Seagulls whirl in concentric circles over next door’s newly ploughed field, white snowy bodies against the slate coloured sky. Violet rests her bum on the fence and watches the school minibus pull away, its sliding door still ajar where she mustn’t have shoved it hard enough. Backs of heads, no one looking her way.
She sits there and chats to Thirteen, delaying her trudge up the driveway, decompressing after a day in the world of adolescents. Thirteen is younger than her, and she thinks about that sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. She tells her about their house, stubbornly empty of Christmas decorations, even now, with only three days to go. About how she understood it last year, she really did, but if there’s no Christmas this year, will there ever be again? She’s fifteen now, she knows she shouldn’t care so much, but the fact is – she does.
Violet only moves when she hears the thrum of the tractor up the hill: Dad. Her shoes squelch through muck all the way up the drive even though she’s trying to be careful. By the time she reaches the farmyard, her feet are caked just like their dairy cows’ cloven hooves.
Everything feels exactly the same. Exactly the same as every day since That Day. She had stupidly hoped this Christmas might be different. But here she is, the last day of term, a day like any other.
She lingers at the calf shed, lets the one with a white star between its eyes suckle her hand like a teat. The calf’s tongue is rough like sandpaper, warm and firm as a hug. Violet watches the distorting lines of her palm, feels the tickle in the centre.
The tractor engine cuts out, and her Dad appears, old brown trousers tucked into enormous wellies, bodywarmer over a checked shirt but no coat.
“There you are!” he exclaims, reaches for her with a hand smeared with something brown and kisses the top of her head as if she’s twelve. He’s bouncier somehow, she doesn’t know when she last saw him like this. Usually these days he has a kind of sad, defeatist look that’s there even when he smiles. “That took a while. Bus a bit late, eh? Or you chatting to this new friend of yours?”
“Aye, chatting a wee bit.”
“What’s her name again?”
“Thirteen,” Violet says sheepishly.
“Funny name.” He raises his eyebrows and Violet shrugs. “Well, I have to say, you’ve cheered up a lot since this friendship his taken off, it’s good to see. You should bring her round sometime.”
Violet doesn’t know what to say.
Her Dad’s brow furrows. She knows he’s thinking of the logistics of this now the words have come out of his mouth; the yawning silence, the empty cupboards, the mounds of washing piling up in the hallway.
Mum, always there, sometimes vacant, mostly sad. Drifting around like a spectre.
He clumps a hand on her shoulder. “It’s almost milking time. You’d best get inside for a bit first.”
She screws up her face, but he gives her an encouraging smile. “Go on, head inside.”
She looks at the house, then at her watch. Half an hour, then she can go and help with the milking.
“Is she awake?” she asks, and he nods in response.
“Go and see, Violet.”
She tries not to hope; she’s done that before. A light in the living room or all the curtains being open, some sort of sign that things were improving, only to find out nothing had changed at all. It was safer not to hope – that way you couldn’t be disappointed.
At the door, something unfamiliar. Sounds, muffled sounds. It isn’t until she’s in the porch taking off her shoes that she realises it’s music. She stands, frozen. Light puddles through the kitchen door. Something else too, something different. Her sister’s wellies are gone.
For thirteen months they’ve stood, stiff as sentinels, waterproof trousers bundled around the ankles where she left them. She didn’t bother to wear them when she went to the barn, strung up a piece of rope and hung herself from it. Violet had been first out to milking next morning. Even her ankles were limp, and weirdly, that’s what she remembers the most. Swollen, shades of black and crimson like braised red cabbage.
Violet’s feet are now half a size bigger than her sister’s were, but she’s never been allowed to wear those wellies.
She swallows, pushes open the door into the kitchen. The oven is on, gingerbread smells filtering through the whole house, shifting dust. Her Mum isn’t there. She tiptoes through to the living room. There, her Mum dances gently, wine glass in hand, eyes shut. Violet feels the prick of tears. In the corner is a Christmas tree, the decorations spread out on the carpet in front of it.
Her Mum senses her the way you can always feel another human presence. Her swaying stops, her eyes glide open reluctantly. She smiles at her, a real, true smile, a seeing smile. And she realises then, that when she tells herself she’s fine it’s not true. She needs her Mum.
“Do you want to decorate the tree?” Mum asks, and she’s so present, so real, so like the figure she remembers from the past. She remembers decorating the tree year after year, the Christmas playlist, arguing with her sister over which colour tinsel they’d each get to arrange. “And there’s gingerbread biscuits,” she says, and her tone is so hopeful, that Violet can’t help the tears spilling over her bottom lids like a reflex.
Her Mum pulls her into a hug, and it’s soft and relaxed, the kind she’d forgotten actually existed. “I’m sorry, Violet,” she says, “I’m here now, OK? I’m here now.”
They sit, side by side so close they’re almost overlapping, because Violet is now bigger than her Mum so she obviously can’t sit on her knee even though she feels like it. She strokes her hair, says shhhhhh, and Violet realises that she’s only ever cried in her room at night, her own private space where she talks to her sister and asks her why. Now it’s as if all these extra tears have been saved for this moment, and it feels so good to let them out.
When they slow, so much time has passed that Violet can’t believe the clock. “I should be helping with milking,” she mumbles, feels a kind of panic it may be nearly over.
“Don’t worry, your Dad will understand,” Mum soothes, but Violet leaps up.
“I’ll go and help,” she says, racing through to the porch, stuffing her feet in wellies and staggering towards the parlour. Most of the cows have gone through already, but there she is, Thirteen, ambling in to be milked, head lolling from side to side, slabber hanging in a string from her velvet muzzle. Violet smiles, descends into the working area, smells the comforting bovine smell. She reaches up to Thirteen’s udder, gives it an affectionate pat and a clean with spray and blue roll. “There you are, girl,” she says as she attaches the cluster, teat by teat. She was here, just as she’d promised.
“You’ve a real soft spot for that cow,” Dad says, looking at her differently as his mind connects the dots. “Thirteen,” he whispers softly, “I thought that was a funny name.” His expression changes to concern.
“She’s a good listener,” Violet says simply, turns back to the cows.
When the cows are all milked and the parlour washed down, she approaches the house with a fear settling inside her that she’s imagined it all. Or it was nothing more than a pleasant, memorable bump in the road, like someone with dementia having a lucid moment. But the boots are still gone, the gingerbread now cooling on wire racks, and above all, there is music.
Her Mum holds up a hunk of tinsel. “Well now, are we going to decorate this tree? Do you want the silver tinsel or the red?”
“Um, silver,” she says mildly.
She holds out the silver, then tugs it back just as Violet’s fingers graze its tendrils.
“No, I’m having the silver!” she replies with a playful smile Violet thought had disappeared forever.
“OK, the red then,” Violet says slowly.
“I’ve changed my mind, I’m having the red!” Mum says, and then they’re both laughing and crying at the same time, Mum’s arm around her, the tinsel pressed between them.
Author: Bethan Crymble is a novelist currently seeking agent representation. Recently, one of her short stories won 2nd prize in the Tyne and Esk Writer of the Year Competition, and her flash fiction was longlisted for the WestWord Past Times Prize. She lives near Edinburgh with her husband and two children.
I found this really moving. Brilliant
Beautifully written, nuanced and emotional. Loved it!