Joseph’s ugly apartment, decorated for Christmas Eve, was a far cry from the rich fabrics and natural colours of the Ritz, Sacha couldn’t help thinking.
His friend had gone to more effort than usual. The apartment that was usually off-white and grey was silver, gold and red. Joseph’s eclectic taste was evident on the Christmas tree, with its mix of patterned decorations from Africa in bright colours, his favourite vintage pieces and the traditional wooden ornaments he’d picked out years ago with his partner. He’d even tied the few remaining horseshoes onto the sturdier boughs.
But Sacha had given up expecting Ren to be anything other than thrilled with all of it. She’d even been excited, if a little taken aback, when he’d explained that they didn’t eat the Christmas meal until after midnight mass. She’d grown keener on the idea after he’d promised her snacks.
His own enjoyment of Christmas Eve had a bittersweet edge; he was conscious of the memories he was making, feeling keenly the poignancy of their last night. He hadn’t wanted to ask what would happen after they’d made it through lunch with her family on Christmas Day, but he could tell by the way she spoke that tomorrow was the end. She had to return to her responsibilities, her real life. And he had to go back to how his life had been without her. That prospect grew more difficult to imagine with every moment she spent in his world.
Nadia and Ren were making chocolate reindeer with pretzel horns to fill the time. Even Raph had been drawn in, if only to laugh at the mixed results. Ren concentrated meticulously, dipping her cake into the chocolate and carefully adding the eyes, nose and antlers – until the whole thing drooped and dripped and looked like something from a horror film. At which point, she held up her phone and snapped a selfie imitating her work, before collapsing into giggles.
‘Ren with renne,’ she joked.
Joseph was busy in the kitchen as usual, wearing his floral apron and threatening people with his silicon oven gloves if they helped too much. Sacha had placed a chair in the corner for him to rest and goaded him into it regularly. The sponge cake for the yule log was in the oven. Joseph had announced mysteriously that dinner would arrive soon and had something to do with the enormous watermelon by the door.
After the reindeer were sloppily finished, Nadia produced paper crowns, laughing as Sacha and Raph both grumbled about them. Ren insisted they take a photo together with their matching frowns, which of course led to a grinning photo that started up the warm ache inside him again.
‘I finally see the queen in her crown,’ he murmured, pressing a kiss just below Ren’s ear. He was painfully aware of his family gaping, but it wasn’t enough for him to keep his hands to himself. She had her hair down in tangled curls the colour of autumn leaves. Every nuanced smile, every warm look made him want her more.
‘Enough of that! Game time!’ Joseph announced, producing four paper plates before disappearing back into the kitchen. They sat around the table, holding the plates on their heads while they attempted to draw a Christmas scene. The results produced peals of laughter, with unrecognisable zigzags and wonky flames consuming the Christmas tree instead of staying in the fireplace.
‘I only hope it’s not telling the future,’ Nadia said with a laugh.
‘Joseph doesn’t have a fireplace,’ Sacha commented drily, slipping his arm along the back of Ren’s chair.
‘It could be a figurative prediction,’ Ren pointed out. ‘But it’s more likely a prediction for tomorrow, not tonight.’
‘Are they going to flambé Christmas dinner at the Ritz?’
‘Don’t even mention it. With my luck, that would be a disaster!’
Sacha settled his fingertips on her back. ‘With all the horseshoes in this room, your luck shouldn’t be in question. And I believe you started this discussion about who was going to burn Christmas.’
Ren turned to Nadia. ‘Has he always been this grumpy?’
‘This grumpy? He is usually much grumpier! Zut, I must show you the family photos! Joseph keeps most of our lives in his spare room – what we managed to save when Papa died.’
Sacha sighed and lifted his hand again so Ren could follow Nadia to the sofa. He allowed Raph to draw him into a few rounds of Mario Kart so he could at least pretend he wasn’t listening and blushing as Ren exclaimed over the old photo album Nadia brought out.
‘It’s not really fair, though,’ Ren muttered at one point. ‘The photos of me as a child are all chubby and freckly and full of braces, but Sacha was this adorable his entire life. Oh, here’s the crooked tooth. If he’d grown up in my position, that snaggle-tooth wouldn’t exist and these photos would be full of metal smiles!’
‘It’s the grace of God that I have bad teeth,’ he muttered.
‘They’re not bad, they’re…’
‘Adorable?’ he suggested with a laugh, utterly unable to affect his usual frown. ‘You’re adorable yourself,’ he teased, slipping his thumb along her jaw. His go-kart crashed on the TV screen behind him.
‘I hear a lot of joy in this room,’ came Joseph’s loud voice from the doorway, a potato in his hand.
‘Joseph, what are you doing? I said I’d do the potatoes,’ Nadia scolded him. She poured him a glass of wine and beckoned for him to sit at the table.
