Connie
Christmas Eve
‘I am so excited,’ Connie said with fierce determination, as she placed another vintage glass ornament on the tree. Ornaments that had not been in her family for generations, although over the festive period, if asked, she would pretend that they had been. She would not admit to the hours nor pounds splurged on eBay; part of an eternal effort to create the impression of stability, legacy.
‘Situation normal, Mum.’ Sophie yawned; she was forever styling out a penchant for appearing world-weary. She was wearing faded denim overalls and a white vest top beneath with the sort of confidence that suggested she’d invented cotton. Her mother remembered wearing the exact same outfit with DMs when she was at university, but she knew better than to say as much. Such a comment would be met with disinterest, scepticism or worse, borderline revulsion. Sophie wasn’t even sixteen yet; was it possible she was already world-weary? Connie supposed it was. Young people were so burdened nowadays. There was the stress of performing in exams, that
seemed to start when a child was aged about four, plus the stress of being awesome, living life to the full, as suggested by TikTok, looking like a supermodel or what have you. It was exhausting to witness, let alone live through. Although, honestly, Connie was unsure how hard Sophie ever worked at her exams, and as she was the youngest of three, Connie didn’t have the oomph or inclination to enquire.
Flora, her middle child, wasn’t offering much in the way of joy and goodwill either. She had just come back to the nest after her fi rst term of university and had clearly been burning the candle at both ends. Her skin did not boast the youthful glow that it had in the summer; she was sallow, gaunt and at the same time pu ff y. She hadn’t moved from the sofa throughout the dressing of the tree; she simply picked at the spots on her chin and occasionally let out a deep, lethargic sigh. She was missing her newly made uni friends and making it very clear that being back home was now dull in comparison to being at Durham.
‘Why don’t you go and have a lie-down if you’re tired? What do you call it? A tactical nap.’ The suggestion was rather more of a plea. Flora’s presence was actively working against the Christmas spirit that Connie was diligently trying to foster. She had rejected the offer of hot chocolate – ‘I’m spotty enough’ –and champagne – ‘Are you, like, an alcoholic, Mum? It’s not even lunchtime.’ She objected to her mother’s music choice, not on the grounds of boredom at having to listen to the songs that had been piped out of sound systems in every shop, café and service station since October, but because she declared ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ to be ‘imperialist, racist shit, born from white saviour syndrome’ and ‘It’s Cold Outside’ as ‘basically a handbook on date rape’.
‘Gosh, I’ve never thought of them that way.’
‘Just listen to the lyrics, Mum,’ Sophie chipped in. She rolled her eyes at Flora, clearly wanting to throw her lot in with her sibling rather than her mother. Connie felt a sting of betrayal. She was glad her daughters were close; she just wished it didn’t mean they ganged up on her, colluded to make her feel outdated and irrelevant.
Instead of reacting to the suggestion of a nap, Flora asked, ‘Do we even have a right to put up a tree?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Or even, maybe, celebrate Christmas at all. It’s not like we go to church or anything.’
‘Speak for yourself. I believe there’s something,’ Connie argued vaguely. She had a feeling she’d be sending up regular prayers to God Almighty this Christmas, when she was surrounded by her friends and family. She placed another ornament on a branch that was already sagging under the strain of being overdressed. ‘I don’t remember everything being so complicated when I was your age.’
‘That’s because you’re prone to being nostalgic. Nostalgia is a cultural tool designed by the patriarchy to control us and to keep the status quo that serves them best. It was probably shit in your day too. You’re just brainwashed.’
‘Possibly, darling, but it really doesn’t help anyone to dwell.’
Connie beamed and tried to somehow thaw her daughters’ miserable cynicism by radiating happy-Christmas energy. Surely the order of the day.
‘God, Mum, how do you fail to see it? Why are you always so oblivious?’
It frustrated Connie that Flora and Sophie, who were pretty,
clever and wealthy, who had enjoyed a damned near-perfect childhood (hadn’t they? Certainly that was what Connie and Luke had tried to provide, lavishing all their girls with an abundance of care and attention and every material advantage available), always seemed to be struggling with something. Real or imagined, Connie wasn’t quite sure. She felt sad and sorry for their generation. It seemed that they saw everything as hard and gloomy. Difficult. Then she thought about global warming, and the internet, which provided not only roundthe-clock bad news but also an abundance of easy-access porn, and she admitted that maybe it was hard and gloomy. Difficult.
