chapter eleven

e l e v e n

*

There's nothing more disorientating than waking up on top of my bed, curtains open to reveal a dingy grey sky that could be morning or night, with no idea what time it is or why I'm awake. I reach for my phone but it's not on my bedside table and I'm lying on something hard. The photo album. Oh, god, I must have fallen asleep after I kicked Casper out of my room.

Casper. That's why I'm awake. He's standing in my doorway looking more lost than I've ever seen him. He's wearing pyjamas, a mug in one hand and my phone in the other, and he's looking at me like I'm a stranger in his house.

"Hey, you're up," he says, his face shifting into a slight smile when I blearily blink at him. "I'd ask if you're okay, but I'm pretty sure I know the answer and I'm worried, Beth."

"Are you going to bed?" I ask, completely confused. His frown deepens and he edges slightly further into the room.

"I just got up," he says slowly. "It's eight in the morning. Monday the sixteenth of December."

I slept all night and I don't remember going to bed. I remember telling Casper I'd be down later and I remember crying as I leafed through the book dedicated to Robin and Noelle, and now, somehow, it's the next day. When that sinks in, I sit up too fast and wince when headrush hits.

"I made you a coffee." He holds out the mug. "Can I come in?"

I nod woozily, vaguely aware that I'm a mess in rumpled pyjamas I put on before supper last night.

"I'm okay," I say unprompted. "Thank you for the coffee."

He hands it to me and turns around my desk chair so he can sit in it and face me. "Beth." He lets out a long sigh. "I know you don't want to talk, but you really worried me yesterday. I don't know what happened when I was looking at your books but you looked so ill all of a sudden. Then you said you'd come back down and you never did."

Leaning across the space between us, he gives me my phone. "You left this downstairs. Your mum rang a few times last night and I tried to bring it up to you but you didn't answer when I knocked."

"I think I was asleep." I rub my eyes and clean my glasses and my eyesight is suddenly ten times better.

"Yeah." He's fidgeting with his fingers, no mug of his own to occupy his hands. "Your mum rang a few more times and I ended up answering. She wanted to check in on you and I told her I was worried. I'm pretty sure she was about to come over, until I told her you had seemed very upset and now you were asleep. I figured sleep was probably good but god, Beth, I was so fucking scared last night."

I can see it in his eyes; I can hear it in his voice. He sounds so unsure, all because of me, and I feel awful. "I'm okay, I promise." I sip my coffee and shift the photo album to the bottom drawer and meet Casper's eye. He's shaking his head.

"I really can't believe that. I'm not saying you have to tell me what's going on, but I'd like to think I might be able to help you if I know what's up?"

He's so kind. He really cares. I can virtually feel his empathy rolling off him in waves that probe my brain, the deepest corners of my heart.

"I think..." My voice wavers. "I think it's a bit too early for this conversation."

His eyes are fixed on me. When I stand and almost lose my footing, he lunges forward to catch my elbows so I don't stumble. I almost feel hungover, the aftereffects of a day of thinking too much and crying too much, wandering too close to the darkest part of my mind.

"What time's your shift today?" I ask, trying to snap myself into some semblance of normality, but I'm completely thrown by waking up like this, thrust into a new day.

"I'm not working today." Casper lets go of one of my elbows, holding tight to the other.

"Wait, what? I thought you always worked Mondays."

"Usually." He nods. "But I was seriously worried. I thought something was really wrong with you. I had these visions of having to rush you to hospital or something, the way you were last night."

I feel my lips turn down into a sad frown. "I'm not ill." I blink and stifle a yawn. "I'm not sick, I swear. I'm just ... I'm not good at processing emotion and I kind of shut down, I guess, when I don't know how to handle things."

He draws his hands together and wrings his wrists, his lips pursed. "I don't want to sound self-centred, but is this about me? Because if it's stressing you out, having me here, I can find somewhere else, Be-"

"God, no! No, Cas, no. Not at all. You're a godsend," I say, my voice shaking. "You really don't need to worry about me. Yesterday was just..." I trail off and sigh. "Yesterday's always bad."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"The fifteenth, I mean. It's always a bad day for me, and I know I freaked you out and I'm really sorry, I truly am, but I really don't want to talk about it. Not yet. Please."

