Split Second

CHAPTER SIX

Andrew

It was almost dark when he left the hospital. He felt drained, hollow. He kept stumbling. The gusts of wind were spinning litter about, sending carrier bags jinking down the streets. Drifts of food cartons and drinks cans rattled in corners. Squalls of rain spat at him. He was indifferent to the groups of partygoers with their tinsel and antlers, the shoppers laden with bags, the beggar sprawled on the pavement, the pools of water underfoot and the drunk roaring red-faced at the traffic.

Jason went past on his bike. He hadn’t any lights on. Andrew went to call out, to warn him, then the chill came over him. He increased his pace, trying to warm up. He couldn’t feel his toes. Could do with a drink. There was a pub on the corner, snowflakes sprayed on the windows, coloured lanterns strung round the building. He imagined the scene inside, the yeasty smell of beer, the golden glow in the mirrors at the bar, the giddy bonhomie. Walked past and on until he found a newsagent’s and grocer’s, grilles over the glass and a notice: ONLY 2 SCHOOLCHILDREN IN SHOP AT ANY TIME. Above that, over the door, the ‘Licensed to sell’ plate.

He bought a half-bottle of brandy, the brand unfamiliar. The first swig hurt his gullet going down, but soon the numb sensation spread, making his mouth cottony, softening his spine, releasing the rigidity in his shoulders, befuddling his brain. He took another draught of liquor, belched and carried on home.

There were fresh candles outside the house, next to the fence, but the wind had blown the flames out. He wondered who had brought them, who had taken time from their Christmas preparations to remember Jason.

Three faces turned to greet him, conversation suspended. Val and her close friends Sheena and Sue. He felt like an interloper. He’d expected her to still be where he’d left her, curled up in Jason’s duvet.

‘Oh, Andrew.’ Sheena, always more demonstrative than he cared for, came to hug him. There was no way he could avoid reciprocating. He wondered if she could feel the brandy bottle in his pocket, smell his breath. He felt unsteady on his feet, feared he might topple over, pin her beneath him in some ghastly faux-pas.

Sue followed. ‘So sorry,’ she said. He knew they had been over to see Val while they were at his parents’, but this was the first time they’d encountered him since it happened.

‘Get a glass,’ Val suggested, but he caught the lack of conviction and knew it would be better all round to leave them to it. Good for Val too; she confided in these friends unreservedly. Their friendships went back years, and although at times they all met up as couples at social events, the men, their other halves, never made independent arrangements. He realized there was no one he saw of his own accord any more. He’d be hard pressed to know who to invite out for a pint and a session putting the world to rights if the fancy took him. Everyone had disappeared into marriage and children and he assumed that they, like him, relied for intimacy on their families.

‘I won’t, thanks.’ He was aware of the slur in his words, his tongue clumsy. ‘I’ll, er…’ He was going to say get a shower, but suddenly that sounded callous. He waved one hand upstairs.

He was cold to the core. He hadn’t had a bath in years, but now he ran one, deep and hot. His skin prickled as he stepped in, goose bumps breaking out on his arms and legs. He took a drink from the brandy and set it on the side. He sank back, gasping at the heat, until only his face and knees protruded.

Jason aged five, in the bath, screaming in terror as a large moth batted about inside the lampshade. ‘It’s only a moth,’ Andrew kept saying, ‘it can’t hurt you,’ as he rigged up the stepladder.

‘I hate moths,’ Jason had sobbed. ‘Take it away, Daddy.’ Hysterical with panic, then screaming, and Val getting him out of the bath into a towel, an edge to her voice. ‘That’s enough, Jason, stop it now.’ Disliking his display of fear. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she’d said.

‘He can’t help it,’ Andrew had protested. The furry moth still smacking into the shade, little puffs of powder exploding as it collided with the glass.

Val glared at him. The wrong response. She believed they must be consistent with Jason, and to be fair, they did see eye to eye on most aspects of parenting, but Andrew recognized in her an impatience, a hardness even, that he didn’t share. She talked of toughening Jason up, and resilience and independence, and Andrew would look at the small boy and wonder why love and protection weren’t enough for now. The child’s neediness, his dependency, seemed to rankle with Val, a burr under her skin. She was a practical, dispassionate nurse whenever anyone was ill; caring for her baby with chickenpox in the same manner as she’d looked after her parents when they each became infirm: her mother with dementia and her father with a series of strokes.