‘Can you pass me the angel? The blue one. It’s Fran’s year to be top of the tree.’ Thank God for Fran. Connie’s eldest. She’d be here any minute and she would bring with her that uplifting, unifying je ne sais quoi that she reliably oozed. She’d contribute to the Christmas spirit, no matter what her thoughts on holiday song lyrics.
The Baker family had three treetop angels, each of which had been made by the girls when they were in reception class. Connie strictly rotated which angel got top billing. Her daughters teased her for having a system to keep the tree fair and equitable, but she knew that if she was ever to slip up, they’d be the first to complain. While close, they were fiercely competitive with one another. Connie spent a lot of time and concentrated vigour avoiding attracting complaints or causing arguments. She liked things to be pleasant. None of her girls, nor her husband, Luke, had any idea as to how much energy it took to appear so bloody happy, eternally positive and upbeat in your mid-fifties.
The truth was, Connie didn’t always feel like a contender
for Little Miss Sunshine; it took effort. But she was glad they didn’t have any idea. That meant she was doing her job well. She was supposed to be steadfast, optimistic, productive and there for them; it was her job. Well, it was one of her jobs; she was also a photographer and she worked two days a week in a local art gallery. Yes, of course she could be irritable, angry or downright mean if she chose to be. She knew plenty of people who were, but she’d chosen to be the sort of person who counted her blessings instead. She embraced the perky posts on her Instagram feed that encouraged her to Carpe Diem and ‘Choose Happy’. She was in good health, she loved her husband, daughters, friends and wider family, they could comfortably manage their bills, she often had two holidays a year, and she had a Sage Barista machine. She was living the dream.
She’d come a long way and she knew it.
She really didn’t understand why so many people in her position found something to complain about (the indie baker selling out of sourdough bread, the ‘endless wait’ for the electric Audi to be delivered). It was a shame. A waste of good fortune. She was sometimes tempted to tell the complainers to get a grip, but she never did. Generously, she considered the possibility that complaining about a near-perfect life came from a ‘touch wood’ mentality. Maybe the beautiful, healthy and wealthy believed that if they openly declared their happiness, they’d invite bad luck. Perhaps in their deepest psyche, they were insecure.
Or maybe they were just spoilt twats.
She really didn’t know.
Either way, she was not going to complain about her sulky
daughters or the stress of hosting her nearest and dearest over the festive period. She was the entertainer, the host with the most open arms, open heart, open purse. It was not an act; she considered it a genuine privilege (damn, that word had been ruined with overuse).
As the eldest of four daughters herself, Connie was used to big, noisy Christmases. Although her mother had never quite managed active excitement, or even peace and joy. The vibe she’d exuded was at best frazzled panic and at worst outright exhausted resentment. But then Connie’s parents had operated within considerably tighter financial parameters than she enjoyed, and her grannies were both acerbic types and pretty offensive towards her mother no matter how hard she’d tried. Added to that, her mother didn’t have a dishwasher. Of course she was stressed. Connie had it so much easier.
Luke was also one of four, and he too remembered Christmas as an exercise in logistics, sibling rivalry and careful fiscal policy. In the early years of their marriage they’d used the fact of their big, chaotic families as an excuse to drop below the radar. They’d opted for quiet celebrations, just the two of them, or noisy drunken ones with their friends, reasoning that they wouldn’t be missed from their respective homes. When their babies came along, they’d started to host, initiating a complicated system whereby they invited both sets of parents and all of their siblings on various dates over the festive period, and more often than not, they managed to see most of them.
Christmas in the Baker household was undoubtably a magical time of the year. Exhausting, expensive, but above all exhilarating. Connie was looking forward to a noisy, squabbling, funny family Christmas. Luke kept joking that he was
looking forward to the day when they found themselves on a Caribbean beach without any of the kids, friends or rellies. Connie laughed when he said as much. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to make the idea sound appealing in case it ever happens. Which it never will while I have breath in my body.’ He wasn’t entirely joking though. She knew Luke would like her to himself and could live without the chaos of a family Christmas. That was vaguely uncomfortable for her, the fact that as they’d aged, they didn’t always think alike on everything. She didn’t like to dwell on that. So she chose not to.
Choose happy!
