none, but was fairly certain Al had picked something out for me despite my protestations. I’d bought him a new silk Liberty dressing gown to replace that godawful “silky” polyester one that resisted removal of teenage sweat and Axe body spray. Family Zoom, followed by Christmas dinner, starring a far too expensive ham and a small Christmas pudding (no baked ziti for Alex, not with his tendency towards toxic belching should a tomato pass over his lips).

And then this fairly simple holiday agenda was completely buggered up on Black Friday. I’d been having a delicious dream of riding through the Upper East Side in an open buggy — my dream-brain told me it was a barouche — on a bright autumn afternoon. I was coiffed as a Gibson Girl, my hair caught up in thick tortoise shell combs, and I shivered slightly in my dark blue velvet cloak. The scent of recent rain and falling leaves, the horses’ shoes cloppeting on the cobblestones, the mild melon orange light of the afternoon, all as clear as if this were my true life, and Santa Monica during a pandemic was a place I had the misfortune to visit only in sleep hours. Alex barged into my delightful afternoon ride, whipping around from his seat as the driver of my carriage pulling the horses to a halt.

“Mel! Mel!” he yelled, first from the carriage box seat in the smart blue uniform Dream-Melissa had chosen for him, then from the foot of the bed in Santa Monica, the godawful paisley robe cinched about his waist with an old school tie (the real tie had been lost well before I met him). “I just read the most amazing thing!”

I desperately wanted to go back to 1897, but Al was having none of it, peeling back the duvet while I tried to pull it over my head. “Better be amazing,” I grumbled, settling for bunching the covers as high as my shoulders. He’d brought me a coffee, which I could tell was a bribe even through my barely creaked-open eyes. Proper china service, tiny spoon on the side, even the saucer matched the cup — all signs of some favor sought.

“Now I want you to think: what would be the very, very best present I could give Lucy this year?” He plumped the pillows behind me in an effort to get me at least partially vertical and brought the cup to my lips like I was an invalid. “Here, get a sip in you, sweetest.”

I thought on what a spoiled, pleasantly macabre seven-year-old might like, which wasn’t really too much of a reach for me, have been one myself once (though not nearly as spoiled). “The Necronomicon for Precocious Children?” I joked.

Alex laughed and rubbed the crown of my head, shoving his phone in my hand. “No, no, no, no. Brilliant idea though. I think this year Father Christmas is going to bring my little girl her daddy. Read that article.”

I looked up from the CNN headline in disbelief. “‘England Cuts Traveler Quarantine Period to Five Days’? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it does!” he beamed as he bounced next to me on the bed. “It means we can go to London and quarantine and get tested after five days and then go to Dorset! It’s been nine months since I held her. Nine months! I’ll only be able to be there for a week, maybe two at the most, but a beggar like me can’t choose his presents. I learned that story years ago.”

“Oof,” I grunted, trying to squirm out of the tackle he held me in against the bedclothes, but I liked the trail of kisses he dotted from my mouth to my collarbone too much to break free. “I meant, how can you seriously quarantine for five days, silly. It can’t be nearly enough. But Al –“

“Stop wriggling so much if you want me to kiss you more.” He moved his mouth across my chest and up the other side of my neck.

“Alex.”

“Do you know you smell de-lect-able, Mrs. Carr?” he purred, straddling my waist as his head dipped low over mine. “I bet you taste even more delicious than you smell.”

“Alex.” My hand on his chest was enough to stop him from taking his pursuit further. “I’m not going. I don’t want to take the risk.”

“Really?” He blew a curl out of his eyes, and his breath tickled my lashes. “Not even for Lou? Not even for bloody Christmas?”

“Go,” my tone dropped, my hand moved to caress, to comfort. “You should go. There’s always a risk, but it’s a risk you have a right to take. What would happen if we both …” I didn’t want to continue. It didn’t bear thinking about.

