December exclusive - "Christmas Time" - Part 2 🎁🪆

15th December

Mum drinks coffee, because that’s what grown-ups do.

Katie eats a bowl of Frosties. She’s 15 years old but she doesn’t have to worry about her diet, she doesn’t dwell of getting spots or gaining weight. Because she is an agent of the Parkdale Parenting Association, and she is bullet-proof.

She asks her mother (because she’s a special kind of 15 years old) what her day has in store.

“Santa supervision,” her mother replies. “This one’s been a little terse, I want to be sure that he’s giving the children a good experience.” She laughs. “I know it’s a lot of kids, but nobody wants scary Santa.”

Katie sees her mother at work sometimes, at the shopping centre. Going from shop to shop, talking with the managers. Schmoozing, she calls it. Katie supposes that there must be a director of operations at every shopping centre in England, but there’s only one who is also employed by the PPA.

To keep an eye out for certain things. Infractions. Runaways.

We’ve done good here, Katie almost says out loud. Haven’t we? I mean, mostly?

Instead, she asks a question she already knows the answer to.

“What are the kids asking for this year?”

Her mother sighs. “Oh, it’s Switch this, PlayStation that.” She smiles, takes Katie’s hand. “I remember you at that age. “You obsessed over something as simple as Silly Putty. Or the year you wanted the doll that ate the peas and the cherries.”

“’Baby All Gone’.”

“Right. Just a doll. Simpler times.”

Katie nods, scooping the sweetened milk from her bowl. She does the math; 25 years since she asked Father Christmas for the magic, pea-eating, cherry-gobbling doll. If she thinks about it too hard, she will feel dizzy, she will feel sad. Instead, she wonders what Luke dreamed about for Christmas, a quarter-century ago.

Buzzy Lightyear, maybe. Furby? A Tickle Me Elmo?

They have similar timeframes, and Parkdale has given them even more in common. Still, Katie can’t imagine what it might be like to go out with him. In real life. Away from here. Because what is Luke like, away from Parkdale? What is Katie like? She has no idea.

“You’ve got a funny look,” says Katie’s mother.

Katie pulls a silly face, earning a laugh, and then says, “Second last job.”

“Getting sentimental?”

Because we’ve done good here. Haven’t we? I mean, mostly?

“Not exactly.”

Feeling sappy, for the tricks and damaged lives? Mostly good, what she’s done here in Parkdale. That’s what Katie has told herself for all these years. But only mostly. A passing grade. No, she’s sentimental for what they left, when she was the real fifteen, when she didn’t know how the world worked. She’s sentimental for when her horse was the most important, only important thing in her life.

And how about when her family was intact, when her only worries were like that of the children of Parkdale – sitting on Santa’s lap, whispering the most innocent of secrets?

She misses being spoiled. Entitled, they call it these days. Absolutely, she misses that.

“Babysitting after school?” her mother asks.

“Yeah.” Babysitting. When Katie thinks about it, her job really is mostly babysitting. With a little science thrown in. With a dash of impossible.

Today, she’ll babysit Paul. Look after him until his mother arrives to collect him.

How many times has Katie babysat? In the hundreds, if not cracking four figures. The PPA will know the exact amount, down to the last nappy.

Stopping looking back. Time to let go of childish things. Hell, maybe she’ll start drinking coffee in the morning.

She takes her cereal bowl to the sink.

“Won’t be late,” she says. She swings her schoolbag over her shoulder and goes to the hall, checks her reflection in the mirror.

“Don’t look in the cupboard under the stairs,” Mum calls from the kitchen.

“I’m not,” Katie calls back.

“Don’t. I’ve got presents I haven’t wrapped yet.”

Katie gives her hair a final brush. “I told you I didn’t need anything.”

“And you don’t get to spoil my fun. It’s just a few little things.”

Katie glances at the cupboard door and imagines it bursting open with treasures.

Something she actually needs? Matching luggage? A guide to the rest of the world?

No, probably like last year. The wrong mobile phone, a jumper she’ll have to take back. Sometimes Mum forgets how long Katie has been 15 years old, sometimes she forgets that it’s not 2006.

From the kitchen, Mum calls after her, asking what exactly Katie does wants for Christmas, because that’s what mother’s do.

Katie laughs. “You know what I want,” she calls back.

Because it’s been fourteen years, three hundred and sixty days since they arrived in Parkdale. And it’s time to leave.

To be continued...