A Beautiful Broken Christmas by Sara Barnard

Author:Sara Barnard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sara Barnard

When I get back to the table no one comments on my departure or my return. The gravy has congealed over my food and I sit there swirling it around my plate with my fork, listening to them all talk about Sarah's cafe, Brian's housemates, Dad's job.

At some point I stop listening and count peas instead, imagining Caddy at home with her family, having a normal day. The kind of day you see on supermarket Christmas adverts and in catalogues. I think of Rosie, having a less conventional but still nice day with her mother, the two of them drinking Prosecco together and eating chicken. I am glad I left my phone switched off in my hotel room, so I don't have to bring them, my favourite people, into this reality, where everything hurts.

The plates are cleared away. Brian points out that I'm the only one at the table not wearing a party hat. I try to put one on and it rips. At this point Sarah pours some of her white wine into my empty glass and smiles at me. Below the table she takes my hand and squeezes it for a moment before letting go.

"Let's have a toast," Dad says, lifting his glass in preparation. "To family." Wanker.

"And new beginnings," Mum adds.

We all clink glasses and I sip the wine, wishing it was the cheap stuff from the supermarket and I was on the beach with Dylan instead of here, with wine that costs too much and people who would never choose me.

Dessert arrives and it's a cheesecake with bits of Christmas pudding baked into it. Something about those blobs of pudding shoved into an existing pudding just to make it somehow "festive" both breaks my heart and enrages me. This entire holiday is a ludicrous, expensive lie. It must be great to be inside it. It must be so nice. But what about the rest of us?

Shut up, Suze. It's just a cheesecake.

I eat the whole thing to try and make some kind of a point to myself, which is a mistake. I end up back in the toilets, throwing the whole lot up. I take my time, but no one checks on me.

When I get back to the table I ask for a Diet Coke from the waiter who has started clearing the table and then, when it arrives, sip it slowly through a straw. The fizz helps. Brian and Dad go to the bar to get a Christmas Day ale, leaving me, Mum and Sarah at the table. Mum moves into the empty seat beside me.

"Are you feeling OK?" she asks.

"The cheesecake was a bit rich," I say, and bite down on my straw. "I'm fine."

Mum reaches out a hand and curls a strand of my hair behind my ear, her perpetually-cool fingers stroking my cheek. "Thank you for coming today," she says quietly. My whole heart leaps into my throat. And, because I have no self-control, tears spring into my eyes. She takes my hand and squeezes it.

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