It took a good half hour before Alex stopped pacing the bedroom, raving about the pandemic, cursing Boris Johnson and Trump, even slamming me a touch for not booting my caution and hopping on a plane with him to isolate for five or six days, in an location to be confirmed. When he’s in full flow, I’ve learned not to attempt reasoning with him. There is no reasonable argument that can be made when the red mist clouds his vision. Instead, I let it dissipate, let the haze burn itself out until it’s only spits and spots of rancor.

The rant continued unabated, with Alex following me into the bathroom, peeking his face into the shower to make a point about how he worried Lucy would think I wasn’t interested in being a stepmother. (Irritated, I turned my back on him to finish soaping up, but that only tempted him to grab a handful of my bum.) When he got to, “S’pose I’m going to be forced onto one of those minging Delta flights, not even a proper recline in business class,” I allowed myself one titter.

“It’s not funny,” he groused, trying to kick my abandoned nightgown out of the way but only stubbing his toe on the marble floor. “Fuckin’ floor.”

Minty thought it was a brilliant idea when we reached her later that morning. “Oh Al, you’re an absolute dream. She’ll be in heaven! And you must, must stay with us. I’ve turned the sewing room back into a bedroom, and Sash has been sleeping in there, but Lucy can sleep with me. Or you can sleep in her room. Or she can sleep with both of us.”

“B-both of you?” I stammered. Images of Alex and Minty, restored to the golden sheen of their early days, flitted through my mind.

“Oh, Mel,” Minty tittered. “You’re such a silly goose sometimes. With either one of us. It might make more sense for her to sleep with Al, if Tom’s here. Oh! I meant to say, Tom might be here, but I don’t think that’s a problem with the rule of six and the households mixing and whatnot. But if it makes you, um, a bit uncomfortable, I can tell him no.”

Well, well, well. Miranda had been assuring me that Sasha was making far more of Minty’s relationship with Tom Gregory than was warranted. “How absurd. Sasha’s acting like she’s the Queen of Dorset these days, fingers in every little pie,” she’d scoffed to me on one of our regular calls. “I don’t deny they’re closer these days, but who wouldn’t be after nine months locked down together in some dreary little Wessex village? I’m Min’s best friend, and I think I’d know first if it was getting to be something more than a bit of fun. Not that Tom Gregory’s much fun. He’s still an utter wankstain.”

I’d held my tongue when the words “Jealous much?” nearly leapt from my mouth. I wasn’t quite sure if Ran was more jealous of Sasha pipping her to the top of Minty’s friend list, or Minty for distracting Tom from his true calling: a devoted slave to the memory of his brief time warming Miranda’s bed.

“Alex, you don’t know how much I need this, truly. She misses you so, so much. There’s only so many parts of a little girl’s heart that a mummy can fill. There are some bits only her daddy knows how to love.”

Even I sniffled at that tiny truth.

***

News of Alex’s impending English mini-quarantine and Dorset Noël bounced rapidly, so rapidly that the tea I’d poured myself at the very end of our call with Minty wasn’t even cool before our phones started clanging in an unending stream of Slack notifications. (Alex had convinced nearly all of the Terrible Ten to start a Slack channel to keep the messages in one place, not realizing this only encouraged everyone to talk all day, every day. No one had bothered to invite Julian, not even Amanda.)

Yes, he was really coming for Christmas. No, he wasn’t going for a piss up with anyone before he drove to Dorset. No, Will, he can’t self-isolate on your living room couch, not if you’re planning on playing FIFA 21 side by side every night on the ugly old thing. Very kind of you to offer your spare room, Jamie, but he’s not going to kick your sister-in-law out of it, not even if you’re sick of everything smelling like the Dior Poison she practically bathes in.

Miranda had been the most insistent.

alex come stay darling it will be an absolute blast

if anyone can make quarantine a blast you know it’s me

even if you’re stuck in the spare room and I can’t come near we can still have a laugh

bob? here?

don’t be absurd darling of course i’m not seeing him

(What a lie, I’d spoken to Bob over Zoom the week before, from what was very clearly Ran’s bed and in what were quite obviously only his boxers.)