For the first time ever, Fran had said she was bringing someone home with her. Someone special? Connie had texted. Her hope palpable even digitally. TBD, was Fran’s response. It was obviously someone special, though. It didn’t need asking. He was no doubt the reason Fran had wanted to spend the summer in her uni flat, the reason she wasn’t coming home until today, Christmas Eve! Not for a moment did Connie buy into the excuse that her daughter wanted to remain near the uni library. Fran, age twenty-one, had never brought a boyfriend home before. The house was often brimming with her friends, both male and female, but she’d never introduced a romantic interest to her parents. Connie realised that was possibly because she called them romantic interests. Publicly, Connie referred to Fran as her ‘independent one’; mentally, she thought of Fran as her ‘flighty one’. There was no judgement, just a realistic recognition of Fran’s discontent: her idealism and her romantic nature when all mashed together tended to lead to fleeting entanglements only. Fran looked like Connie,
as did Flora, while Sophie resembled her dad. But it wasn’t only Fran’s physicality that reminded Connie of her younger self. Fran was adventurous, fluid, open to everything, which tended to mean commitment was a struggle – finding it, giving it. Connie had been in her thirties before she became anywhere near as content as she was now. It was only after she’d married and almost lost Luke that she fully committed to him.
It wasn’t a near-death thing. She’d had an affair. Risked it all. Rolled the dice and lost.
She hated thinking about that, what she might have thrown away, how she might have ruined everything due to nothing other than a lack of discipline and an irritating (but sadly inherent) impulse to play with fire. When the memory of her behaviour came to her, invariably her skin itched with shame and something darker still. Fear.
Connie was glad there was someone Fran wanted to introduce to the family. It was great news, and she hoped he’d be wonderful: clever, charming, caring and conscientious. But she was also prepared for the fact that he might be a total disaster. There was always a chance that they’d find him snorting something in the downstairs loo or shagging one of their friends’ daughters in the spare room under a pile of winter coats; she’d had boyfriends who behaved that way. She shook her head and tried to dislodge that distinctly unfestive thought. It made her shudder. How little she had thought of herself. How easily disrespect was doled out, disguised as daring.
Ancient, long-buried history.
Since her daughters had started their own various romantic entanglements, Connie had noticed that her mind occasionally drifted to her past; she found herself comparing their
experiences with her own, or simply reflecting on how she’d ended up where she was. It was a great place to be, so she figured if she could draw any conclusions about her own path, work out what she’d done well and where she’d gone wrong and then communicate those learnings to her girls, she might help them navigate their lives too. Perhaps allow them to avoid some of the most glaring and painful mistakes that she’d made. She wanted to guide, protect, accelerate, improve things for her daughters. Of course. However, the more she thought about it, the more she tended to believe that her ending up in a fine place was a matter of good luck rather than good management, and little could be drawn from being gifted a lottery ticket that just happened to have the winning numbers. This thought was frightening.
She wished she believed humans oversaw their own destinies in a clear-cut, unequivocal way, but throughout her life she’d seen misery rain down on the nicest people and extreme good fortune fall into the laps of some heinous beings. She’d seen grafters rewarded and grafters going without, she’d witnessed the idle hit the jackpot and the idle languish in poverty. There were no rules. Life had a cruel arbitrariness to it. Illness, death, redundancy, infertility, divorce, addiction, accidents all occurred with horrible indiscrimination. The best she could offer her daughters in terms of advice, or perhaps solace, was that shit happened and all that could be managed was our response to that.
Two of her three girls were officially adults; Sophie would be too in a blink of an eye. Out there, independent, in the huge, confusing world. It was another terrifying thought. She wished she could always keep them with her, Sophie in
a stroller, Flora on a buggy board, Fran holding the handle. All three under her wing. Protected. People told you that them being babies was the frightening part, but that she had largely managed, even controlled. She’d fed them, bathed them, changed and dressed them. Most often she’d averted disasters, and then comforted and soothed when she couldn’t. The school years were frankly torturous; she couldn’t regulate many external factors. Injustices and disappointments were rife and abundant: broken friendships, being dropped from teams, bullying, tricky exams. They say you are only as happy as your unhappiest child; a mother of three school-age children couldn’t expect to be dancing a cha-cha every day. But now she was beginning to realise that proper fear, an ice-cold terror of the unpredictable, really kicked in when they were adults. When every aspect of their lives slipped from your control. It had been a long time since Connie had had an idea about what they were ingesting or who they were playing with or since a ‘quiet word with a teacher’ solved their issues. Now it was up to them to fall and flounder or fly and flourish. She was powerless. When parents reached this stage, all they could do was stand back and trust that they’d given their kids enough guidance, resilience and basic common sense to get through.