Her whole family had been like that really: practical, unsentimental, sharing a belief in hard work, common decency, moderation and frugality. Val’s father had taken over the family ironmonger’s in the late fifties and expanded into general hardware. They’d all worked in the shop, Val after school and on Saturdays until she escaped to university. Once their parents were gone, dying within a year of each other when Jason was seven, her brother got out too. Single and in his thirties, he decided to travel. To everyone’s astonishment, he had entered a monastery in Thailand. He informed Val by postcard. She never heard from him again. They didn’t even know if he was still alive.

They had no way to tell him about Jason.

Andrew had found Val a little intimidating on first acquaintance. Beautiful, with that fine blonde hair and her cool cover-girl looks, but overpowering. It was a union meeting, local authority branch in the upstairs room of a pub. The first he’d attended. He’d have died of boredom but for the antics of this young woman, who repeatedly challenged standing orders and queried points of procedure. He didn’t follow all the ins and outs but could see that some sort of power struggle was under way. Val was a shop steward in environmental health. The meeting ended, they adjourned to the bar downstairs and Andrew ended up sitting opposite her. She interrogated him about the proposed cuts in the planning department and invited him to a fund-raising benefit for anti-apartheid.

He thought she was just drumming up business, but she gave him her undivided attention at the event. He offered to walk her home, and she laughed and said she was hoping for more than a walk. She took him back to the room she had in a shared house and they slept together.

The bathwater was cooling. Andrew drained the last of the brandy and got out. As he lay in bed, he could hear the cadence of conversation downstairs. He woke just after three and his head was throbbing, his stomach cramped. He made it to the bathroom just in time, puking over and over again until he was spent and the waves of nausea receded.

He fed the stove, took some ibuprofen and lay down on the sofa. Waiting for morning to come, for the day to pass, for another night to descend.

Louise

More snow had fallen, smothering everything thick and white. Clouds hung feathery in the sky, their edges an oyster sheen. Louise threw scraps out for the birds and watched them come: the robin and the sparrows. A white Christmas. It was cold, too; she could feel the bite of frost in the air, the snap of it as she breathed in.

Much of the country had ground to a halt, airports closed, cars abandoned, trains marooned. It seemed fitting somehow: the muffled unreality of the weather, the suspension of normal life, the eerie hush, the extreme cold and glittering white world an apt backdrop to Luke in his frozen state, in his white sheets in his quiet white room.

Carl had gone home for Christmas. He had offered to stay, said to Louise that he didn’t like to leave her when she was in the middle of a crisis.

‘You’re fine,’ she insisted. ‘We’ll spend most of the time at the hospital anyway. Besides, your mother’d kill me.’

He’d grinned. Carl had told her all about his mother, an old-school matriarch who would clout her kids for the slightest indiscretion and was fierce as a tiger in their defence. Carl was the baby. He tried to get back once a year, at Christmas time. He’d spend almost three days travelling there on coaches and trains.

‘We’ll take our presents in to Luke,’ Louise told Ruby on Christmas Eve. ‘Open them there.’

‘I thought we weren’t doing anything.’ Ruby was practising her dance routine; none of their rooms were really big enough, but it was too muddy for her to do it outside. After the holiday she’d be able to use the school dance studio during lunch break.

‘Well I’ve got you both a little thing,’ Louise said. ‘I’m not taking it back. And you’d better have got me something.’ Knowing full well that Ruby had done her Christmas shopping and had made a point of asking Louise on three separate occasions what her favourite colour was.

‘Tuck your chin in,’ Louise said.

‘Since when were you the expert?’ Ruby asked, altering her stance and doing a sidestep and slide.

‘You look like you’re straining, that’s all, like a nervous chicken.’

‘Mum!’

‘Suit yourself.’ Louise went into the kitchen. ‘Soup or soup?’ she called.

‘Soup – tomato.’

‘Right first time.’

Shrek 3 was on the box. Louise had a shower and sat with Ruby to watch the second half. Ruby was texting every few minutes. Her phone trilling with each reply.

‘That Becky?’ Louise asked.

‘Yeah, she wants me to go over Boxing Day, sleep over.’

‘Good idea.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ruby said.