There are times when my husband surprises me with his common sense. Though I could almost see the gears in his mind clink-clunk into coming up with a rational excuse to take Miranda up on her offer, which she’d sweetened with promises of gourmand delights brought via Deliveroo and enough whisky “for a Scotsman to swim in, darling,” he did the right thing and got Little Prim on the phone. In the Pimlico flat of his sensible aunt, there was very little risk he’d be given enough rope to shimmy out of the flat with Prim’s key to Warwick Square for an amble, let alone a cheeky pint at his old local in Chelsea.

“He’ll be locked up tighter than Rosemary West,” Prim cackled. “I expect my cooking’s as good as you’ll find in any of Her Majesty’s prisons, too.”

The slapped-together plan came together swiftly with so many hands at work. Little Prim informed Harry he’d have to sleep in the box room beneath the laser printer while Cousin Alex took over his bedroom, and laid in stocks of Waitrose ready meals, Walkers crisps (smoky bacon), pickled onions and Old Speckled Hen. Minty drew up a list of clothes she’d seen on the Saks website that Lucy simply had to have, you wouldn’t believe how quickly she grows, and you’ll have two suitcases to bring with you, right, Alex? (I drew the line at a black and hot pink Balenciaga sweatshirt but gave my blessing to a pair of Doc Martens — a baby Goth needs to start somewhere.) I booked tickets — out on the 15th, test on the 22nd, Dorset on Christmas Eve in a Vauxhall Astra borrowed from Little Prim, and back on a plane on New Year’s Day. Cora was talked down from near-hysteria — she threatened to drive down to Dorset and camp out in the Bosworth-Carr living room when Alex announced Scottish travel restrictions would make it impossible, but “next visit, Mum, I promise.”

Bam bam bam, everything fell into place, as smoothly as if this had always been the plan. Alex would fly back the same day Fenn would return to Scotland — they could even spend an hour scoffing free mini-quiches and quaffing mid-range sparkling wine in the Delta lounge at LAX together before their flights. And we rolled with the punches when London went into Tier 4 a few days after his arrival. After a momentary hiccup when we thought he wouldn’t be able to travel to Dorset, Minty’s solicitor assured them both that Alex’s travel to visit his daughter was classified as essential and all could proceed according to plan. Al got his negative COVID result after five and a half days of lazing around chez Little Prim, playing Xbox and telling Harry dirty jokes through the open bedroom door. He even squeezed in a meander around Regent’s Park with Amanda, Will, Jamie and Miranda — socially distanced, masked up, and after the negative result, of course.

Well, mostly socially distanced, even if it was masked. By his telling, Amanda quite unexpectedly grabbed him into a bear hug, squashing him tight to her bosom while she wept about much she’d missed him. “I’d quite forgotten how much it’s like being attacked by an over-upholstered Queen Anne chair getting hugged by Amanda. Not unpleasant, just… pillowy.”

Miranda wasn’t far behind. “Then Ran shoved her off me, calling Man a silly old moo, before telling me I looked pale and a bit sad and in need of a hug. So she hugged me too. I don’t know how she could tell all that with a mask covering half my face, but hey ho.”

“Alex!” I squealed. Really I didn’t like any of it. Well, Amanda I didn’t mind, beyond the risk of contagion. She has continued to amaze me over the course of the past year with her spontaneous displays of near-adult behavior: getting over being dumped by Julian, setting up a successful Depop shop and companion Instagram to flog all manner of her old designer gear, admitting that I wasn’t that bad of a spousal choice for dear old Alexander. Miranda, well… I love my dearest Rizzo, but I never really will trust her.

“If it helps, her being so short meant she shoved her face in my ribcage, nowhere near any of my external respiratory system,” he teased through my laptop screen. “But it was nothing like what I want, sweetness.”