‘Mum, Mum! The angel,’ Sophie barked at Connie, who had lost track of the conversation as she’d fallen into her own thoughts. Sophie held an angel out towards her mother and shook it with an air of impatience. She was offering the yellow one. Hers.
‘I said the blue angel. It’s Fran’s turn.’
Sophie tutted, but dug around in the decoration box, retrieved the blue angel and handed it over. Connie carefully
reached up and placed the paper doily skirt over the utmost tip of the tree. The angel’s head scraped the ceiling; she looked like she’d indulged in a little drink. Connie climbed down the ladder and stepped back to inspect her handiwork.
‘There,’ she pronounced. ‘It’s perfect.’
‘You really do have a very generous interpretation of that word, Mum. There are way more decs on the left side and hardly any at the top. It’s really not balanced,’ grumbled Flora.
‘Yup,’ Connie grinned. ‘Just how it looked when you kids decorated it when you were young. Perfect.’
Fran
‘
So this is it. Bougie.’ Zac pauses outside the smart black and white reclaimed Victorian tiled path that leads up to Portland stone steps and the entrance to our white stucco townhouse, sitting squarely in a quiet tree-lined street. He looks hesitant. Intimidated. My dad’s an architect. They bought this place when I was really young. I can’t remember much about the renovation, other than scooting through rooms on my pink tricycle, careless and carefree, while all around me there were builders, electricians and plumbers sweating and swearing, my dad calmly project-managing, my mum heavily pregnant and looking frazzled. I consider trying to downplay; telling Zac that when we bought it it was dark and dank, that it hadn’t been renovated since the early 1980s and we got it for a song. But our obviously elegant home is spread over four floors and we’re in Notting Hill. Any attempt to downplay would be patronising.
‘Yup. You can’t curve now. I promise you, my mum is hovering behind the curtains and has already clocked you. So
there’s no reasonable means of escape. If you do a runner, she will chase you down the street and drag you back. Possibly by your pubes.’
Zac laughs and pulls me towards him, leaning in to kiss my forehead. I’m a bit weirded out by the public displays of affection that he seems so into. I dip away from him and make out I’m grabbing my suitcase. He immediately tries to wrestle it off me, which is stupid because it’s on wheels and I can easily manage it; plus he has his own bag to pull; plus, I’m not like a frail Victorian woman restricted by a whalebone corset or anything. ‘I’m perfectly capable of pulling my own bag,’ I mutter. Then I feel bad because he looks wounded and I know he’s only trying to be kind. The thing is, I don’t like to be fussed over; it makes me feel claustrophobic. He’s nervous about meeting my parents. So am I, which is why I’m being a bitch. Mum saves me from having to apologise as she flings open the front door.
‘Hello! Hello! Hello!’ she shouts with the kind of enthusiasm that is generally saved for the return of soldiers who have seen conflict. Although it’s only a couple of metres from me to the doorway, she can’t contain herself: she dashes forwards and flings her arms around my neck, kissing my cheek over and over again. This is why I don’t like public displays of affection. My mum loves them, and has throughout my life delivered them with alarming frequency and flounce – to me, my sisters, my dad and just about anyone she takes a passing interest in, no matter how often I’ve asked her to back off. She really is a hugger. It’s pretty cool, I suppose. The fact she puts herself out there and makes herself vulnerable. I value it on an intellectual level. It’s just IRL it’s overwhelming. I should have
grown out of being embarrassed by my parents, but I think my mum sees it as a personal goal to keep bringing the cringe.
She gestures towards Zac, but her gaze is still on me. My mum’s eyes are always on her own kids. ‘And this must be …’ She inclines her head towards him, a none-too-discreet gesture. Embarrassed, I realise I haven’t actually told her Zac’s name.
‘Zac,’ I chip in now, cheerfully, with a better-late-than-never mentality.
She covers her blunder (or mine) by pulling Zac into a huge hug too. She hugs with her whole body. He’s not a tall guy, so she folds her head under his chin. It’s totally inappropriate and over the top. I know her full-body hugs are not meant to be sexual, but somehow they are. I notice Zac’s cheeks flare. He’s probably fighting a hard-on. My mum is hot. She’s not especially aware of it, which is endearing and a bit dangerous. I should have warned Zac that she can be a lot.
