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“Is this thing on?”
“Aunt Elvira, you ask that every single time, and every single time we tell you that it’s working fine. Surely you must be used to it by now. We’ve been doing this for months.”
“Well, it’s all right for you bright young things, you’re used to technology and all those whatnots. I can barely make my mobile phone work, and even then Rum had to get me one with super-sized buttons on it so that I could read them.” Aunt Elvira waved her oversized phone at them over the webcam and Bae couldn’t help but grin.
It was a strange Christmas. He and Emma had always intended to spend this year just the two of them; they tended to alternate between seeing family and needing a break from all the madness, and once Emma had entered her final trimester they wanted to avoid any and all contact with the outside world as much as possible. But with everything else that had gone on throughout the year, they had decided that a family Zoom call on Christmas day would be a good idea to help spread the festive cheer. Well, it would be a rather extended family call, since Regina and Mal and Ursula and Ella would also be joining in, but it had long been established that they were as much a part of the family as the core Gold clan were.
Beside Bae, Emma just laughed. “You know, I haven’t known Aunt Elvira for anywhere near as long as the rest of you have, but I think that she’s a lot more shrewd about technology than she lets on.”
“Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out.” Aunt Elvira winked. “Anyway, since we’ve established that we can indeed all see each other, Happy Christmas!”
“Happy Christmas, Aunt Elvira.”
Despite the current state of the world, it had been a very happy Christmas. Without having any of the family coming to stay or having to go out to see any of them, it had taken the pressure off a bit and Bae and Emma had spent the entire day in their pyjamas, including their Christmas dinner.
“Where’s the rest of them?” Bae peered at the screen, trying to see past Elvira into the rest of the house.
“Just finishing doing the dishes, then they’ll be here.” On cue, Rosie raced into the room and took up a seat on the sofa beside her great-aunt, waving excitedly to Bae and Emma.
Another window opened and Regina and Mal waved from their living room.
“Merry Christmas everyone!”
“Merry Christmas… Mal did you just pour an energy drink into your eggnog?”
Mal nodded merrily and took a sip of what must have been the world’s most disgusting concoction. Bae didn’t like eggnog at the best of times but he knew that adding sugar, caffeine and chemicals wouldn’t make it any better.
“I haven’t been to bed yet,” she said. “I’ve been awake for the last twenty-four hours and I am wired!”
Regina shook her head in despair. “I would like to point out that I did tell her to go to bed. It’s getting to the stage where I think I’m going to have to tie her down to the sofa to stop her bouncing off the walls with the amount of sugar she’s consumed. She ate pretty much the whole yule log on her own.”
“I get the munchies when I’m tired!”
Ursula appeared on the screen and waved.
“Hello all, Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, Ursula. Where’s Ella?”
“Looking for her Christmas gin. She bought a bottle specially and hid it so that she wouldn’t drink it before Christmas, but now she can’t remember where she put it.”
There was a brief pause whilst Aunt Elvira expounded on the horrors of not being able to find any gin, during which Rosie spent most of the time rolling her eyes. Elvira didn’t even realise that Belle and Gold had joined them in the living room until Bae said hello to his dad and stepmum.
“I found it!” Ella raced into the picture and threw herself down on the sofa beside Ursula, no mean feat since she was also holding a bottle of gin and a glass of tonic. She poured a generous glug of gin into the glass and waved it at the rest of the gathered family before taking a huge sip. Ursula just gave a long-suffering sigh, and Ella rolled her eyes.
“Oh come on, you can’t deny that after the year we’ve had, we all need it.”
Gold raised his wine glass. “Amen to that.”
“I think we should have a toast,” Mal said. “Congratulations to all of us for surviving the year from hell with only mild alcohol poisoning.”
It was certainly an eclectic mix of drinks used in the toast, from wine to gin to orange squash to tea to Mal’s hideous concoction, but the spirit of the message, Bae found, was definitely a celebratory one rather than miserable. There had been many moments of misery over the last year with so many of them working in the public health sector. There had been so much worry on all sides, but the fates had finally come together to allow them all to be together - if not physically together - today, and they could all see that they were healthy, and happy for the moment, if a little worse for wear.
The merriment continued as Mal, Ella and Elvira all got steadily drunker, sharing hilarious tales of Christmas shifts at the hospital gone by. The year that Elvira fell down the stairs was mentioned more than once.
Eventually though, the time came to bring the call to a close after Mal had finally given up the ghost and fallen asleep on Regina’s shoulder, and quiet goodbyes were said, with the hope of being able to all see each other in the same room soon.
Bae closed down the laptop as Emma leaned into his side with a contented sigh.
“It’s been a strange sort of Christmas,” she began.
“It’s been a strange sort of year.”
“Well, yes, that too. Anyway, it’s been a strange sort of Christmas, but it’s good to know that no matter what else is going on, there are some things that never change. Like Aunt Elvira. And Ella and her gin. And Ursula despairing of us all.”
Bae smiled. “Yeah. We can always rely on them for entertainment if nothing else.”
“And you know, hopefully next year Ursula will be despairing of us all whilst Elvira and Ella enthuse over alcoholic beverages in person. Although I’m not quite sure that would be a good first impression of Christmas for Henry.” Emma patted her belly.
Bae just laughed. The times were indeed strange, but there was always hope on the horizon.