Louise wanted Ruby to have a break, escape the tension and tedium of hospital visits. She was aware that Ruby was worried about her, was keen to be there and help, but Louise wanted her to have a chance to relax with her friends, the freedom to set it all aside for a few hours. ‘Hey.’ She waited for Ruby to look at her. ‘I’ll be fine, it’ll do you good.’

Ruby wrinkled her nose.

‘Don’t you want to?’ Louise asked.

‘I suppose.’

‘Say yes, then.’ Louise turned back to the film. The donkey talking a mile a minute. There was something of that donkey in Luke. The irrepressible energy, the impulsiveness.

‘What the hell did you do it for?’ she’d demanded of him after the fireworks palaver. Luke had bought contraband Chinese fireworks, mortars, and set them off in two wheelie bins. Destroying both bins and setting the nearby fence alight, triggering a car alarm and waking half the neighbourhood.

‘To see what’d happen,’ he said. And then a glint dancing in his eye at the memory. ‘It was awesome – like a bomb.’

‘Jesus, Luke. It was dangerous, that’s what it was – and stupid. You could have taken your head off.’

‘No, they’ve a long fuse, there was plenty of time,’ reassuring her.

The police had cautioned him and warned her. They used all the clichés: off the rails and slippery slope. One of them did the talking, with the other just chipping in now and again, a cold face on him and a lick of malice in the cast of his eyes, the curl of his lips. She marked him as a bigot. Probably disapproved of her, prejudiced against Luke. Single mother, mixed-race kid.

She’d lost track of the number of times complete strangers had tried to have a cosy little chinwag with her bemoaning immigration and the flood of Pakis/Poles/blacks into the area stealing jobs/shops/school places, assuming she shared their Little Englander views. A different matter when she had the children with her: sleeping with the enemy then. She saw that there were issues for Luke and Ruby caught between two cultures, two identities. Ruby had come home from school in tears aged nine after being called a coconut (black on the outside, white inside) in the playground. Louise did all she could to inform them of their backgrounds, but that was hard when neither of their fathers were around and they didn’t have access to their extended families.

‘I’ve been thinking about my hair,’ Ruby announced.

‘Never!’ Louise said in mock surprise.

Ruby squeezed her knee, just where it really tickled, and Louise yelped.

‘I think I will get a wig. Make it a bit Lady Gaga,’ naming the flamboyant pop star with her theatrical costumes.

‘Fine. There’s that place on Oldham Street.’

Louise heard the ‘thwock’ of the letter box and went to investigate. A manila envelope with her name and address. Inside she found another envelope: Louise Murray c/o Care24, and the agency address. She pulled out a notelet, a painting of violets on the front, and opened it. Crabbed writing, the letters misshapen and crooked, trailing down the page at an alarming angle. She translated.

Dear Louise,

I was so very sorry to hear of your recent misfortune

and wish your son a most speedy recovery.

With very best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs R.M. Coulson

She shook her head. It would have taken Mrs Coulson most of an afternoon to write the note, her hand shaking uncontrollably, her eyes peering at the jumble of shapes that insisted on moving about on the page. Then she would have had to find a way of getting the card to Louise, asking the carers to help. Louise put the card on the side to take to the hospital.

Mrs Coulson had actually met Luke once, though Louise doubted she would remember. He’d been excluded from school and Louise didn’t want to leave him at home unsupervised. She decided he could accompany her on her day’s work, see what she did to earn a living for the three of them. Some places, where a new face might have caused confusion or upset, she made him wait in the car, but she took him in to Mrs Coulson’s, where she had to prepare and serve lunch and check on any errands or shopping that were needed.

When she introduced them, Mrs Coulson had looked startled. ‘Your son?’ she’d repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘I see,’ she’d murmured, and kept an eye (not as beady as it had once been) on Luke throughout, as though he might morph into a burglar and make off with the silver. As they were leaving, she’d called Louise back. ‘Is he adopted?’ she’d hissed.

‘No.’ Louise tried not to laugh. ‘No, he’s mine.’

