Chapter Text
Rebecca checked her phone as if she was addicted to it. Time had ticked on, yet she hadn’t gotten any new texts or calls. She dropped her hand down onto the sofa cushion, accidentally thwacking a snowman stuffie who had been sitting there peacefully.
“No?” asked Julie.
She rested her elbow on the sofa arm, and pressed her index finger against her temple. “Still no word.” Her driver, Chuck, was supposed to have been here 20 minutes ago, and she hadn’t heard back from him yet. It’d been a particularly raucous Christmas, and they were now existing in the A.M.
Even Dando the terrier, who found it difficult to sleep anytime there was company over was fast asleep, in her little bed, next to her fellow dogs.
Under normal circumstances, Julie would’ve offered a stranded guest a makeshift bed and a pair of earplugs, but the house was full tonight. They were putting up friends who were visiting from Parsippany, and Lindsay (who’d recently left the nest) was going to stay the night. He was out, but would be returning imminently. Despite it having been Christmas night, a parish member had rung him, needing a priest for some dodgy-sounding “emergency.”
The other reason she hadn’t offered was Rebecca was filthy rich; wealth practically poured out of her ears. Even if the nearest hotel had no vacancies, she could’ve just bought it to finagle a rooming arrangement, and her wallet wouldn’t have been any lighter.
This wasn’t to say that she was in a hurry to get rid of Rebecca; quite the contrary! They’d been chatting away, laughing about nutmeg and array of other things, with Julie laughing just a bit harder than her. Tequila from much earlier continued to linger somewhere inside.
Rebecca’s phone lit up, and she snatched it and held it before her face again, hoping it was Chuck saying he was alright. It wasn’t him contacting her, however, the contents of the message were more than enough to keep up her spirits. She tapped on the photo she’d received so it filled the screen, and then turned the phone to fully face Julie. “Ted sends his love.”
“Oh, how nice!” said Julie, taking hold of the phone to get a closer look.
Ted was standing side-by-side with a boy who sported an identical grin and thumbs up. Behind them was a Christmas tree topped by a photograph of Michelle Kwan.
Rebecca took the phone back and went back to the messaging screen. “He says he wishes he could be two places at once.” She stopped and took stock of that statement. “But it is his family who he doesn’t get to see on the daily. On his behalf, I’m glad that this year, he got a chance to go to the States for the week and give them his full attention.”
“That must be so hard on him, because you can just tell with the way he talks about him—Henry in particular—that he misses them desperately.”
Rebecca knew how much he’d love to have them closer, how he’d keep them tucked in his back pocket if he could.
“He’s really always so helpful, he tried offering to help Leslie with the car recently, and I had to put my foot down and say absolutely not. I mean, he’s such a busy man, I really don’t know how he does it.”
Rebecca lifted her hand slightly to point her index finger at her. “Julie, you keep a household of so, just so many living beings alive, and you obviously do it well. Truly, I couldn’t do it. If I had to take care of so many people, and pets, and plants, I don’t think everyone would make it through.”
“Oh stop it, you’re the one who runs a whole football club! Not that I understand what you lot spend your time doing all day—“ Rebecca opened her mouth to start to explain exactly what she does all day at work “—and don’t even bother trying to explain, Leslie’s tried. What I do know is that it’s a lot of hard work and that you’re a phenomenal manager of it all.”
Rebecca had a knack for what she did, but there was still a level of embarrassment in sitting there and hearing it said so directly from Julie.
“And, if you could see the state of things in here sometimes, you wouldn’t look around and think it was top form.” Julie gestured at their surroundings. “How it all looks now isn’t so far from the norm, honestly.”
Rebecca’s gaze darted around. There were things strewn all about the room. “Speaking of, are you sure you don’t need a hand clearing some of this?” asked Rebecca.
Julie completely waved away the idea. “Oh, no, we always leave it for the next day to deal with. We tell the boys—“ Leslie stepped into the room from loading the dishwasher, and she amended her statement at his look “—I tell the boys that Boxing Day is the most important day of the year, it’s the one Santa looks at the most when when doing up his nice and naughty lists. So they should really do a good job with tidying up. Frees me right up to kick back and watch telly all day.”
Rebecca appreciated her strategic thinking.
“That sort of tall tale will only really work on Terry this year… He’s always so eager to help anyway, but he has no sense of where things should go. He’s a very topsy-turvy boy,” she says, fondly.
