I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,50
with fresh water before placing it on the draining board.
‘You even do the washing up properly, don’t you?’ said Jack, curious grin quirking up one side of his mouth.
‘I try and do everything properly,’ replied Mary. ‘It only takes a little extra effort to do a good job rather than a mediocre one. That’s what my dad taught us.’
Jack lifted up the glass, began to dry it.
‘Do you still miss him? Even after… two years is it now?’
‘Yes,’ said Mary, dipping another glass. ‘I’ve got past the floppy, crying all the time stage but that doesn’t mean he’s not in my thoughts. I still think “I must tell Dad” when something happens that I know he’d like to hear about or when I want to run something past him. And I still feel sad that I can’t ring, but I talk to him, and if he’s around, he’ll hear me, and maybe he’ll guide me. Dad wouldn’t want me to mope and be miserable, he’d tell me off. If I had children and I… left them, I wouldn’t want them to miss me so much that they didn’t enjoy things any more.’
‘Do you think you’ll have children one day?’ asked Jack.
The question surprised her; he’d never asked her anything as personal before, but she tried not to let that show as she answered him.
‘If I found someone nice to have them with.’
Admittedly her thoughts, on occasion, had strayed to pictures of herself and a nice man walking through a park: she pushing a buggy, he holding the lead of a collie they’d taken in from a rescue centre, like the sort of dog her family had when she was growing up. But she would never attract someone who was truly interested in her as long as Jack was occupying her thoughts, because she wouldn’t flag up on the dating radar as available. Presently, she was like a nun, married to the Church. And tomorrow she would be twenty-five years old. Time to make things happen, not dream stupid dreams any more that would never come to anything.
‘What about you? Do you ever think about having children?’ she threw the question back at him.
Yes he did, imagined him kicking a ball over the vast lawn at the back of his house or holding a little girl’s hand as she prattled on and he tried not to chuckle at her. But he wouldn’t have children if it meant he didn’t have enough time to read a story to them, or worked so long and hard that he had to send them away to boarding school. He wouldn’t have them if his marriage wasn’t rock-solid and if, by any chance, it broke down afterwards, he would do his damnedest to make sure his child wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire or be dragged into the poisoned lake that stood between warring factions. He knew his father hadn’t meant for that to happen, but still it had. No, better not to have them at all than risk he might replicate his mistakes.
‘I’m not sure I will,’ said Jack, setting the dried glasses on a tray to take back through to the bar.
‘Why not?’ said Mary.
‘I’d be worried I wouldn’t be a good enough father.’
‘Well that’s just rubbish, if you don’t mind me saying, Jack. All parents make mistakes.’ Ooh, was that a bit rude, said a voice inside her. She jumped in quickly to pat her dissidence down. ‘I mean, my parents made loads. They were only human. My dad never went to any of the plays my older siblings did at school, which he regretted, he said, because he came to the ones I did and he realised then what he’d been missing. And my mum always said she was a bit soft on us. For instance, my older brother made a mess of his GCSEs and Mum was really cross at herself for not coming down harder on him for playing truant at school. But then again, maybe if he hadn’t cocked up he wouldn’t have tried so hard to make up lost ground. He’s a chartered surveyor now and lives in a massive house. Maybe his wrong path turned out to be the right one in disguise.’
She shut up, not even sure if that made sense.
‘I don’t know if I have a healthy family template to copy,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t want others to suffer because of things I get wrong.’