Graham Joyce by Dark Sister

Author:Dark Sister [Sister, Dark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-13T05:00:00+00:00

 TWENTY-FIVE

Christmas Day was bleak. Maggie woke with a hangover and a palate like a carpet soaked in sticky liqueurs. She’d been out with Kate to a pub on Christmas Eve. A drunk with Jesus Christ hair and the smell of vomit in his beard had spent the night trying to kiss her. She’d turned down two offers of bed and one of salvation when the Church Army had arrived with collecting tins just before midnight.

Now all she had was the vengeance of the morning after in her dismal bedsit. Kate had gone home to her parents’ house. Even the thrash music (which hadn’t started up again since she’d left her calling card) would have been almost welcome. The house was as quiet and as chilly as a tomb.

Beginning to wish she’d taken up the offer to spend Christmas Day with Kate’s family, she switched on her gas fire and went to wash in the bathroom. The fungus in the corner exuded malintent. When she returned to her room, the gas had died. She emptied her purse onto the table, finding not a single coin for the meter. She flicked on her portable TV set. Every channel seemed to be showing cartoons. She got back into bed.

And there she stayed until midday when there came a hammering on the front door. Maggie got out of bed and, tying the sash of her dressing gown, padded downstairs and along the cold corridor.

“Ash!” He was standing holding a gift-wrapped present. She hugged him, almost bowling him from the step in her enthusiasm. “Oh, Ash!”

“Didn’t like to think of you here alone. Thought you might need cheering up.”

She took him inside and made him wait in the kitchen while she dressed.

“Cold in here,” he observed when he was allowed in the room.

“This is the worst Christmas Day of my life. You’ve no idea what it’s like to be on your own for Christmas Day.”

Ash looked at her strangely. “Put your coat on,” he said. “Time you met the wife.”

“I couldn’t intrude, Ash. It’s not fair.”

“Do as you’re told. You’re not staying here all day.”

So she let him bully her into spending Christmas Day at his place. She carried her still-wrapped gift to the car and climbed in beside him. It was a half-hour drive along roads that were almost empty.

Ash lived in a large, slightly gloomy detached house with rampant ivy trailing the facing wall. The lounge had a coal fire burning behind a brass fireguard. Ash moved the fireguard aside and she took advantage of the warmth. Maggie made a quick assessment as Ash poured them both a glass of sherry. It was a most conventional room, disappointingly so with its Dralon suite and velvet curtains and its brass ornaments grouped around the fire. She’d expected something more…bohemian, more eccentric.

“Cheers,” said Ash, tipping back his sherry.

“Isn’t your wife going to join us?”

“The wife. Right. Time for you to meet the wife. Come through to the study.”

Ash tugged her by the wrist and led her down the hall to a room at the rear of the house.

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