Dad rescues the situation by hugging me briefly and shaking hands with Zac, asking about our journey down from York, telling us to get inside quickly as we’re ‘letting out all the heat’. Dad’s job in life is to swiftly re-establish proper norms following my mum’s almost pathological destruction of them.
As we all make our way through the open-plan house and head towards the kitchen zone, I notice Mum repeatedly checking out Zac. She is staring at him with weird obsessive intensity. I mean, I know it’s the first time I’ve brought a guy to meet the folks, but back off, Mum. Stay proportional, yeah. My grandpop and granny slowly emerge from somewhere; they look a little frailer and older than when I last saw them at the beginning of summer. Sort of whiter. I sometimes think that’s what ageing is. They’ll get whiter and whiter until they
are finally transparent. The thought of my grandparents disappearing creates a hiccup of horror and grief in my gut. My nose squeezes as though I’m suppressing a sneeze. I’m glad when my sisters bounce into the room; they are both talking at once and are a distraction from my own emotions. Dad introduces Zac to everyone, obviously unsure that I’ll manage the job properly on my own. Mum is surprisingly quiet. I expected her to have fired like a million questions at Zac by now. She’s been in his company for five whole minutes. She isn’t saying anything, in fact, she’s just staring at him. She almost walks into a breakfast bar stool. This really is a new level of embarrassment. What is wrong with her?
Dad does his best. ‘Can I get anyone a cup of tea or coffee?’
‘Can you do a decaf?’
‘Do you have mint?’
‘Mine’s a flat white.’
‘I’d like a frothy one.’
No two people request the same thing, and Dad repeatedly checks the orders as he does his best to accommodate. Every surface in the kitchen is heaving with food: mince pies, chocolate log, pretzel wreaths, Nutella Christmas tree pastry, but Mum hasn’t offered anyone anything to eat. Weird, as normally she’s a feeder, happiest when we are all munching something she’s made.
Instead, she says, ‘Take your coat and scarf off, Fran. Make it look as though you’re staying.’ It’s one of her many familiar and vaguely annoying phrases. She stares at me. Steady.
Here’s the thing, she’s embarrassing and full on and all of that, but she’s also my mum, right. And she is the total epitome of ‘means well’, ‘good heart’, ‘got my back’, all that.
I’m depending on it. I don’t know how, but I think she already knows. I feel it in the connection we have; a connection that, I suppose, all women have with their mothers, to a greater or lesser extent. I unwrap my scarf from my neck and then slip out of my big bulky coat. I try to place them on the stool next to me, but the coat slips to the floor.
‘You’re pregnant,’ she says.
Connie
‘ Surprise!’ Fran placed her hands on her curved stomach and sent a wide smile to her mother. Connie recognised that her beam wasn’t entirely authentic; she was apprehensive. Her stance, arms curled around her mass, communicated protectiveness. Something in Connie’s heart fluttered. Her daughter was already protecting her own baby. Connie recognised it as one of those dividing moments: before and after, when things were never the same again. A second ago her daughter was a child. Now that was all behind her.
Done with.
The kitchen had fallen silent. Something that rarely occurred in the Baker household. The sight of the round belly had sliced through the various demands for coffee. Connie and Fran held eye contact; everyone else held their breath, waiting for Connie’s response.
Zac stepped forward and said, ‘We’re both very happy. We’re amped about being parents.’
Connie’s head jerked backwards an infinitesimal amount.
She respected his move. He was making it clear he was in this, that he was with Fran. That was good. That was decent. Of course Connie respected that.
But she also wanted to kill him.
Literally. In that moment, she would have liked to efficiently, forcefully shove him off a bridge, or onto a railway track, off the edge of the planet, out into orbit, because he was claiming Fran.
‘You’re just twenty-one,’ she said.
‘I know how old I am, Mum.’
‘You’re still at uni.’
‘I realise that too.’
‘I take it that this isn’t a matter of planned parenthood.’
Fran glared at her mother. ‘How far along are you?’
‘Connie,’ her mother and Luke chorused simultaneously. She heard the caution they were issuing. Connie had basically asked if it was too late to do anything to stop the pregnancy. Could they make this go away?