“What’s that?” Tell me, I need to hear it.

“You.” His grin was electric, and in that moment the miles were meaningless. He was mine, mine, mine, as he always had been.

***

Living with Alexander Carr has dulled the early alert system that had whined and whirred as background noise throughout my marriage to Julian. With Jules, I never knew when the wind would change and I’d fall out of favor, cross some unspoken line, so I had to be ready at all times for some disaster. I lived on a knife’s edge, prepared forever to do battle, to defend him to others or perhaps myself. Through Alex’s steady love I’d been lulled into forgetting that even outside of Julian, threats still could knock at the door.

It was Julian who announced the unwelcome guest, though given the time of year, I shouldn’t have been that surprised. I’d been tracking Alex’s flight that afternoon, following the sedate pace of a tiny plane on a screen as it ferried him over the northern plains and the great expanse of Canada. It’s a silly habit, one I’d had since it was Jules’ arrival I impatiently awaited. I’d promised myself that I’d take the two weeks I had on my own at home as a chance to unwind, to stretch out in the living room and read all the Bridgerton novels unperturbed, to serve only myself and my whims for a while. I’d had nine months of all Alex, all the time; some time alone might be the reset I needed.

And when Julian’s number flashed up on my phone screen, I didn’t hesitate to pick up. As little as I liked to admit it, lockdown, Fenn’s love and Kayla’s friendship has changed Julian in ways I hadn’t thought possible. He’s still an asshole, don’t get me wrong, but the strictures of public health and the expectations of two women who aren’t doormats suit a man whose impulses need to be reined in. That and he found that far from a “feeble attempt at brainwashing a man whose only sin is that he’s a Republican,” he quite enjoys the therapy sessions Fenn ordered him to enter. Of course a narcissist likes 45 minutes twice a week to talk about himself.

“Is he gone?” Julian barked in lieu of a simple “Hello, Mel.”

“Charming,” I shot back, arching my back as I tried to get more comfortable on the blue velvet loveseat. Lockdown has meant no chance to shop properly for a replacement for the dreadful old thing I’d dragged down from Berkeley. “Of course he’s gone. You dropped Fenn off at our apartment this morning, or have you forgotten already?”

“No need to be unpleasant, darling. I’m only thinking of you. I know you don’t like to rile up the brute by speaking to me when he’s about.” The words were the sort of honey-sweet nonsense I used to lap up, proof of how dearly he cared for me.

“Not to be rude, but what’s this about, Jules?” I could think of several tasks that needed attention that were far more diverting than what I presumed this call was about: his failed attempts to cajole the resolutely Scottish Fenn into ditching Balcraigie for a Malibu idyll. Scrubbing the refrigerator vegetable crisper was high on the top of that task list.

Jules clicked his tongue. “I’ll pretend your snippishness is down to what must have been a sleepless night with your brand new husband. I know Fenn barely let me close my eyes, except when she put that silk eyeshade of hers on me. What a tease.”

“Really? Now who’s being unpleasant?” So much for a new leaf.

“I’m just teasing you, darling. But I do hope he’s worth all of… everything. Treating you well. Fenn said he’s been far easier to be around on this trip than when you two were in Pitlochry last year. I put it down to your good influence. You always were excellent at pulling me out of my dark moods.”

The flattery had me on guard, and I paused instead of lapping up the praise like the rich cream he intended it to be. “What’s this really about? If it’s more about your bananas idea to marry Fenn so she can travel back and forth more easily during COVID, I don’t want to hear it. I did you a big favor never even breathing a word of that to Alex, you know.”

“It was just an idea, Mel, and you were quite right that it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Nicely put, though I do note that’s a phrase more usually associated with suicide than hasty marriage.”

“You’re overlooking that marrying Fenn would be suicide,” I replied. “Just not at your own hand.”