He relents. His shoulders slump and he sits back in his chair, hands loose in his lap. "All right. But you should call your mum back."

"Okay. And you should call Julio back. You don't need to miss work for me, Cas."

"Too late. Gloria already took my shift." He spreads out his arms. "Fine or not fine, you're stuck with me today."

*

I feel a lot more human once I've washed and dressed and had something to eaten, courtesy of Casper greeting me in the kitchen with fresh coffee and poached eggs. It takes a moment for me to register that the place is spotless, no sign of yesterday's spaghetti chaos: the plates and pans are washed up, the sink empty and the counter wiped down. There's no evidence of him accidentally throwing sauce all over the wall.

"Oh my god, you cleaned." Shame washes over me as I take a seat. He pours an orange juice for himself and holds the carton up for me, filling my glass when I nod.

"I did. I know you said you'd come down and do it, but then you didn't," he says, "and I figured that whatever you're going through, it might help if I got rid of the evidence that I'm a very messy cook."

"You didn't have to do that," I say, but my protest is weak. "Thank you, Cas."

"It's my pleasure." He smiles and cuts into one of his eggs. They're perfectly cooked, the yolk a bright orange that runs over the toast.

"I'm sorry for being so shit to you yesterday," I say, tearing my eyes from my breakfast to look at him. "It won't happen again, I promise."

Unless you're still living here next year, I think, but I keep that to myself. Casper dismisses me with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head.

"It's okay," he says, but he doesn't sound convince. We lapse into silence and as we eat, I can feel his eyes on me, darting away every time I look up. After it happens for the third time, I wait until he meets my gaze again.

"Stop looking at me like I'm about to drop dead," I say. "I'm fine, Cas. I'm not sick."

"Sorry." He mashes his egg into his toast and slices it into strips. "You can understand why I'm a bit concerned, though, right? I just feel a bit helpless."

Spreading my arms out at the spotless kitchen, I say, "This is anything but helpless. It's very helpful." I give him a smile, glad to be feeling better than yesterday. My emotions are so intrinsically attached to the fifteenth that every year, by the time the day's over and the sixteenth rolls around, I feel like I've wiped the slate clean and started again. Brand new day, brand new Beth.

"It's the least I could do, what with everything you've done for me," he says, accidentally slurping when he takes a sip of coffee. "So, what're you up to today?"

Today may be a new day but it isn't without its rituals. Today I can see with a clearer mind and I'm a lot less likely to burst into tears, so today is the day that I go back to St Mary's – to the church, this time, rather than the graveyard. Inside, there's an altar of sorts off to one side, covered in tealights and pillar candles. A table holds a donation tin and a box of fresh candles, and every year on the sixteenth, I drop a two-pound coin into the tin and I take two tealights, lighting them off the flames of other people's memories.

My plan was to go after dropping Casper off at work. But now he doesn't have work today, and I'm thrown. I won't miss this part of my routine. It's essential. But do I include Casper, or do I tell him to do his own thing?

"I have some errands to run," I say instead, copping out of a proper answer and throwing the ball into his court.

"Want some company?" he asks.

I can't say no. I can't bring myself to come up with a way to turn him away, to encourage him to do his own thing and let me carry out this one thing I need to do. So I feebly nod and say, "Okay."

I don't know how to explain what I need to do so when we get in the car and Casper asks where we're heading first, I falter for a moment before I say, "The church."

"St Mary's?" he asks. I nod. "Oh, god, I thought you weren't religious. Shit. Sorry, Beth. I'm ninety-nine percent sure I've said some very insensitive stuff over the last few years if you're a Christian."

"I'm not, don't worry," I say, giving him a smile and patting his knee as I turn down the road towards the church. It isn't far from my house. Close enough that I could walk, if I didn't mind freezing my arse off for thirty minutes and risking slipping a hundred times on the iced-over pavements. The gritters and snow ploughs are on top of the roads around here, but it's no fun being a pedestrian in winter.