“So true, so true…” Leslie took a step forward, and said, “Well, that’s another wonderful Christmas in the books.”
Julie patted his hand. “It really was something. Even though it was a lot at times, we were certainly more prepared, compared to last year.”
“Yes,” said Leslie, “although I’m not sure any amount of preparation could have gotten us fully ready for ready for Dani's identical twin, Ignaci.”
Julie had always thought Dani was great fun, but Ignaci had gotten the place turnt.
“Jesus was that insane,” said Rebecca.
“There’d come a point where I thought the kitchen floor was caving in,” said Leslie. “But all was well in the end. We’ve lived to a new day.” He bent his knees slightly in apology at bowing out of the conversation. “I’m going to just make sure Dana’s taken his pills.”
Julie’s face scrunched. “I suppose he’s still awake.”
Leslie sighed heavily. To Rebecca, he said, “He often is at this hour, due to his gaming.”
He made his way up the stairs, prompting the longest silence there’d been between the two women over the past half hour. Dando padded sleepily over, curled around Rebecca’s foot, and fell back asleep. When they heard the ceiling shuffle above them, Rebecca said, “How do you do it?”
Julie frowned slightly, not quite knowing what Rebecca was referring to.
“Sustaining your relationship for so long. I mean, you’ve been married, what, 28 years—“
“Twenty-nine!”
“Yes, right,” said Rebecca, now having remembered Leslie telling her about how he was planning on surprising Julie on their landmark thirtieth anniversary. “You’ve been around each other all this time, for decades, and still aren’t at each other’s throats. Not only that, you two are always so good to each other.”
“Oh, we have our moments,” said Julie, smiling as she remembered a past quibble. “It’s all got the do with it being the right person, I suppose. There’s some couples where the passion’s all there, but they don’t seem to fit otherwise.” She swallowed quickly. “I’ve got this friend, Marjorie, and she’s absolutely mad about this bloke she’s seeing, but, and I said this to our other friend Jane, I honestly can’t imagine them just together out and about in the world. Do you ever see a couple who are meant to be madly in love, but you can’t even imagine them in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket together?”
Rebecca laughed; she loved when Julie got all riled up like this.
“Really!” said Julie. “It’s as if they’d seem out of place just standing around together!”
Rebecca shook her head, then reached way, way forward to pick up the last crisps still hanging out in a bowl on the coffee table. “Don’t worry,” she said, eating a crisp. “I know exactly what you’re saying.” She might’ve even lived it.
Julie was awed. “If I ate another bite tonight, I’d just explode.” She let her body fall fully back against the sofa, and turned her head towards Rebecca, her face half-obscured by the upholstery. “Really, I suppose the ‘secret,’ if you can call it that, is finding a person you want with you to fill the idle moments. And who can bear with you during the ones where it’s so chaotic you can’t even hear yourself think. All of them. It’s not easy, but it’s easy. If that makes sense.”
There weren’t anymore crisps. “God, it’s so fucking cliché to say, but I want that,” said Rebecca.
Julie privately thought that Rebecca knows who she wants that with.
“Nothing wrong with being fucking cliché!”
There was, sometimes. Though, Rebecca didn’t get to think anything more on the matter, for her phone buzzed. She pulled it from where it was, buried slightly under her thigh. Nothing from Chuck, just a spam text. It really was too late in the night to continue dilly-dallying. “I’m going to ring for a car.”
“Oh dear,” Julie lamented.
“I’m seriously worried now.” Chuck had never been MIA like this. Lips pursed, she listened to the dial tone and willed everything to be alright. A Scouse dispatcher assured her there’d be a car on the Higgins’ doorstep in 20 minutes’ time. When she hung up, her phone was still in her hand as she started relaying the ETA to Julie.
A new text popped up on her screen. Rebecca flinched just enough that Dando awoke with a jump. “I’ve gotten a text from my car!?”
“Your car is texting you?!”
“Yes?”
Julie bounced over the snowman stuffy, to her side of the sofa, and leaned in to take a look. The sender was indeed the make and model of Rebecca’s practically superyacht-priced car.
Rebecca scrambled to unlock the device, typing in her password incorrectly on the first try. The first text she’d received from her car was just a string of gibberish. The second was coordinates, which when tapped brought up a place called Foots Cray on the maps app.
