Blue Moon by Weaver Pam

Author:Weaver, Pam
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2015-07-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

The suitcase was leaning against the kitchen dresser. When Ruby opened it, her father’s coat had gone and so had the dresses. In its place she found a lovely silk nightdress and some jumpers. One was hand-knitted in a pretty blue wool with a silver thread, but there was an ugly mistake in the pattern running down the front. Ruby decided to swap it with the boring black shoes she had worn at Warnes. She wouldn’t be needing them now and, if she unpicked the blue jumper, she could make something else.

The Christmas celebrations began on Christmas Eve. Just before May went to bed they heard carol singers in the road. Bea opened the front door and they listened. ‘Peace on earth and mercy mild …’

‘Oh, I hope so,’ Bea whispered.

To the family’s delight, the singers sang ‘Away in a Manger’ and ‘As with Gladness, Men of Old’, before moving on. May went up to bed. Percy went to the pub. Ruby put the finishing touches to the room. Having come home a bit earlier, with the excuse that she’d been given the time off as a Christmas gesture, she and May had spent the afternoon making the room look quite festive. They’d already hung crêpe-paper chains and now they added a bit of holly to the mantelpiece, taken from the tree three doors down, and some ivy picked from the archway beside the railway line leading into Ivy Arch Road. They’d put Epsom salts onto some fir cones they’d found on the road nearby. Ruby knew that if they spread them thickly enough, when they dried it would look like snow.

She put a plate of cobnuts, collected in September and left to ripen, next to her mother’s armchair, and the home-made sweets she’d made the previous week in the centre of the table. Standing back to admire her handiwork, Ruby smiled. It was perfect.

The day itself began with May thundering downstairs to see if Father Christmas had been. Ruby turned one sleepy eye towards the clock. Five-thirty. She groaned and turned over, pulling the bed-sheets back over her head. The room was freezing. She dozed, but she wasn’t allowed to stay there for long. She was called downstairs by her mother at six-fifteen, with the promise of a cup of tea if she came down to watch her sister open her presents.

They sat huddled in the kitchen, Percy included, yawning and trying to look enthusiastic while May unwrapped everything. Whenever possible, Bea carefully folded the paper that could be used again, although some pieces had obviously done several Christmases already and were rather the worse for wear. She put what she could into a drawer, ready to iron some day, and then it would go upstairs to be stored until next year.

Ruby and Bea loved their presents from Percy, given to them both still in the Woolworths bag. The jumper that Ruby had knitted her mother was fine, although it was slightly bigger than she’d thought. Her mother had given her the brooch Grandma used to wear.

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