Lost Christmas (2 page)

‘Must've been outside,' said Dad.

Just then, there was another yip, and Goose could see a dog bouncing up and down excitedly behind his parents and his grandmother.

‘Dad!' Goose came further into the room, weaving left and right, trying to get a better look at the animal.

‘We were going to hide him till tomorrow,' explained his mum, ‘but he doesn't seem to want to play along with that plan. Happy Christmas, sweetheart.'

And, with that, Mum, Dad and Nan stepped aside, revealing a small brown and white mongrel deeply engrossed in a satisfying scratch behind his ear. With an open mouth Goose looked down at the dog. The dog stopped what he
was doing and looked up at Goose. Their eyes met. And it was love at first sight.

Goose dropped to his knees in front of the dog, who bounded forward, paws up on Goose's chest, licking him manically, tail wagging back and forth two hundred times a minute.

‘What is he?' asked Goose.

‘He's a dog,' said Dad.

‘No, I mean, what breed?'

‘He's a bitsa.'

‘A bitsa?'

‘Bitsa this, bitsa that,' Dad smiled.

Goose groaned. He should've seen that one coming.

‘What you going to call him, love?' asked Nan.

Goose pondered the question as the dog bounced around him in a circle of barely contained excitement, yipping and pausing now and again to lick or sniff his new master, or scratch himself. After a moment Goose gave up and shrugged. ‘Don't know yet. I'll think of something.'

Paul crouched next to his son and his new pet. The puppy lay on his back submissively and Paul tickled the dog's belly. ‘There's a good boy!' He smiled at Goose. ‘He's had all his shots. Wanna take him out?'

The sides of Goose's mouth strained to encapsulate his grin. His entire body thrummed with total and absolute joy. He couldn't remember a time when he'd been happier.
He felt elation coursing through him, as if it was a physical thing: a thick luminescent liquid filling him up. Even his ears felt happy. At that precise moment, the phone rang and the smile faded from Goose's face. His mum went out into the hall to answer it. His dad looked at him, still smiling, and gave a small shake of his head.

‘It's awright. I'm not on call,' he said.

Just as Goose was starting to smile again, Linda came back into the room. ‘Paul, it's the station. Jamie's broken a finger, had to go to A&E.' The smile on Goose's face was only just starting to reignite. It went out like a candle in a storm. Paul frowned and looked apologetic, but there was nothing he could do. He mouthed the word ‘sorry', but knew it didn't help.

Goose watched as his dad stood up and strode out into the hallway. Paul took the phone from his wife and listened.

Nearby Nan was making her way along the mantelpiece, turning all the Christmas cards upside down. Goose looked at her, but the strangeness of her actions didn't register with him. His mind was elsewhere. He looked back to the hallway just as his dad glanced back at him. Then Paul turned away and sighed. ‘Yeah, okay, I'll be there as soon as I can,' Goose heard him say.

He looked down at his new puppy frolicking in front of him, rolling this way and that and then getting startled by his own tail. Something silver caught his eye and he saw
a set of car keys sitting on the coffee table, at eye level, a mere arm's reach away. A dozen thoughts raced through Goose's head, all of them colliding into a jumble and not one of them making any more or less sense than any of the others. So, without thinking, his hand shot out and grabbed the keys. He pushed them under the cushion of the mauve Dralon-covered armchair behind him just as Paul came hurrying back in, clearly looking for something.

With the puppy still a non-stop ball of excitement before him, Goose watched as his dad picked up magazines from the coffee table and rooted around the mantel.

‘You seen my keys anywhere, Goose?'

Goose shook his head as little as possible; somehow that made it less of a lie.

Paul stopped searching and looked at his watch. He cursed under his breath. Then he made a decision and called out: ‘Linda, you're gonna have to drive me, love.'

A small barbed ball of anger lodged in Goose's throat. He clenched his lips tightly shut so he wouldn't say anything he'd regret. He breathed through his nostrils and let the bitterness mushroom inside him.
This always happens
, he thought. His dad was always working. It wasn't fair. Sometimes he hated his dad. He spoiled everything. He was so selfish.

Goose glanced down at the puppy, who had stopped spinning and was now watching Goose, his head cocked
to one side as if he could tell something was wrong. It was almost as if he could read Goose's mind, and for a moment Goose felt ashamed of the thoughts he'd had. However, that didn't change the fact that his great plan had been foiled. He watched as his mum and dad left.

Paul and Linda climbed into Linda's green Ford Focus and drove away from the cul-de-sac where they lived. Linda was driving. She turned right at the end of the street. It was still early and the roads were mostly empty. They saw the occasional milk float or delivery truck. They drove in silence for a few minutes, but both were thinking the same thing.

‘I'll make it up to him,' said Paul.

‘He'll be fine. He's got Ronnie to distract him.'

‘Ronnie?' Paul frowned.
Who's Ronnie?

‘Ronnie Barker. Thought it was a good name for the dog. What d'you think?' Linda smiled at her husband.

He grinned. Twelve years of marriage and they still made each other laugh.

‘Little out of date for Goose, isn't it? He won't have the first clue who Ronnie Barker is.'

Linda indicated to turn left.

‘You should take Langford Street,' said Paul. ‘It's quicker.'

‘It's not going to matter much at this time, is it?' It
irritated Linda when Paul tried to tell her what to do when she was driving. They'd never had an argument about it. Linda mostly just swallowed her irritation and carried on doing what she was planning to do in the first place. Women had been doing that for centuries. It's how most marriages survived. Paul's unconscious habit of pressing his right foot down when it was time to brake was also annoying, but, seeing as he wasn't even aware he was doing it, Linda had never said anything.