“We really are living in the future,” said Julie. “Where’s Foots Cray?”
Rebecca pinched in to zoom out. Foots Cray was… “That’s far.”
“What’s he doing out in Bexley?”
Her phone began to vibrate. “Oh, fantastic,” said Rebecca, throwing her palm up, then letting it slap against her leg. “Now I’m getting a call from my car.” She put it on speaker.
“Can you hear me?” asked Chuck, at his wit’s end. Rebecca was both relieved to hear his voice and anxious at the tone of his voice.
“Yes!” chorused the pair.
“My phone died!” Chuck croaked. He went on to explain that his charging cable didn’t seem to be working either, and he couldn’t use Rebecca’s as she had a different kind of phone, and he stopped in a shop to borrow their landline but he realized he didn’t know her number off the top of his head. He proceeded try out every single feature her car had, accidentally turning on the periwinkle hi-beams and activating the door umbrella that popped out just as it was supposed to when one pressed the umbrella button. At last, he found that the car could send out communication without needing a separate mobile device.
This was the first time his even temperament had truly been broken. Rebecca closed her gaping mouth and expressed to him how sorry she was that all this had happened. She signed off with a “please go home and get a good night’s rest. “
The second she hung up, with wide eyes, she said, “I just don’t know how he got so far out.”
Ten minutes before the taxi was due to come, Terry descended the stairs with one hand gripping the banister, the other holding a tooth. He walked directly to his mother, motioned for her to open her hand, and placed it into her palm.
She laughed in surprise. “Okay, I’ll leave it out in the mailbox for the tooth fairy to come collect!”
“I can’t wait!” said Terry, reversing and heading back up the stairs.
“I didn’t even know he had one loose!” said Julie.
Rebecca looked a tad bewildered.
Julie explained, “We do it like this ever since I tried sticking an arm under Kris’ pillow, and he bit me in his sleep.”
“Oh,” said Rebecca.
“It’s a freaky tradition isn’t it, a little fairy exchanging teeth for money?”
“Now that you put it that way, yes, it is." Rebecca thought for a moment. "There was one time Mum forgot to do the switch in the middle of the night, so I just woke up to find my tooth still there. She told me it must’ve been a really special tooth, one that money couldn’t even buy.”
“It would be something if there were a grown-up version of it, when you have a tooth removed,” said Julie. She rubbed the corner of her eye before continuing. “Dentist has to remove a wisdom tooth, or a rotten one, and gives you a summer house.”
“The average amount of teeth in the population would very quickly dwindle,” said Rebecca.
The taxi arrived just a couple minutes later. Julie picked up Dando, who was sprawled out in the center of the room, and put her back in her bed. “Where’s Leslie?” she said to herself, and then out loud. She bounded up the stairs.
As Rebecca was by the front door, putting her arm through her coat, Lindsay re-entered the house after being out for hours.
“Father,” she said solemnly.
He gave her a nod before walking in a straight line towards the sofa and falling down onto it in a boneless manner she hadn’t believed priests capable of.
Julie ran back down and said, “Leslie’s passed out diagonally on the bed, so any dreams we might’ve had of him seeing you out are dashed.”
Rebecca brushed it off; she'd just see him at work on Monday.
“Mum,” said Lindsay, greeting Julie from the living room.
Julie turned, not having expected anyone else to be downstairs. “Lindsay? When did you get here?! Well, never mind that.“ She shook her head, and unlocked the door. “Rebecca, it’s been wonderful having you here to celebrate with us.” She put her hand on her shoulder so she could get on her tiptoes to kiss her cheek in adieu.
“Thank you for having me. And all of us.”
“It’s our pleasure.”
Rebecca stepped outside, and then stared at Julie, as if she was waiting for her to do something. “Are you going to…” Rebecca said.
Julie tilted her head, still not knowing what Rebecca was prompting.
“Oh my god,” Rebecca said loudly before covering her mouth with her hand. “I was going to ask if you were going to put Terry’s tooth in—” She pointed at the garland-wrapped mailbox. “Then I realized—“
“Oh!”
“—that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real.” She knocked on her forehead. “I’m going straight to bed when I get home.”
Julie laughed, not meanly, but merrily. “Don’t worry, the Tooth Fairy is real on Boxing Day.”