“Oh, Mel,” he choked out between gasps for air and rollicking guffaws. “Good one, good one. Fine, I’ll get to it. I’ve had the annual love note from Josh’s publishers, thought you should know.”

The sip of Earl Grey I’d passed over my lips caught in my mouth for a moment before I gulped it down. “Bit late,” I choked out. “Nothing new, I hope?”

“Much the usual, don’t bother yourself with it, though both the envelope and letter were addressed to me this time, not you. They did refer to you as Melissa Carr, so some minion’s doing her homework. Trolls asked for your new address. I ripped it up and wrote back that even if you and I were divorced as they are quite clearly aware, anything having to do with Josh Brookes would always come through me.”

“Jules, I –” I paused. I should have been disgusted, should have insisted that I fight my own battles with Josh, or at the very least passed the lance and the shield to my new husband, a man who’d rattled off curse after curse to damn my first love.

“He can’t take care of this like I can. You know that, I know that. What do you think he would do if you put him in charge of this business?” Jules scoffed.

“His name is Alex,” I scolded. “And he would… oh, I don’t know, Jules. How would you feel if you knew one of Fenn’s exes was still taking care of some sensitive part of her life?”

“First, it would be stunning if that were the case, because the only one of her exes that was anything more than a fling died, if you remember. Rather callous of you. More importantly, she wouldn’t hold anything like that back from me because unlike him –“

“Alex.”

Julian drew out a sigh. “Fine. Unlike Alex, I can be trusted to keep my temper in check. I have wits and lawyers to rely on, not fists.”

“And what exactly do you think he’s going to do when he finds out, huh?”

“Why, he’ll blame you, Liss. Not a great place to be in. Which is why you’re best off letting me take care of Josh Brookes and keeping this between us. Alex does know about those old letters, correct?”

I murmured a yes. Although I hadn’t told Alex everything yet about my relationship with Josh and the role I’d played in his writings over the years, I had told him all about “Summer Green.” From the daily letters crisscrossing the country to the ricepaper note to the safety deposit box in Burbank to the yearly — and increasingly stern — letters from Josh’s publishers, demanding I hand over the missing piece of Josh’s oeuvre.

“I doubt he’ll even remember anything about the letters in the first place without you bringing them up,” Julian breezed. “Hardly the thing he’d fixate on, knowing him. I’m certain the gallant Sir Alex is far more entranced with the idea of breaking Josh’s jaw. I’ve taken care of it, and if there’s any follow up from them, it will have to be through me.”

After I hung up, that last part stayed with me. Why would there be any follow up beyond a letter in 2021? Asking for a copy of this year’s missive was pointless — surely Julian’s maid would have seen that the torn up pieces made their way to the recycling bin.

It’s nothing, I assured myself, you’re just tired from the last minute rush to get Alex out of the house and into an LAX-bound Uber. Al had refused when I offered my services as chauffeur that morning.

“You always cry, sweetest,” he said sweetly, touching away the tears that were already pooling in my eyes. “It’s far safer to have a big old moan and wail at home than in the car at LAX. Didn’t you once tell me you were fairly certain LAX departures was the eighth and a half circle of Los Angeles hell? Right between the Trader Joe’s parking lot in Silverlake and the 405 North during rush hour.” (He was right.)

With Alex safe and (mostly) locked up in Pimlico until Christmas Eve, I let it slide. There were far larger problems in both of the big bad cities he and I were sheltering in, nearly all of them related to COVID. ICUs were filling up quickly in LA County, and soon they’d be so fit to burst that patients would be treated in hospital gift shops. London and most of the Southeast got shoved into Tier 4, as the new super-contagious strain ricocheted through the Big Smoke. Someone was dying from COVID in LA County every ten minutes, a figure that became almost meaningless as the number of the dead crept higher and higher. 200,000 dead nationally became a memory so quickly. 300,000, 350,000. The numbers were obscene, and nothing stopped the inexorable crawl of the virus into every corner of the country.

