I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,79

a big tub of Quality Street, doesn’t she, Charlie. We love those.’

‘When you open up a tin of Quality Street, the smell of Christmas rushes out at you, doesn’t it,’ said Radio Brian, as if he were joining in with the conversation.

‘Sadly you don’t get that effect from the plastic tubs they come in nowadays, Brian,’ Robin replied to the radio. ‘It’s not the same.’

Bridge nestled back into her armchair. It was Christmas Day and it felt every bit like a Christmas Day should. The only thing missing from the scene was some chestnuts roasting on the open fire, which was crackling cheerfully. The sherry was mellowing her like she couldn’t remember being mellowed for years and her thoughts strayed south to Ben. She’d bought him a Mont Blanc pen for Christmas, something he’d always wanted but would never have bought for himself. He deserved it; he was the kindest, sweetest man she knew. She hoped he wasn’t eating his Christmas dinner alone and had braved the elements to go and join his sister and her family who lived less than half a mile away.

Charlie dropped a fork and almost toppled over trying to pick it up. Mary leapt up to retrieve it for him.

‘Thank you, Mary. You know, I never had children but if I had, I would have wished for a daughter like you. I think your parents were a very lucky couple.’

Mary beamed. ‘Oh, thank you, Charlie. That’s such a lovely thing to say.’

‘It’s important to say all the things that are sitting waiting in your heart to be said,’ he replied. ‘You never know what’s around the corner.’

Robin nodded in agreement. He was so glad he’d had ‘that’ conversation with him this morning. It hadn’t been as morbid as he’d been expecting and he knew it had given Charlie great comfort. And himself. He wouldn’t have regrets now that he hadn’t told Charlie how much he felt about him; he’d said important words that had been sitting in his own heart unspoken.

‘I’m presuming neither of you have children, then?’ asked Bridge.

‘No, but I would have liked them,’ said Charlie. ‘When I was young, the idea of a gay man raising a child was not something to be considered. The world is a far more tolerant place for us now than it was back then. When I was eighteen, I smiled at a man in passing in a park. He not only beat me up very badly but had me arrested, said I’d accosted him, which was a lie. I spent three months in prison. The judge said I was in danger of infecting men with homosexuality, whatever that means. So, never in my wildest imagination did I think during that horrific time that one day men would be able to marry each other and bring up children together.’ He shuddered as terrible memories were nudged to the surface.

‘Did you have families who supported you?’ asked Mary to both Charlie and Robin. It was horrible to think such archaic attitudes were actually just over the leaf in history’s book.

‘Not me,’ said Robin. ‘I was an only child, a great disappointment. We skirted around the elephant in the room when I was growing up. My father forced me to box and play football. If he could have injected me with testosterone, he would have. Then one day, when he’d had too much to drink, he asked me if I preferred boys to girls, he told me to be honest with him. And so I was. And within the hour I was thrown out with my suitcase. I was seventeen. They carried on being Christians, going to church, collecting money for the poor, listening to sermons about kindness and tolerance while turning their back on their only child. My cousin let me know when my father died, but he’d had it written into his will that I wasn’t to come to the funeral. I reached out to my mother after a respectful waiting period but…’ He paused, breathed. ‘She didn’t want to know me. I was dead to her. She’d also had it written into her will that I wasn’t to come to her funeral either. And that was in the 1980s.’

‘And yet my mother couldn’t have been more different,’ said Charlie. ‘She was a Londoner who had moved up to Yorkshire when she married my father, but after he died when I was eight she went back home to live with my grandmother, and the two of them