I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,38

and she’d roll her eyes or groan. How many times had she heard him say that and what she wouldn’t give to hear him say it again.

‘He sounds a very wise man,’ said Jack.

‘He was,’ said Mary. Was. Such a little word to have the power it did. At first, when her dad had died, thinking of him as ‘was’ rather than ‘is’ broke her. She hadn’t been able to process that he was no longer around, that she couldn’t ring him to tell him this or that as she always had. She loved her mum dearly, but she had always been a daddy’s girl. He was the first port of call to tell when she got her A-level results, passed her driving test, got the job working for Butterly’s. Still now, two years later, sometimes she thought ‘I must tell my dad…’ On those times, optimism didn’t work so well.

‘My dad used to say that optimism had a magic. Take that Buckaroo for instance. Neither of us knows if it’ll work or not, so maybe if we presume it will, it will. And if we presume it won’t, it won’t,’ said Mary, shifting some cobwebby demijohns to poke behind them.

‘Okay, then I’ll revise what I said and say… I can’t wait to see us all playing Buckaroo.’ Jack smiled again, properly this time, a smile that stretched his lips to their full extent and Mary thought how altered he looked when he did that, like a totally different person. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen him smile in the office, his expression was usually one that implied there was a lot going on in the brain behind it and it was all serious scone business.

‘That’s better.’ Mary smiled back at him and once again he thought how her eyes seemed to brighten when she did so, as if a light had been switched on inside her. He also thought that Mary’s dad might have not been best pleased about the way she was treated by Butterly’s when he died. Something that he should have been aware of and broached with her long before this.

‘Ah, bingo. Literally,’ said Mary, reaching up to drag over a box with a bingo set in it. There was also a cheap-looking chess and draughts set and a pack of Donkey cards, as well as some monster dead spiders, their skeletal bodies looking like the spikes of miniature broken umbrellas. She’d never been one to be scared of creepy crawlies though. She’d been brought up in the countryside where big spiders weren’t uncommon. Plus, one of her favourite childhood books was Charlotte’s Web and that had coloured her young view of spiders somewhat.

‘I think this lot might suffice,’ said Mary, brushing some dirt from her pale blue shirt. ‘They—’

‘Mary,’ said Jack, interrupting her flow. ‘I have an apology to make to you.’

‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ said Mary. ‘No one knew this weather was going to—’

Jack stopped her again; she’d got the wrong end of the stick. ‘No, I don’t mean about that.’ He paused, shamed by what he was about to say. ‘When your father died, we sent you some flowers, didn’t we? From the company, as we always do in such circumstances.’

‘Yes.’ Mary nodded, slightly befuddled.

‘It wasn’t enough,’ said Jack. ‘They were just flowers. A standard company token. I never realised what you must have been feeling, not until… last year, when it happened to me… my father passed…’

‘It’s fine,’ said Mary, rescuing him.

‘No, it isn’t fine one bit. I had no idea what it would be like. I wasn’t prepared for how low I’d get.’

‘Ah.’ Mary understood him now. ‘It’s a club no one wants to join, Jack. I don’t think anyone can know until they walk through its doors.’

He remembered asking Kimberley, Mary’s temporary replacement, to email and enquire how she was doing and if she had an idea when she’d be coming back to work, even though there was no rush. He shouldn’t have asked at all. Or at the very least he should have sent the email himself.

Mary remembered how hurt she’d been to get the curt email from Kimberley. Jack wants to know when you’ll be back. No enquiry as to how she was. Not a word of concern. That hurt had segued into anger enough for her to reply: I’ll be off as long as I have to be. She went back three weeks after the funeral and Kimberley was shunted off to finance again, despite hoping