Further afield, my Aunt Kathleen — my mother’s slightly dippy younger sister, the one with the Etsy store selling angel-print face masks — caught the virus at Thanksgiving from her daughter, my trashy, QAnon-adjacent cousin Sienna and her MAGA husband. It had been my Aunt Suzy — not Sienna — who’d driven Kathleen to the hospital over the border in Connecticut, my Aunt Suzy who fed and bathed Kathleen for a week once they were back in Westerly. Mom had gone back to work seeing some of her most vulnerable patients, putting her own health on the line. My dad started attending church services at our old Unitarian church virtually, not in a sudden fit of piety but for a sense of community with those who also prayed.

Jen tried to buoy my spirits at a remove, scheduling Zooms so I could coo over baby Ethan, all of eight weeks old and in possession of a solid, well-oiled screambox. “He’s never like this when he’s not on camera,” Mack assured me while he slung Ethan over his shoulder and patted the baby’s back. “So quiet, just like Addy says Jen was as a baby.”

Jenn, who’d actually met Ethan at a very respectful 10 foot distance, privately disagreed. “All that baby does is shriek and nurse, as far as I can tell,” she observed with a clear note of disdain as she painted her toenails shocking yellow. We’d taken to turning Zoom on and leaving it on in the afternoons, wandering in and out of conversations as we felt. I missed her terribly; having her a few blocks away was a great temptation, though not as great as the mince pies I was making on the regular and then schnarfling up nearly as quickly as they came out of the oven. If Jocasta Cranford could have seen me, her jabs and digs about my “cornfed body” might have actually been well-placed. Even Alex eyed me up dubiously on his return from the UK and asked if I was carrying his baby.

The loneliness didn’t fold me in its arms on Christmas Day, as I expected. I’d set up a full day of phone calls and Zooms, starting with Alex and Lucy very late on Christmas Eve (Lucy was giddily pulling a board game “for children of all ages!” based on the Necronomicon out of a box by 7am in Dorset so I guess my gift suggestion was dead-on), on through the usual scrum of a Family Zoom with the Carrs and de Mornays. Phone calls with Little Prim and Harry, check-ins with the Uncles de Mornay, and later a brief chat with P.F. St. Clair, the Great Man himself, who thanked Alex and me for the generous gift of a case of much, much better sherry than he’s used to. Aunt Kathleen and Aunt Suzy, Uncle Steve (the better of my two Sullivan uncles, in my opinion) and his dim but sweet wife Maxine, who wears Christmas sweaters unironically and hangs in the kitchen what Caitlin uncharitably refers to as “wine decor.”

The afternoon was capped, though, with a very shouty and slightly-more-than-slightly sozzled Zoom featuring the entirety of the Terrible Ten. Even Julian was invited for a change; Will had vouchsafed for my ex-husband’s ability to be at least occasionally polite about Alex behind his back.

For example, Will had said in our Slack the week before Christmas, Julian said just the other day to me that he quite liked those trousers Alex wore to your wedding. And that he looked ‘well taken care of’ which sounds like testament to your wifely prowess.

What fucking mental defective shared our wedding photos with that arsemunch?? Alex shout-typed in reply. (Sasha gave it a thumbs up and a “boom” reaction.)

I watched the empty message box for two entire minutes staring at the caption “Minty is typing” until finally: ummmmmmmmmmmm sorry alex sorry mel

Sorry I called you a mental defective babe, Alex typed back.

typical, Amanda sent me in a PM. he lets her get away with this and i wouldnt stand for it nor should you

For the sake of marital concord, I ignored her advice. Alex will always let the mother of his child behave in ways that he’d rake Miranda over the coals for. The simpering kindness of the little dun bird still blinds him, even if the rest of us can see.

