and Janice and Martin popping in for a sherry in terrible Christmas sweaters.
The thing about our family Christmas is, it’s always the same. In a good way. Mum always buys the same things, from the crackers to the Waitrose chocolate roll. Now that we have Minnie, we all get even more excited—and this year she’ll be old enough to really understand it. I’ll buy her a cute Christmas outfit and we’ll look out for Father Christmas in the sky and leave out a mince pie for him….Basically, I can’t wait.
Luke’s dad and sister are going to Florida for Christmas, and to be fair, they invited us along. His mum, Elinor, is going to be in the Hamptons, and she invited us too. But we’ve declined both invitations. We both want a nice, normal, happy family Christmas.
As I buckle Minnie into her car seat, I look back at our house and feel a familiar tweak of disbelief at how life has changed for Luke and me over the last year or so. Once upon a time we lived in central London and I worked at a department store called The Look. We knew where we were heading, and everything seemed settled.
Then we went on this massive, life-changing adventure to California—and while we were away, The Look went bust. And openings for other personal-shopping jobs were pretty thin on the ground. At the same time, my best friend, Suze, decided to expand her gift shop at Letherby Hall, the stately home where she lives. (It was more of a gift “cupboard” till then.) I was having a glass of wine with her one evening and bewailing the fact that I couldn’t find a job, while she was bewailing the fact that she couldn’t find anyone to help run the gift shop—and asking me for all my ideas—when the solution hit us.
So now I’m an employee of Letherby Hall Gift Shop! Not only that, Luke and I have moved out of London to the village of Letherby. We’re three minutes away from Suze, living in a house owned by a family who have gone to Dubai for two years. We’ve rented out our London house. Luke commutes to his job, and Minnie has joined the village school with all of Suze’s kids. It’s perfect! The shopping isn’t that brilliant in Letherby—but you can get everything online, next-day delivery. So it’s all good.
Mum and Dad are thrilled, too, because 1. Letherby isn’t too far from Oxshott, where they live, and 2. our rented house has off-street parking. Off-street parking is, like, my parents’ religion. That and double glazing. And “good quality” curtains.
(Though Mum and I don’t exactly agree on what “good quality” curtains means. We discovered this when she dragged me to a curtain exchange place and tried to make me buy some wadded blue flowery curtains, which were “a fraction of what they’d cost new, Becky, love, a fraction.” At last I said, “Actually, I might get blinds,” and she looked devastated and said, “But these are such good quality!” and I said, “But they’re gross.” Which I shouldn’t have done.)
(I mean, it was fine. Mum was only offended for about half an hour. And every time I visit her, I say, “Those curtains look great in the spare room, Mum, and the matching duvet is gorgeous.”)
As we pull up in front of Suze’s massive front door, Minnie starts wriggling with excitement. She loves having sleepovers with Suze’s children so much, I almost get offended. I mean, what’s wrong with home?
“Wilfie!” she’s already yelling, as he appears in the drive. “Wilfie! I’m here, I’m here! Let’s play monter tucks!”
“Monter tucks” is Minnie-talk for “monster trucks.” Minnie, Wilfie, and Wilfie’s twin, Clemmie, spend hours happily running monster trucks up and down the endless corridors of Letherby Hall. I’ve even bought Minnie her own truck to keep there.
I’ve also made sure to mention this fact when I write emails to Jess, who’s living in Chile at the moment. Jess and her husband have applied to adopt a child, rather than add to the world’s population problem, and meanwhile Jess is always lecturing me about bringing up Minnie in a gender-neutral way and sending me books called things like The Zero-Carbon Child.
So last week I wrote her an email—I’m really encouraging Minnie in non-gender-aligned play—and attached a photo of Minnie clutching a truck, wearing a pair of Wilfie’s jeans. (She’d fallen in the mud and had to change out of her frilly skirt.)