‘I can do the potatoes,’ Ren insisted, to a chorus of silence and sceptical looks. If she peeled potatoes as well as she cracked eggs, then they’d need an ambulance on hand.
‘Who knew that the job of peeling potatoes was so in demand,’ Joseph muttered, but allowed Sacha to lead him to the table for a rest.
‘Come, we can both do it,’ Nadia said, waving the bottle of wine at Ren and smiling. Sacha drifted into the kitchen after he’d lost his next race against Raph.
‘Allez ouste,’ Nadia said, waving him away. ‘She doesn’t want an audience.’
‘Shit!’ Ren cried. He turned to catch the blur of a semi-naked potato flying towards him. Recovering from the shock of the potato impact, he noticed her finger was bleeding and grabbed a tea-towel to apply pressure.
He cradled her arm in his. ‘You push away from yourself with the économe!’
‘Sorry,’ she said with a grimace. ‘But at least I didn’t injure you this time.’
‘The potato was very hard. Let’s see how my eye looks tomorrow.’
‘What?’ She brushed her hand over his cheek and inspected his face.
‘I’m joking. I won’t appear at your Christmas dinner with a black eye, on top of everything else.’
‘If I ruin your Christmas dinner, you have every right to ruin mine.’
‘That’s fair,’ he quipped. Except she wasn’t ruining his Christmas. This was the best time he’d had in years, and when he pressed another soft kiss to her lips, it was even better. He’d never grow tired of the way she expectantly lifted her face to his.
The doorbell rang twenty minutes later, when the potatoes had been tucked onto their tray, ready for roasting. ‘Ah! That is Djamel,’ called Joseph.
The family crammed into the hallway to greet the neighbour with kisses. ‘Joyeux Noël, Joseph,’ he said with a smile and handed over a plastic bag. ‘Your order. I saved the best ones for you.’
‘Merci beaucoup. C’est très gentil! This is for you and have a lovely evening. Say hello to Zahra for me.’ Joseph handed him a pain d’épices wrapped elegantly in paper with a gold sticker. Tied to it with red ribbon was a horseshoe. ‘Get the watermelon, Sacha.’
Sacha hefted the enormous melon and shared a smile with Djamel as the neighbour took it. When Djamel had left, Sacha turned to Joseph and gestured to the bag. ‘If that’s what I think it is, Ren should open it.’
Nadia slapped him on the arm. ‘C’est méchant, mon frère! How mean.’
‘Did I hear my name? Or were you talking about queens or reindeer?’ Ren asked from the doorway.
Sacha took the heavy plastic bag from his friend and handed it to Ren. ‘This is the dinner. Go and open it in the kitchen.’
She peered at the bag with a frown, but did as he said. Sacha grinned unrepentantly, sharing the joke with Raph while Nadia and Joseph scowled at him. ‘Trois, deux, un…’
‘Eeek!’ Ren cried, accompanied by a rustle of plastic and a crunch as she dropped the dinner.
Nadia rushed to avert disaster – and stop the dinner from feebly crawling away.
‘I touched it! Urgh. The leg moved!’
Sacha wrapped an arm around her, but she shoved him away. ‘You did that on purpose. Don’t expect a hug in return.’ She shuddered.
‘Don’t you like lobster?’ he asked with a twitch of a smile.
‘I love lobster,’ she said with a stamp of her foot.
‘Alors, I thank you for… bravely subjugating our dinner.’
‘Oh, shut up. And wipe that smile off your face.’ She crossed her arms and regarded him critically, but her lips were wobbling with a smile already. He judged his moment and slipped his arms around her, pulling her against him until she landed with a little ‘Oof,’ her arms still crossed. ‘You’ll have to try harder than that.’
He dipped his head. ‘This?’ he said, giving her a light, aching kiss.
‘A good start,’ she murmured. He kissed her again, not surprised when she wrapped her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss.
‘I’m still here, vous savez,’ Nadia called out from the kitchen bench. ‘I don’t want to see my brother playing roll-the-galosh.’
Ren drew away with a blush. ‘Roll a what?’
‘A shoe, but you call it French kissing,’ Nadia said.
‘You don’t?’ Ren asked.
‘Mon Dieu, non!’
The dinner prepared and awaiting the final cooking after church, Raph dragged Ren to the sofa to teach her to play Zelda and Sacha wandered into the spare room for his regular dose of nostalgia. He’d stayed in this room many times, often during the lowest points of his life, and now Joseph stored the bits of the past Sacha couldn’t bear to keep with him – or that simply wouldn’t fit in his tiny, humid cellar.
He reached behind a stack of old schoolbooks for the framed sepia photo that should be on display somewhere, but wasn’t. Even the twinkle in Papa’s eye, behind his aviator-style spectacles, looked different today.