But true to Will’s word, on Christmas Day Julian behaved like a child told to smarten up for inspection by his flinty grandpapa. For want of a better phrase, he performed the Julian I’d known, we’d all known years before. Julian had scraped a decent 2:2 in Economics and Politics, but he should have joined Min in the theatre department. He had a knack for telling a ripping yarn, an ear for dialogue and characters. I watched as we all got drawn into his dramatic retelling of being caught in the heart of the George Floyd riots at the end of May.

By Jules’ account, downtown was “practically Dresden, a conflagration brought to the city not from above but at the hands of hooligans down in the streets. Useless. I support racial equality — who couldn’t? — but this, this wasn’t the right way. Marches? Calling the police to account? Certainly. I’m not nearly as much of a zealot as some people think I am. But destroying property… just shocking, shocking. Once I recognized the destruction was at the hands of looters who used a moment of national tragedy to distract from craven burglary, I knew I should not fear for my life as a white man. I should fear for the life of my country instead.”

I didn’t bother interjecting that the CVS at the end of my block had been looted, a mere 100 feet away from the front door. Nor the scant four floors between me and the fracas, unlike the 31 stories and security guards that stood between Julian’s white ass and the marching in the streets below. Even Alex was so enthralled he forgot to grouse, which is his default “low” setting when it comes to anything Julian Cranford.

Julian Cranford, social justice warrior, I texted Alex. He ignored it.

Halfway through Jamie giving what felt like a blow-by-blow of Bex’s nineteenth week of pregnancy (“She never did like pickled beetroot, and now all she wants is pickled beetroot, and did you know that our baby is now the size of a mango?”), I excused myself to make myself a cup of coffee and shake the fuzz out of my brain. Though it may have been 9 p.m. where that lot were, an appropriate hour for champagne toasts and orders of “bottoms up,” it was lunchtime in Santa Monica. I still had a call with Ben scheduled for 4, which was going to involve at least two White Russians (in honor of his Belorussian ex-boyfriend, Yaros). I had to press the pause button or I’d be paralytic before teatime.

While I waited for Alex’s Keurig machine to spit out a hazelnut coffee, “Flight of the Bumblebee” buzzed out of my phone, the notification for the second line I gave to businesses when I didn’t want them to have my real number. 818 area code — probably the Mercedes mechanic my dad had been taking the biodiesel to for years, and I’d reneged on my promise to take the car to Willie last month for a service. By the time I was pouring in a drizzle of half and half, I was trying to scry meaning from the garbled mess of the speech-to-text:

It’s rock. Hi. Sorry for see spectre call butter please. Call me Bactrim. Hurt about the suit. Sorry. Thread of a suit. I never cauterized that and the past finger want tutu is care you. I know it’s Christian but if you can churn the call. I miss you.

Hard to believe but that’s the one of the less confusing translations I’ve had from the app. It was unlikely to be Willie (I don’t even want to guess it would make of his heavy Bavarian accent) but when I tried to tag a reminder to listen to the message later, I hit the delete key. Hardly a big deal –it was likely to be one of the many, many former clients of the weed dealer whose number I inherited, or yet another call raising money for Jon Ossoff’s race in Georgia.

When I returned, Charlie was in mid-flow about some of the harrowing COVID cases he’d treated, the daily physical and mental exhaustion of being on the front lines, the patients he’d lost, the patients who made it through but were still fighting symptoms months after recovery.

“The one that hurt me most was this one woman, my sister Georgie’s age. She’s been seeing me for the past five years, colds, sprained ankles, that sort of business. Works in the Sainsbury’s I shop in, always a ‘hello, Dr. Fawcett!’ for me when she spots me perusing the yoghurts. Whenever I see her in the surgery, no matter what’s wrong with her, she always say, ‘Can’t complain, could be worse!’