In weather like this, when it's sub-zero outside and the snowflakes have started to fall again, driving is treacherous but I have winter tyres and I take it slow, crawling all the way at twenty. It takes five minutes to reach the church, and Casper follows me without a word when I get out and nod at the church.

It's an impressive building, the oldest in Saint Wendelin, according to the plaque above the door that claims it was built in 1181. It's been restored since then, the crumbling bricks patched up and some of the tiles replaced, but the stunning painted ceiling remains untouched from the twelfth century and it takes my breath away every time I step through the heavy doors and look up.

"Wow," Casper says, following my lead. "I've never been in here before."

"Really?"

"What reason would I have to have ever stepped foot inside an Anglican church?" He chuckles to himself, thumbs into the pockets of his coat, and says, "Sunday mass isn't really my thing, and I doubt it'll come as a surprise that I steer clear of their Christmas services."

"Fair enough."

"So, what're we here for?"

My feet carry me straight over to the candles. Several are flickering brightly in various states of disrepair, wax melting and dripping down the sides, pooling at the base. Some of the big candles are old; they've been lit hundreds of times, never for long enough to have completely wasted away. I have my money ready, a heavy coin in my palm that I drop into the tin with a rattle before I take a couple of tealights and light them from the tallest candle.

"This is all very mysterious," Casper says, gazing around the church. We're not alone in here, but no-one else is close enough to overhear us. "Is this some kind of initiation?"

I try to shush him gently, though there's no way to shush someone without sounding like a dickhead. He zips his lips though, giving me enough peace and quiet to think Robin when I light the first candle, to think Noelle when the second one gains its flame. I find a space where they can sit next to each other on the altar, far enough away from any of the larger candles that they won't be extinguished by falling wax.

I can feel how much Casper wants to talk, to make some inane comment to fill the silence, but to his credit, he keeps it to himself. I want to let him in, I'm trying, but I can't quite bring myself to say the words. It'll be easier if he understands before I have to say anything. I could just load up one of the articles written about me five years ago, when the Saint Wendelin Weekly wrote a short article where they got my name wrong. According to the paper, a teenager called Elizabeth King was involved in a single-car accident that caused her to miscarry twins. I raged when I found it, infuriated by their inability to report the right name, and their insensitivity. I didn't miscarry my twins. They were born, and then they died. They lived, even if it was for less time than I spent unconscious.

But I'm not going to stand here and watch his face as he reads a crap old article.

"Come with me," I say. "I need to show you something."

"Ooh. Mysterious," he says with a grin. He's reading the room all wrong.

"No, not really. I just want you to understand yesterday a bit more."

He goes quiet. I can almost hear his brain churning as he adds two and two together. The way I acted yesterday; the fact that I'm leading him out to the frozen graveyard. He doesn't say a word as we step carefully on the snow, my feet finding their way on instinct. I've been here so much, I could find my way in the dark, blindfolded, backwards.

It's snowed more since I was here yesterday, since Callum came here after me. Casper hovers back when I crouch to brush snow from the granite grave. When I stand, unblocking his view, he gasps. We're standing so close that I feel him tense up beside me.

"My daughters," I say. He's staring at the engraving; I know he's seen the date. "I'm not sick, like I promised. Yesterday is always a difficult day, and I'm not used to having the company of someone who doesn't know what happened. So, I freaked out a bit."

I look over at him. I didn't think it was possible, but he looks pale. His eyes are wide and glistening, as though he's on the edge of tears, and his mouth is gaping like a fish when he turns to me and struggles to find the words to say. But his tongue is frozen. There was probably a more tactful way of doing this, I think, but it's too late for that.

Once I start speaking, my words flow. Casper still hasn't said a word since he saw the names of my girls, the single date on their headstone, and he doesn't have space to get a word in edgeways when I dissolve into a rambling account of what happened, from my break-up with Callum to spinning on the ice, from waking up to the worst news imaginable, to the years since.