Nadia peered around the doorway, but her words died on her lips when she saw what he was holding. ‘I haven’t looked at that photo in years.’ He gave an inarticulate response and went to stow the photo behind the books again. ‘Sometimes,’ Nadia continued thoughtfully, stopping him in his tracks, ‘I was jealous of the way you got all his spirit. He never left me any notebooks.’
‘How did you know about the notebook?’
‘You can’t keep secrets from me. Alors, does his notebook say anything about first love?’
‘Do you still think that’s what’s going on?’ he huffed. ‘And why first love? I’ve had…’ He fell silent.
Nadia gave him a withering look. ‘Just don’t mess it up.’
‘I won’t have to,’ he muttered. ‘It came pre-messed up.’
‘I was afraid of this,’ she said with a sigh. ‘You don’t have to care about her family or who she is.’
‘They want me to care. I’d never make her choose between her grandmother and me.’
‘Because you’re scared she’d pick her grandmother. But what if she doesn’t?’
‘She should pick her grandmother,’ he grumbled, stuffing down deeper the suspicions that were plaguing him increasingly. Six days… He understood only too well Ren’s loyalty to her only living family member, but what if he was right? What if all her family had to offer was money and grief? But then again, what more did he have to offer? The grief without the money.
‘And since when do you do what people want you to do?’
‘It’s family. You don’t understand how much trouble we’re in because of… this. It can’t continue.’
‘You’re right, I don’t understand the trouble. All I see is my brother looking so happy he reminds me how much Papa used to love Maman. We all adore her – and you obviously do, too.’
‘Loving Maman wasn’t the only thing Papa felt,’ he muttered.
‘Perhaps not,’ Nadia agreed, ‘but it was one of the best things.’
One of the best things that was ripped away from him – like everything else. Life had not been fair to Karim. ‘Ren deserves someone who can give her the whole world and I barely have a free evening. There’s a difference between loving someone and belonging with someone. You should know that.’
‘Merde, don’t bring me into this! You are not young and stupid, like I was. And she’s not helpless, needing “the world” from someone. I think she just wants you. You don’t love easily. This is… big, Sacha.’
‘What? I love you and Raph… so much. How can you say that?’ But Nadia’s words rang in his ears. She just wants you… It sounded a lot like, ‘Give me your shadows.’ God, he hadn’t realised hope could hurt like this.
His sister clutched his shoulders. ‘I know you love us more than anything. You love so deeply. I saw Maman fade away, too, you know. I lost Papa suddenly, as well. It was awful for me, too, and I understand that you never wanted to lose anyone else you loved that much. But I still say it’s worth the risk. I made us both do it by accident when I got pregnant with Raph. And you know how terrifying that was, to love him so much. You can choose this time, but this is it, Sacha – love. Papa left you his poetry to open your heart, not to burden it. Go back and read his notebook again, with that in mind. That’s what he would tell you to do.’
He stared at Nadia, his mind desperately searching for answers, because he was too scared to search his heart. Ren’s words had also planted themselves in his mind. Papa was gone. It was Sacha who had to decide how to respect his legacy. ‘You do have Papa’s spirit,’ he murmured.
She shrugged. ‘How could I not?’
‘You can read the notebook any time.’
She waved a hand dismissively. ‘One day I will. But the important thing now is for you to forget this bullshit about trouble and tell her you love her. What better time than Christmas Eve?’
‘It might not make any difference.’ Christmas Eve, after all, was followed by Christmas Day, the prospect of which sat heavily in his stomach. ‘And you know how soft-hearted she is. I don’t want her to feel indebted to me. I don’t want to hold her back.’
‘You mean you’re scared she’ll tell you she loves you, too,’ Nadia said flippantly. Before Sacha had time to react beyond a dumbfounded gape, Joseph’s voice sounded in the hallway.
‘Sacha? Nadi? Time to go. Messe de minuit doesn’t wait for you!’ He poked his head around the door and saw what they were looking at. He approached with a smile. ‘Joyeux Noël, Karim,’ he said conversationally. ‘Don’t worry. I’m taking them to mass. Oh, and Sacha is in love. Perhaps he’ll tell you about it, since he won’t admit it to anyone else.’
‘Not you, too,’ Sacha muttered, but he draped an arm around Joseph when his friend cuffed him on the back of the head as though he were still sixteen.
‘Let’s go.’
As his family fetched their shoes and coats, Sacha hung back. ‘Just give me five minutes. I’ll be down soon.’ To Ren, he added a kiss and a translation into English. Then he snatched the unassuming gift, wrapped in brown paper with her name on it, from under the tree. Opening it carefully, he turned to the right page and took up a pencil.
Perhaps she wouldn’t see the note tonight. He could only hope so.