Mrs Coulson made a little ‘I see’ sort of noise and her eyebrows twitched.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Louise had thought. She wondered if Luke remembered that day. If he had any memories left. Was that where he was now, lost in the labyrinth of past times? Reliving his jaunts with the Woodcraft Folk or play-fighting with Eddie, climbing into his great-grandad’s lap for a story or snorkelling by the caves on their holiday in Ibiza. What if he was trapped with bad memories? The sad times after Grandad died, after Eddie’s sudden, shocking death; the miserable days eked out in detention or the occasions when Louise had lost her temper, taken him to task for missing school again.

When he woke up, what would he remember? What would be forgotten? Would he still know her? Love her? Her heart swooped with fear. He would surely. Surely he would.

‘Hello, Luke.’ Louise put the bags down, shucked off her coat. She moved the chair where she could talk to him, leant over and kissed him, stroked his face. ‘It’s Christmas Day, Luke, Happy Christmas.’

‘Happy Christmas,’ Ruby echoed, unrolling the scarf from her neck.

‘We’re going to open our presents here. We’ve got yours too.’ Louise no longer felt self-conscious talking aloud like this, though she did worry sometimes that she might get too babyish in what she said, treating Luke as a helpless child instead of a boy close to adulthood. She did not want to infantilize him, turn him into some travesty of the real Luke.

Personality could change with brain injury. She’d seen it with some of her clients, people who had become quite unlike themselves after a stroke: more fearful and suspicious or alternatively more easy-going and cheerful. But all that really mattered now was that Luke woke up.

‘Right.’ She sat down and rummaged in one of the carriers. ‘This is for Ruby.’ She passed her the rectangular parcel and her daughter thanked her, tore the wrapping off. ‘Yes!’ she breathed. New hair straighteners with various extra tools and attachments.

‘And this.’ Louise passed her an envelope. She’d saved since summer to give them each some Christmas money, both of them at an age where they liked to choose their own gifts.

‘Thanks, Mum.’ Ruby came round and hugged her. She smelled of sweet cherry hair conditioner and some new rose and jasmine perfume she’d taken to wearing. But like Louise she was showing signs of the strain, her skin dry and ashy-looking round her eyes.

‘And here’s yours, Luke.’ Louise picked up his hand and folded it round the small parcel. ‘It’s what you asked for,’ she said, ‘the new phone in the black.’ Would he ever use it? The treacherous thought darted through her mind. The police still had his old one. He might have to change his number. Or would they let him use the old number on the new one, even if they still had it as evidence. No one had said anything to her about whether they had found anything of importance on his phone, anything to help piece together what had happened that night.

She nodded to Ruby.

‘This is from me.’ Ruby mimicked her mother, placing Luke’s other hand on the soft, bulky package. ‘It’s a T-shirt, TK Maxx, like your old one, but in white.’

‘You could say thank you,’ Louise teased him, ‘instead of just lying there.’

‘And this is yours, Mum.’ Ruby brought the present to Louise, who made a show of opening it.

‘A pashmina. That is so soft. It’s lovely.’

‘And you like red?’

‘I do, my favourite. You asked us enough times.’

Ruby laughed.

Louise draped the scarf round her neck. ‘What do you think?’

‘Cool. Needs lipstick, though.’

Louise smiled.

‘You going to try?’ Ruby asked her. Meaning try and wake him.

‘Bit later. Sing him your piece.’

‘They might not like it; it’s pretty full-on.’ Ruby nodded to the door to the rest of the ward. Some of the patients were meant to have as much peace and quiet as possible. Overstimulation being a concern with a fragile brain.

‘Sing it quietly. Go on, be good practice.’

‘Okay.’

Louise settled back, savoured the sound. Ruby never faltered. Her confidence clear, her breathing controlled, pitch-perfect.

An hour later, Louise set aside her sewing, stood up and stretched. She shifted her chair back and took Luke’s hand in hers, patted the back of it and spoke clearly in his ear. A command and a prayer: ‘Wake up, Luke, open your eyes, come on, wake up now.’ She watched. Pinched the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing hard. He remained limp, made no response.

She felt the disappointment keenly; it didn’t get any easier. She fought the impulse to yank him upright, as if she could shake him awake, as if with enough vehemence she could break through the cocoon and free him. She closed her eyes for a moment, regaining her balance.

Ruby gave a rueful shrug and pulled out her phone. Louise imagined teenagers the length and breadth of the land texting over the Christmas turkey, causing ructions.

