Christmas at the Farmhouse - Rebecca Boxall Page 0,4

eyes, as though he were ridiculously old-fashioned to be assuming a man might have a part to play in the conception and rearing of a baby. I was glad it was Magnus who’d asked such a delicate question and I waited, holding my breath, to see if Freja would give any sort of sensible answer.

‘Actually,’ she said, throwing the apple core with unexpected accuracy into the bin, ‘you know him.’

‘We do?’ I asked nervously.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Don’t keep us in suspense, darling,’ I told her.

Freja smiled slowly, as if savouring her announcement.

‘The father is… drum roll please… Father Christmas!’ she said, bursting into laughter. ‘Really!’ she said, her eyes filling with tears as they always do when she’s tickled by something. Magnus reached for some kitchen roll and passed it to her, while she dabbed her eyes before bursting into another fit of giggles. We weren’t quite so amused.

‘Stop messing us about,’ Magnus said. ‘Such nonsense! If you don’t want to tell us, then just say.’

‘But I’m serious!’ Freja said. ‘Okay, so he’s not the real Father Christmas, but he’s the one who dresses up as him at the garden centre at this time of year. Hands out presents to all the little kids. You know him because he was Mikkel’s best friend at primary school. He’s called Sunny.’

Alarm bells began ringing in my mind as memories from twenty years ago were stirred; ten-year-old Mikkel bringing home the most peculiar boy as his new ‘best friend’. (It had fizzled out by the time they left primary school a year later). I couldn’t picture Sunny, but suddenly – with disturbing clarity – I recalled his mother, with her bottom-length matted brown hair and the ‘easy-going’ aura she used to give off until she opened her mouth. Now, I have nothing against hippies, but this woman was one of those sorts who – for all her ‘free speech, free love’ principles – believed that everyone should, without a shadow of a doubt, be thinking, believing and doing exactly the same as her.

This wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d drawn some sort of line between her own beliefs and the needs of her son, but it came back to me now how the poor child’s hair had stunk to high heaven (‘only an idiot would fall for those shampoo commercials; the hair is perfectly capable of washing itself’ she’d crow to anyone mad enough to listen); how Sunny had had to put up with sodden feet through the winter in his canvas plimsolls as his mother wouldn’t countenance leather shoes but for some reason hadn’t considered the idea of rubber Wellingtons – I think I gave him some of Mikkel’s in the end; and then, of course, there was the confusing stream of ‘uncles’ who passed through Sunny’s life in the shared house where they lived.

‘I think I remember,’ I murmured eventually. ‘How’s his mother? Have you met her?’

‘Oh no, she vanished years ago, when Sunny was fourteen.’

I felt a sense of relief, tempered by the concern that Sunny – and now this baby – would doubtless carry some of her genes. But too many minutes had passed with me worrying inwardly. It was time I did what all good mothers should do.

‘Congratulations, my darling,’ I said to Freja. ‘I mean, if you’re…’ I began, anxious to say the right thing.

‘It’s okay, Mum. I’ve made my decision. Do you want to see the scan picture?’ she said, excitedly, and she pulled a slightly crumpled printout from her pocket and brought it over to me.

‘Aah, gorgeous!’ I told her. ‘Magnus, look at this,’ I said and he got up from his chair to peer over my shoulder, making encouraging noises.

Freja put the picture back in her pocket and hopped onto my lap, snuggling her head into the crook of my neck as she had as a child. ‘My baby’s having a baby,’ I mused to myself.

‘I’m hardly a baby,’ she breathed. ‘I’ll be twenty next month.’

‘Exactly.’

Chapter Five

January 1969

Susan

When Saturday arrived, I woke up feeling nervous. It was icy cold in my bedroom and when I drew the curtains back a frost was visible on the windowpanes. Shivering, I set about getting ready, taking a little more care than usual over my appearance, which was – to my mind – mediocre at best. I dressed in the red polo-neck mini-dress Penny had decided didn’t suit her – worn with thick tights, so Father wouldn’t insist I change into something more decorous should he see me before I