I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,66
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‘Jack, I thought I had a crap upbringing but it pales into insignificance alongside how Bridge was dragged up. We both came from households with no discipline, no care, no love, permanently hungry stomachs, no Father Christmas visits. We were just kids people had, by-products of careless contraception, not wanted. Bridge ended up in the care system, which failed her really badly, made her borderline feral. I at least moved into a wonderful foster family at thirteen that unknotted some of the damage. Bridge didn’t know what it was to love or be loved until we met and she both wanted it and couldn’t handle it. She craved normality, the stuff that she’d seen other kids have; you know, the stuff people like you probably took for granted.’
Jack didn’t commit to any comment.
‘And she was so bright, but she hadn’t a GCSE to her name because she’d messed about at school, trying to get attention in all the wrong ways. She realised this and decided to make up for it in the world of work, show all those people who’d written her off just what she was capable of. She’d stand outside estate agents’ windows and look at the big houses. She’d tell me that one day we’d live in a pad like that. And we do, but not together.’
Luke gave a small groan. ‘Sorry for giving you the long version. The short version is that Bridge was bonkers and I didn’t pull my weight enough. Bridge tried to buy her mansion one quid at a time, I preferred to dream about it in a pot-filled haze. I didn’t want to sell things, build things or write about them at a desk. I was, without putting too fine a point on it, a lazy, selfish arse.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Jack. Luke was anything but the past portrait he’d painted of himself. ‘What was that catalyst that changed you?’
‘Looking back, it’s pretty clear I was a singular piece of touchpaper waiting for the exact match. And that, my friend, was also supplied by Bridge’s vituperative gob.’
* * *
Oh, how to explain where it all went wrong, thought Bridge. ‘We didn’t believe in each other. I laughed at Luke for wanting to be a leading light in the food world. He laughed at me when I said I wanted to buy and sell property. I had big ideas for someone who had to pawn her engagement ring to pay the electricity bill.’
She remembered the woman in the pawn shop’s derisory tone when she offered her an insult of cash for it. ‘If I had a strong enough magnifier in my loupe to see the diamond you say is there, I might have given you a fiver extra.’
‘I wasn’t a very nice person when I was younger,’ Bridge went on. ‘I was screwed up and defensive and aggressive and I nagged Luke into the ground to get him to change. I can’t remember how many pieces of crockery I threw at the walls in exasperation, but the neighbours must have thought we had a Greek wedding in our flat every night. And then I announced I wanted a child by him and I fell to bits when I found out I couldn’t have them. Thank God, really. I’d have been a shit mother.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that, Bridge. That must have been hard for you both. And I’m sure you wouldn’t have been a shit mother.’
‘It was my fault that we couldn’t have them anyway. You were so lucky you had the upbringing you did, Mary. I don’t even think I had a childhood.’
* * *
‘No job fitted or interested me. I hopped from one to the other like a dysfunctional frog between lily pads. I was happy enough living hand to mouth, but Bridge wanted everything: big car, big bank balance, big house, his and hers walk-in wardrobes, swimming pool, Koi carp…’ Luke explained to Jack. ‘She was working for a property auction place at the time, loving it, she was excited by it, aiming to end up running it. I thought she had no chance. Incidentally she didn’t end up only running it, but she ended up owning it.’ He pulled himself up into a sitting position because even the short version of this part of the story would run on a while.
‘Anyway, she saw a job advertised in Calvers Frozen Foods, in the product development department, told me if I didn’t apply she was leaving me. I thought