Fran didn’t answer the question, or maybe she did. She said, ‘I’m sorry you missed the twelve-week scan, Mum. Maybe you can come to the next one, we’re close to that.’
‘Well, forget the tea and coffee, Luke, we should open some champagne,’ Grandpop said. ‘My first great-grandchild. Well, I never, isn’t that a lovely Christmas gift? The very best.’
Connie felt an inappropriate nip of irritation that her father had settled so swiftly into declaring this a moment of celebration. He’d have killed her or any of her sisters if they’d come home pregnant aged twenty-one and unmarried. Most likely throttled them with his bare hands. He’d changed. Mellowed. It was a good thing that he’d moved with the times. Usually
she liked that about him, but just now she wanted him to shut up. Champagne, a toast, that would cement things. There was no going back once the cork popped. A pronouncement had been made.
Was this a good thing? A lovely gift? It didn’t feel like it. What was the proper response to this news nowadays? A generation ago it would have been cause for bitter recriminations and a row, two generations ago a shotgun marriage. Now, she couldn’t think of what to do or say, so she opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of champagne.
‘We have fizzy elderflower too, Fran,’ she offered. She was working on automatic pilot. She was probably in shock. As she reached up to the cupboard where the champagne flutes were kept, she felt Luke gently squeeze her arm. She was unsure as to exactly what he was trying to communicate. Was he supporting her or silencing her? It surprised her a little that she was unsure as to what he was thinking about this monumental news. Surprised and saddened. True, he never charged in with a less than carefully considered comment, but generally she could read him before he had to open his mouth. Often, he’d forget to take his reading glasses to a restaurant, and rather than borrow hers he’d simply say, ‘Will you choose for me?’ He was always happy with what she picked because she always knew what he’d fancy. She knew what he would want to watch on TV and he knew the same about her. They knew what to expect from one another around the house. They knew how one another ticked in bed. It rarely had to be spoken of; instinct and experience combined so that they knew the most efficient way to reach orgasm or when they both wanted to take their time or even not bother at all. Offence was never
taken if it was the latter. There would always be another day. They knew that too.
But now? What was he thinking? Connie told herself it was unreasonable to hope she could guess his thoughts when she couldn’t even process her own.
‘Sophie, pour your sister an elderflower,’ she instructed.
‘Actually, I’ll have champagne,’ said Fran.
‘Oh, I thought that you’d …’ Connie didn’t finish the sentence. It was obvious that she thought Fran would be abstaining.
‘Half a glass of champagne isn’t likely to be a problem, Mum. French women drink red wine throughout their pregnancies.’
‘Do they? Even now, or is that a myth?’ Connie challenged. Luke took the bottle off her and began to pour.
‘If they’re born alcoholic, then you can say I told you so,’ muttered Fran.
Connie was about to tell her daughter not to joke about being an alcoholic, it wasn’t a funny thing to be, but instead she gasped, ‘You’re expecting twins?’
‘No.’
‘But you said they.’
‘I’m not going to mindlessly fall into restrictive patriarchal labelling, simply because it’s inherited.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t want to say he or she. Because that’s creating expectations.’
‘On whom?’
‘On them.’
‘But the baby doesn’t understand what we’re saying.’
‘We don’t know that, and anyway, I don’t want to create expectations for everyone else by suggesting they will definitively be a he or a she.’
‘Couldn’t we just talk about “the baby”?’ Connie asked. ‘No.’
‘I don’t understand how saying “the baby” is patriarchal or restrictive.’ She could hear her own voice rising, not in volume but in tone. She sounded squeaky, shrewish. Why was she picking this battle?
Fran rolled her eyes. ‘You need to move with the times, Mum.’
Connie felt a flare of offence. She didn’t need to do any such thing, as it happened. She was perfectly happy ensconced in her own part of geography and history, or at least she had been until about three minutes ago, when this news broke. She was stunned, scrambling for evidence of the je ne sais quoi her daughter was supposed to deliver. The excited, unequivocal, simple Christmas spirit.
‘Will they have gender-neutral names when they are born?’ Luke asked. He laid emphasis on the word ‘they’. Was he being mindful or mischievous? Connie wasn’t certain.
‘We’re going to wait and see what they look like they’ll suit,’ replied Fran.
‘Are you expecting twins?’ asked Connie’s mother.
‘Cheers,’ said Luke quickly, raising his glass and then swallowing down the champagne in one gulp.