She got the wash bag from her carriers and pulled out the nail-clippers. His nails were longer than her own, smooth, with a gentle sheen, the half-moons clear, the cuts on his knuckles healed now. She wondered when the bandages would come off his head; if his hair would grow back the same, or if there would be bald patches where they’d opened him up.

Emma

She went home every Christmas. What else could she do? Her mum loved to have her there and did her best to make it cosy. Always made turkey and all the trimmings, even though there were just the three of them.

This year Emma was ill. The cold had broken overnight, her raw throat giving way to a streaming nose and thumping head. The journey was a nightmare. An earlier train had been cancelled, so this one was full of people squabbling about seat reservations and advance bookings and there weren’t enough seats. The only place Emma could find to settle herself was in the corridor outside the toilets, surrounded by her bags. It stank. Even with a blocked-up nose she could smell it. There was something wrong with the heating too, like it was set at boiling point, and she was sweaty and thirsty and it just wasn’t possible to fight her way through to the on-board buffet.

She was feeling so cranky and weary by the time the train squealed into New Street that she got a taxi rather than wait for a bus and blew sixteen pounds on that.

‘Ey up.’ Her father took one look at her. ‘It’s Rudolph! What a conk; you could light your way home with that.’ The very first thing he said.

‘I’ve got a cold,’ Emma said.

‘Never!’ he said sarcastically. ‘Come on, bring your bags in, don’t stand there like a sack of potatoes.’

Her mother usually tried to smooth things over, to cajole him, but he always had the upper hand. One time he’d derided Emma’s choice of winter coat.

‘Makes you look twice as fat.’

‘It’s padded, that’s the style,’ her mum had said. And she had got black, not the white, which was nicer but less practical. Black was meant to be slimming.

But he wouldn’t stop. ‘Marshmallow Man!’ he crowed. ‘Like in Ghostbusters.’

‘Roger, please!’ her mum scolded. ‘Stop going on at her.’

That made it worse. ‘What? I’m not allowed to comment on what my hard-earned wages are spent on?’

‘If you can’t say anything nice…’ her mother started, but there was a pleading quality in her voice.

‘I’m not going to lie to the girl. I don’t know what you were thinking of. She looks a bloody sight.’

He would often laugh as he said these things. Not the sort of laugh that was infectious. A cold, barking laugh so you’d see his teeth, but his eyes looked furious. One time when he told her she couldn’t learn piano because it was a waste of money and she’d as much musical talent as a tone-deaf ape and they’d no piano to practise on anyway, Emma had gone to her mother. Rounded on her really, the wildness coming out of her and saying awful things about him: I hate him, I wish he was dead.

‘No you don’t, that’s silly talk.’ Her mother had calmed her down and Emma stopped crying.

‘Why don’t you tell him, Mum? Make him stop.’

‘Look. He loves me, and he loves you. He never swears, he’s never violent. He’s never laid a finger on me, never would. He’s a bit sharp-tongued now and again, but that’s just how he is. Que sera sera. There’s a lot worse men, I can tell you. Now, go wash your face and I’ll make us a drink. Can you manage an eclair? There’s still two left.’

On the rare occasion that Emma did look to her mother for a sense of shared grievance, of solidarity, it was always the same: her mother quick to mollify her. ‘It’s just his way; he loves you, he doesn’t mean anything by it.’ Did he love her? Of course he did, she knew he did, and she loved him; she just wished he wasn’t always finding fault.

Other times, he pretended he was only joking. He’d accuse Emma and her mum of having no sense of humour, of not being able to take a joke. Usually it was Emma he picked on, but sometimes it was her mum. Her mum would go very quiet and then just disappear upstairs, if she could, and Emma thought she had a cry, but when she came back you couldn’t tell. She hadn’t got red eyes or a husky voice.

Emma liked it best when he was out and there was just the two of them, like on Sundays when he played cricket and his Tuesday practices, or Wednesdays when he played darts. What was weird was they talked about him even when he wasn’t there, passing on things he’d said, sharing his views on this and that, but it was like talking about some rare species. Observing its mannerisms and habits as though they were fixed and a fact of nature.

He should have been a critic, Emma thought. One of those people who write scathing, bitchy columns in magazines about films or celebrities or restaurants. Hatchet jobs. He’d be good at those. Because his disdain wasn’t confined to immediate family; he’d carp on about neighbours or workmates or politicians with the same acid tongue. The difference was he did it behind their backs, not to their faces. And he’d entertain his friends at the pub with his put-downs and send-ups. Roger was known as ‘a good laugh’. He could have been a stand-up comedian.