‘I suppose not,' said Paul. He switched on the radio. ‘Wonderful Christmastime' by Tom McRae was playing. ‘Oh, I haven't heard this for ages.' Paul hummed along with the song, half a second slow as always. Linda smiled.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something red. It was moving fast. Too fast for her to even turn her head. Too fast for her to form any words to say to her husband. About the same time, Paul saw it too. It was an LDV Convoy van. Red. The driver was a middle-aged man called Eric Cutty. A late night and an early start had got the better of him and he had drifted off to sleep just for a moment, his foot on the accelerator. The van shot out of the T-junction at speed. Eric jolted awake. He saw a tree ahead. He didn't have any time to react, but his mind calculated in a fraction of a second that he wouldn't hit the tree …

… because of the small green Ford Focus approaching from his left.

The van ploughed into the side of Linda's car. In the split second before impact, Paul stamped both feet down into the well of the passenger's side with as much force as he could muster. His unconscious was trying to brake, trying desperately to stop the car.

Linda did the same thing on the driver's side. The difference being that she was able to press down on the brake for real. It made no difference. The car was lifted up off the tarmac by the snub nose of the van. A kind of clarity settled in Linda's mind. She knew she was about to die and she wanted very much to kiss her little boy one more time.

‘Goose …' she said, and then everything went black.

Mick, the landlord of the Three Witches pub, had a great sense of humour. Or at least that's what he thought. He prided himself on his entertaining quiz nights. If they weren't rolling in the aisles, he wasn't satisfied. The problem was that Mick just wasn't funny. It wasn't the material, it was the delivery. Mick would steal jokes from the best. There's an old gag by the comedian Tommy Cooper that goes, ‘Apparently, one in five people in the world is Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad or my older brother Colin or my younger brother Ho-Chau-Chou. I think it's Colin!' The problem was that Mick would always forget to name the brothers, and then when no laughs were
forthcoming for several long, excruciating seconds, he would remember his mistake and then try to explain that one brother was Chinese. Then he would remember it's saying the names that's the funny bit, but by then the joke was dead and Tommy Cooper was cringing in his grave.

Frank Lester emptied his glass and looked up at the large clock behind the bar. He struggled to focus and his tongue felt like it was coated with very small mushrooms. He definitely shouldn't have had that last whisky. Or probably the two before it. Or the first three for that matter. But, hey, it wasn't Christmas Eve every night. Technically it hadn't been Christmas Eve for the first four and a half hours Frank had been in the Witches, but now it was ten past midnight, so now it was Christmas Eve. Frank tried to say ‘Merry Christmas', but it came out as ‘Mirtle Kism' followed by a wet burp and he trailed off halfway through.

He slid off his stool and took a moment to steady himself while still holding on to the bar. Frank was a tall, willowy, pale man. His strawberry-blond hair was shaggy and needed both a trim and a wash. He wore a long, scruffy leather coat that had looked shabby when he bought it. Now it looked like a miracle of stitching that it was still together. But Frank loved that coat and wore it all year round.

Frank looked to the door. There was an alarming expanse of open space where there was nothing to hold
on to. Frank really didn't want to take a tumble in front of everyone. Not that there were that many of the regulars left. Just Mick the barman, old Dr Clarence, sitting in his usual spot at the end of the bar, a face like he was chewing a particularly sour wasp, his nose in a book as always, and a handful of others Frank knew well enough to nod at in the street.

‘You off then, Frank?' asked Mick, coming up to swipe Frank's empty glass. He didn't give Frank a chance to answer. He said: ‘Got a Christmas joke for you, to send you on your way.' Mick was laughing before he had even started.

‘There's these two cats, right? One of them's called One-Two-Three and the other one's called Un-Deux-Trois. You know, like, numbers in French.'

Frank managed the smallest of nods to show that he understood and was keeping up with the gag.

‘So, anyway, they have this race, right,' Mick continued. ‘Which one do you think wins?' He was straining to hold back a snigger. All Frank could manage was to shrug and shake his head. Mick hit him with the punchline: ‘One-Two-Three, because Un-Deux-Trois cat sank.' And, with that, a rambunctious belly laugh bubbled up out of the depths of Mick's throat. His whole body juddered with the unbridling of his mirth. Frank frowned, playing the joke over in his head. He didn't get it. ‘Un-Deux-Trois cat – Oh,
wait a minute!' said Mick, remembering a fairly integral part of the joke he had forgotten. ‘The race, it's across a river. The cats are swimming across a river. So Un-Deux-Trois cat sank into the river. It's brilliant, innit? French cat sank. Probably drowned.'

Mick chortled and guffawed some more, oblivious to the fact that Frank hadn't so much as cracked a smile. After several moments, the power of articulate speech started to return to Frank. He nodded. ‘Have a good one, Mick.'

‘And you. I'll see you tomorrow,' said Mick. Frank took a deep breath and turned towards the door.

The freezing cold night air had a decent enough sobering effect and pretty soon Frank felt confident enough to start walking home. He buttoned up his coat, though it made absolutely no difference, and headed off down the street, weaving a little here and there.

At the end of the street Frank took a corner a little too wide, lost his footing and slipped over into the gutter. He gathered himself up and carried on, thinking about maybe singing. He could feel an almost overwhelming urge to start singing, which was strange because he was neither a man who liked to sing, even when alone in the shower, nor one who thought he could sing. Most people say they can't sing, but deep down inside they think they have an amazing voice. Frank opened his mouth and was about to
launch into a rendition of the Oasis song ‘Wonderwall' at the top of his voice when he realized he didn't know any of the words.

Frank stopped at a lamp post. He had to pee badly and this was as good a place as any. As he started, a sense of relief coursed through him.