Chapter 4

      Auntie Lynn’s house is warm and welcoming, and smells of fresh baking. I lived with her until I was twenty, at which point we both agreed that it might be better if I moved out. Lynn is more free-love than I am, and it was getting awkward and, to be honest, a bit embarrassing to bump into her lovers wandering about in the nude. Especially as some of them seemed a damned sight sexier than the men I brought back. And more interesting. And even, on one memorable occasion, younger.

      ‘Now dear.’ She pushes the plate of tarts in front of me; they’re a bit of a strange colour, with weird stripes that look like petrified goldfish immobilised in a sea of strangely translucent custard. ‘Lemon curd and marmalade – I ran out of lemon, but oranges and lemons go together perfectly, don’t they?’

      I take a tentative bite. A sour sweetness explodes in my mouth, along with a chewy bit that could be orange rind, and my tongue goes kind of numb. I think my eyes are wide and watering, and I seem to have developed lockjaw.

      ‘I’ve got a bit of news.’ She is smiling, but watching my face closely, slightly nervous – as if she’s expecting me to keel over any second. ‘It’s all been a bit last minute, but I wanted to have a chat about it and explain.’ This obviously isn’t about her cooking. This is about ‘her plans’. The reason I’m here.

      There is a long pause. I don’t like pauses, they come before bad news. I’m also not keen on the word ‘explain’. I put the rest of the tart down.

      ‘I’m going away for Christmas.’

      My locked jaw is suddenly slack and I understand her nervousness now. This isn’t about her culinary skills. ‘But we never go away for Christmas, we always have it here.’ We have the biggest tree we can find, too much glitter, and pretend cotton-wool snow if the real stuff doesn’t appear. We make mulled wine and weird-shaped mince pies, we go to midnight mass in our wellies and swap a special present just before we go to bed. We help feed the homeless and then walk the dogs in the shelter, and then we watch the Queen’s speech and play Monopoly.

      ‘I know, love. But this year,’ she sighs, ‘I’m afraid I have to go and see Ralph.’ She stresses the ‘I’, which I realise I’d missed before. I as in her, not us. Not me. There’s a hollow pang of emptiness inside me, and my heart is racing away as though it knows I need to run and hide. It’s that feeling I remember from school, when I knew I wasn’t going to get picked by anybody to be on their team.

      ‘You’re spending Christmas without me?’

      She leans forward and squeezes my hand, and I realise I sound like a five-year-old child, not the independent woman I insist to the rest of the world that I am. Except Aunt Lynn isn’t the rest of the world. ‘You’re leaving me on my own?’

      ‘Only for a few days.’

      ‘And who’s Ralph?’ Is Ralph a dog? Why have I never heard of Ralph before?

      ‘He’s in Australia.’

      ‘Australia?’ I do realise I’m just repeating everything, but she’s saying all the wrong things.

      ‘I need to do this on my own, darling.’ Lynn sits back, and I watch mesmerised, as she stirs her mug of tea and the words swirl round inside me. ‘He’s an old friend,’ the way she says ‘friend’ makes me look up, into her eyes, ‘and he’s dying. This will be his last Christmas, and I’d really like to spend it with him. You knew I was in Australia just before you came to live with me?’

      I nod. I have some vague recollection of being told, but I was little more than a toddler back then, and all I remember is the strangeness. Aunt Lynn was strangely brown and wore odd, flamboyant clothes, all bright and swirly. Big skirts that swished as she walked, big beads that jingled together, that I played with as I sat on her knee.

      Her house smelled different to my old one, all scented and smoky. She smelled different, all warm and inviting. She’d hug me to her chest and sing to me, and even her hugs were different to all the ones I’d had before. Only Aunt Lynn hugged me that way, as though she’d never let me go.

      A silly lump is lodged in my throat, and I sit and blink like an owl at her.

      Christmas has always been about the two of us being together. How does Christmas work without her?

      Oh God, I can’t spend Christmas all alone, I haven’t even got a cat for company!

      I know, I’ll take Callum up on his offer. He texted this morning asking if I wanted to spend the day at his parents’ house with him, and I’d been horrified. I’d nearly rushed round there and then to say no, to explain I had to be with Aunt Lynn. That’s we always spend the day together. But something had stopped me. I blink some more. I don’t want to be with Callum. If I say yes now, it will be for all the wrong reasons. I’ll be using him.

      ‘I came back for you, Sarah, and I left Ralph behind. But now it’s time to go and see him. One last time.’ She squeezes my hand again and her voice is gentle as she studies my face with eyes that used to be piercing blue but are now softened with age, and the sadness of life. ‘I am so sorry, love. I know what Christmas together means to you, it’s important to me as well. But you can come with me if you like? Ralph won’t mind at all. I just didn’t think you’d want to share Christmas in a strange place with a man you don’t know who’s dying, and I know it won’t be the same as Christmas here, but . . .’

      ‘It’s all right. Honest.’ I’d rather have Christmas anywhere if it meant being with her, than being at home without her, but I can see that this is something that really can’t be shared. Ralph needs her. And I’ve got a feeling she needs him.

      ‘He’s only got a few weeks left; he might not be here to see the new year in, so it’s all been a bit rushed, you see. It was the earliest flight I could get – the silly idiot had put off telling me until now.’ There’s real anguish, mixed with tears in her strangled voice. ‘I just hope I’m not too late.’

      I’ve never thought of her as old, or sad before, but now the mist of my own selfishness is breaking up and I realise she’s more than just my Auntie Lynn. She’s a woman with a past of her own.

      Aunt Lynn has never said much about her other life. Her pre-me life. Before my parents disappeared. But as I grew up, and studied the photographs, the discarded rucksack shoved to the back of her wardrobe, and the small mementoes of different places and people that adorned every shelf, nook and cranny in her house, I pieced together her real life as best as I could. And I saw a carefree,