Her mum made a fuss of her and they had her favourite tea: lasagne and apple pie and cream. It would ruin her diet, but there was no point trying to stick to it over Christmas – and not when she was ill as well. She’d start again in the New Year.

Dad complained that there was a new man sharing his office at Clevely and Son and he wanted them to switch to a new type of spreadsheet package. Dad was quite happy with the one they used, he didn’t want to have to start fathoming out something else, but Mr Clevely was ‘thinking about it’.

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ Mum said and doled out the rest of the pie.

Emma told them she’d had to go to the police.

‘Causing an obstruction, eh?’ Dad quipped, his eyes hard and bright.

‘I saw the student who was stabbed and the other boy, the one in the coma.’ She told them what had happened, quickly, so he wouldn’t make any nasty comments.

Her mum was shocked; she’d seen all about it on the news. She wanted to know if they’d caught anyone. Emma told her no.

‘It’s awful, that,’ her mum said. ‘He was from a good family and everything. It was right outside his house. Oh, Emma, I never liked you being in Manchester, and now this.’

Her dad snorted. ‘It’s everywhere these days, woman. And if you do have a go, half the time it’s you’ll get arrested. Charged with assault. People screaming human rights, never mind who the bad guy is. What rights did that student have?’

‘Disgraceful,’ her mother agreed. ‘Ted, next door but one, saw some kids knocking over wheelie bins, making a right mess. He rang the police, and do you know what they said? They didn’t have the resources to send anyone round, but if Ted wanted to, he could go down to the station and make a complaint. We’re thinking of setting up a Home Watch.’

‘Improve your house and contents premiums,’ Emma, on safer ground, told them.

They watched a documentary about rogue builders; it was shocking, it really was. Emma couldn’t stay awake any longer. Mum told her to take some paracetamol and drink some orange juice.

She slept fitfully. Her throat felt like she was gargling ground glass; she was sweating and throwing the duvet off, then she’d get really cold and shivery. She couldn’t stop coughing and spluttering, and she felt like someone had stuffed her head with sand.

Christmas Day was just like every year: drinks before lunch, presents after. All done in time for the Queen’s speech.

Emma talked to them about her work and told them that her last appraisal had been the best yet but there was a freeze on pay rises at the moment because of the financial situation. That set Dad off on his soapbox about government spending and benefit cheats, until Mum asked him to change the record. But she said it in a nice way, laughing, and he didn’t jump down her throat.

On Boxing Day they always went to her aunt and uncle’s. They had a bigger house and her nan lived with them now. They’d made the dining room into a bedroom for her and put in a downstairs shower. Nan was much worse. She kept calling Emma Claire. Emma hadn’t a clue who Claire was until Mum explained she had been Nan’s sister and died in her twenties of complications after an operation. Nan’s teeth had mostly gone and she had new hearing aids that made a swooping, whistling noise that set Emma’s teeth on edge.

Her auntie wasn’t any great shakes as a cook: the beef was leathery and the Christmas pud, which she did in the microwave – ‘Do you remember they used to take forever on the stove?’ – was so tiny they got like a teaspoon each with lumpy brandy sauce.

Emma’s uncle got a bit drunk and wanted to show them a DVD of a cruise they’d taken in the spring. Emma was glad when Nan became agitated and insisted they put the proper telly back on. Thank God they could leave early with Emma being poorly.

Her mum never said a word about Emma’s weight. Not once in all the time she was home. Usually she’d tell her she looked well or she was looking trimmer or even ask if she was still dieting. Emma took the silence as confirmation that what she’d suspected all year was true. She was still gaining. She just kept getting bigger, and nothing worked.

The two Kims were like straws, could eat anything and never put on weight. Laura was bigger but still only size 14. She would exercise more, Emma promised herself. She couldn’t afford a gym, but she would get into the habit of taking the train both ways to work and walking through town. She wasn’t going to just give up. And she’d have to be a lot bigger to qualify for gastric-band surgery. Meanwhile it was impossible not to eat over the holiday; the fridge was stuffed with food, so she just got on with it. Tucked in with the rest of them.