Glass Houses by Melanie Murphy

Author:Melanie Murphy [Murphy, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature, Family Life, FA, Contemporary Women, FIC000000; FIC044000; FIC071000; FIC045020; FIC077000
ISBN: 9781473691803
Google: AzWcDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2022-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

ROSIE

It’s 9 p.m. the following evening. I’m on my third vodka and Coke. Jenna’s been vegging on the couch all evening in what I’m assuming is her costume for the group Christmas party: a red clown nose and some heavy eyeliner. Eventually I ask who she’s supposed to be. ‘Rudolph,’ she says, hair a state, outfit all wrinkled. At least she’s finally talking again!

‘Is this’ – I start, concerned that I’ve gone a bit over the top with my outfit – ‘a bit much? I showed Mam a picture of the model wearing it and, you know her, wasn’t a fan, because God forbid anyone sees my knees, but …’ I haven’t even added the gloves yet. I ordered the Mean Girls Jingle Bell Rock Santa costume from Amazon a couple of days ago and now, thanks to Jeff Bezos, I’m a cloud of white fluff and red leather on fake-tanned flesh.

Jenna takes five seconds too long to drag her eyes away from her phone screen. I tug the skirt down as low as it’ll go (it barely skims my arse cheeks) and anticipate a raised eyebrow, a snort, a giggle, a gasp, something – but she just seems … sad. There’s more dullness in her eyes than before, and because her face is a bigger-featured mirror of the flat expression I see daily in my selfie camera, it’s difficult to observe – almost like seeing myself in a parallel world, slowly fading to black.

‘You look amazing,’ she says. Not a hint of sarcasm. I feel my chin tuck itself into my neck. It doesn’t know what else to do because Jenna has never said something so nice to me as an adult.

I shift my booted-up feet. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

Then I wait for her to notice the thin crystal bracelet around my wrist. Mam spotted it immediately when I went over earlier to heat up leftover stew – took it to mean that we’ve ‘sorted all our differences’, that our relationship has magically healed in a matter of weeks, that soon we’ll be playing happy families again. I didn’t have it in me to correct her, to tell her that we still hardly say two words to one another, that Jenna probably threw her bracelet away, or lost it, or, more likely, forgot it even existed. Like Mam probably will and all.

Jenna doesn’t notice. She looks back down at her phone. I pull on the gloves in silence and tell her it’s time to head down to Peter’s bus.

There are two camps when it comes to Christmas: people who grew up in happy homes – the types to gobble up the sentimentality – and those who grew up with people like our dad. I watched him wrap his fingers in bandages from punching through plaster walls more times than I unwrapped presents. I’m already counting down the days to January first.

That said, the sight before me now would convert the Grinchiest of sorts.

Nathan is dressed as Will Ferrell’s Elf and Peter as

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