"So. Yeah. There it is," I say eventually. "That's why I was the way I was yesterday. That's the guy you saw me with in Java Tea, and that's why I was upset." I suddenly feel so exposed, like I've just bared my soul to him. "I told you because you're my friend, and my friends know, and we're living together. It would have come out eventually."

"The ... the hands and feet, on your shelf," he says at long last. His voice is thick and scratchy.

"Yeah."

"Oh, god, Beth. I had no idea." He shakes his head and I realise he's crying. "I'm so sorry, Beth. Fuck."

"You don't need to say anything. I just wanted you to know. Now you can stop worrying that I'm ill, right?"

He's still shaking his head. I feel bad for dumping this on him. I know how hard it is to have emotional conversations, and now I've gone and thrown this at him and asked him to deal with it, but now he knows and I feel lighter for it. He knows the most awful thing about me, the one thing that can reduce me to a sobbing mess on the floor, a screaming wreck in the bath.

The last thing I expect is for him to hug me, but when he turns to me and puts his arms around me, I sink into his embrace and I'm hit with a wave of relief. I feel lighter, like I've unburdened myself. I wrap my arms around him and find my face buried in the warmth of his scarf. It's one of mine, but it already smells like him and his aftershave. The smell is oddly comforting, and so is his hug. His arms are strong, wrapped tightly around me, and his breath is warm on top of my head.

I don't know what he's going to say. His default is to joke, but I've probably told him the one thing that he won't want to joke about. And yet I realise I'm hoping he'll say something silly, an urge that grows the longer he says nothing. Please lighten the situation, I think, still clutching him.

"Robin and Noelle," he murmurs when he eventually lets go of me. We've never hugged before. I've never really hugged anyone I'm not related to or dating.

"Robin and Noelle," I echo, quietly proud of myself when I don't let my voice crack on their names.

"Christmas names, huh?" He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and lets out a shaky laugh. "You ain't slick, Beth. I know what Noelle means, and I'm not so averse to Christmas cards that I don't know that robins feature on half of them."

Oh, thank fuck, I think to myself. He's not going to stand here pitying me, making both of us feel awkward. Maybe it'll come up later, but not now, as we stand here in an empty graveyard as the snow starts to get heavier.

"Very on brand," he says. "What if they'd been boys, though? I guess they could've been Robin and Noel."

"Rudolph and Claus, of course."

A laugh bursts out of him, a laugh that I am so grateful for. I upset our equilibrium for a moment, but now we're slipping back into our dynamic. My eyes are wet, but I'm not sobbing today; I'm not pushing him out of my room two minutes after inviting him up there.

As we head back to the car, Casper drifts closer to me and says, "Thanks for telling me, Beth. I'm sorry you felt you had to – I didn't mean to pressurise you, I was just worried."

"You didn't pressurise me, it's okay."

"I can't imagine what you've gone through. You are strong as hell, Bethlehem. Maybe your parents should have called you Donkey."

"Are you calling me an ass?"

"No! I'm calling you strong, carrying all of that on your shoulders. It was meant to be a joke." He flounders as we get into the car with a shiver, and then looks over at me and the wry smile on my face. "Oh. You know that."

"I know that," I confirm.

"I know you," he adds. "Maybe not as well as I thought, but a lot better than last week."

I put the car into gear and he puts his hand over mine, warm through his glove. He squeezes it, so gently. He has a soft side, a softer soft side than I expected, and I know that no matter what he says, I can show him the Christmas light.

*

casper's a good egg. i'm so glad you're all enjoying this story so much. it really means the world to me, i can't tell you how much i love to read your comments! below are my top 10 christmas films - do we share any favourites?

1: HOME ALONE 2

2: HOME ALONE

3: ELF

4: ARTHUR CHRISTMAS

5: NATIVITY

6: LOVE ACTUALLY

7: THE POLAR EXPRESS

8: HOME ALONE 3

9: THE SANTA CLAUSE

10: THE HOLIDAY