“But one week it was worse. So much worse. I didn’t see her, my staff had told her to get tested before she came in and, well, you know. Spent a week on a ventilator at the Whittington. That was in August. She’s one of the lucky ones to bounce out of that, and she hasn’t been able to work since she tested negative. She’s not the same — brain fog, crippling body aches. Can’t get out of bed some days. Over three months like this and I, I just don’t know what to say to her. I’m a fucking doctor and I can’t help a 30-year-old woman who had nothing wrong with her six months ago. Some days I want to throw my hands up and walk away, sell the house, move to the Caymans and take only private patients. I don’t know how much more I can do, chaps.”

“You said that last month,” Minty reminded him quietly. “If anyone can do it, it’s you, Charlie.”

Will wagged a pudgy finger at his camera. “Chaz, you aren’t going to the Caymans without me, and I’m not ready to leave here. And what about the rugger? We still have at least three more seasons left in us, you know, even if we get shunted to senior status once this palaver is over.”

I could tell everyone else was either drunk or knackered by then. Or both. It was a bit of a downer to end the Zoom on. But then Lucy bounded out of bed to gurn in front of the camera that took in Alex, Minty and Sasha, sitting side by side as if there were no pandemic. We were treated to a lisping version of the “WAP” radio edit — “Bring a bucket and a mop for this wet and gushy!” isn’t something you expect to hear from someone who’s seven, but Alex and Minty both thought it was hysterical.

Julian didn’t agree. “Lucy! That’s quite rude for a young lady. Minty, I don’t know how you allow it,” he sniffed.

“Auntie Sash taught it to me. She said it’s about female, female… embodiment,” Lucy said with a firm nod.

“Female empowerment,” Sasha whispered, barely suppressing a giggle.

Julian blanched. “Female empowerment isn’t about stripper poles. It’s about succeeding in a man’s world. Even Melissa would agree with me.”

Lucy twirled in her red flannel nightgown. “Daddy, you’re right. Uncle Julian is a poo. But I forgive you, Uncle Julian.”

“Forgive? Forgive what?” Julian appeared to be put out by a seven-year-old, and personally, I was there for all of that indignation.

“My mummy said it’s important to forgive.” The Dorset accent Minty had complained of was not nearly as strong as I’d remembered — perhaps being more at home had rubbed the country off the girl.

“And what did Daddy say?” Sasha asked innocently.

Alex’s daughter turned to him, as if for permission. “Go on, poppet,” he whispered, mussing her hair before pressing a kiss on her crown of curls. “Answer Auntie Sash.”

Lucy squared her shoulders and peered into the camera, a miniature version of her father when he’s trying to be very serious with me about something, like the importance of keeping the thermostat set no higher than 68 degrees, or why he simply cannot fathom how to use mobile deposit on his phone. “Daddy said it’s important not to forget. The good and the bad. And that even very good people can be bad sometimes, and terrible people can be very good sometimes.”

With a hoot of delight, Miranda sucked back what was left in her champagne flute. “Quite true. Your father is very, very bright, Lucy.”

A precocious sigh of ennui escaped Lucy’s lips. “Not really. He’s convinced Father Christmas is real still. I’m quite concerned about him. Melissa, is it true that all the food in America has chemicals in it that make you stupid? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with Uncle Julian, too.”

Ruminating on the evils of high fructose corn syrup with a little girl was a far better coda to the end of an evening than Charlie’s reminder of the pandemic, and Sasha signed us all off while the Terrible Ten (plus sproglet) waved goodbye-goodbye-Happy Christmas-love you! Not nearly as good as having them with me, especially Alex, whose delight at being with the daughter he clutched in his arms was scribbled all over his face. She was shooting up fast, a lean sprout bursting with far more joy than I could summon within my body at her age. Surely bound to be another in the family line of long-limbed, slim-hipped Dacre women like her great-grandmother, grandmother and Aunt Fenn, but with a greater deal of the steady and genial temper of her mother. And I hated myself just a little more for keeping Alex from her.

***

More to follow of Christmas. But you know, as you should by now, that anything, anything involving Josh Brookes takes too many of my words to express.