Her Christmas Carole by Margaux Fox

Author:Margaux Fox [Fox, Margaux]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-18T23:00:00+00:00

13

1995

It was August, nearing the end of the school summer holidays and Jo and Carole were inseparable. Jo had work to do on the farm helping with the harvest and the sheep and Carole would help. Jo’s father always happy to have another pair of hands and he always liked Carole. She might not look the part, but she always worked hard and that was what was important to Arthur. Carole somehow still looked glamorous after a day on the farm, glossy hair shining in a ponytail, her feminine face somehow not as sweaty and dirty as anyone else’s. In the evenings she would soak her hands and moisturise them and was forever repainting her nails. She was the only one to somehow escape ‘workers hands’. Jo often marvelled as she held Carole’s hands in her own how perfect her hands were. How delicate her long fingers were. How beautiful her short and neatly painted and filed nails were. On the evenings they would stay in each other’s beds. Their parents extremely naive to what was going on. Carole’s parents liked Carole’s ‘best friend’. Jo was a polite, quiet girl and Anne in particular had so much sympathy for Jo’s situation.

“Terrible thing for a child to go through, losing her mother.” Anne would often say. “So lovely of you to help Joanna, Carole. She will be in such dreadful pain now, it is good that you are such a good friend to her.”

And so they would spend evenings in Carole’s bedroom. It would always get the evening sun and they would lounge on her bed talking and laughing. They played board games and listened to music and moved their hands swiftly away from each other when Anne poked her head round the door. Anne was so proud of Carole. She was developing perfectly. She was beautiful and never difficult, she did well at school and she was not getting into trouble with boys, although a lot of men were becoming very interested in her. Anne had no doubt that Carole would grow up and find a very eligible husband.

It was funny, Carole thought that she never really had had any close friends before Jo. Jo was everything to her, the one person she felt really herself around. She spent so much time playing a role of the ‘young lady’ that was so important to both of her parents, she felt like she had spent years masking who she really was. The image she projected was what was so important to her parents, not who she really was.

They would ostensibly put pyjamas on and brush their teeth and each others hair and say goodnight to Carole’s parents like good girls. As if they were twelve years old. And Carole’s parents would believe them as they got an early night like good girls. The lights went out and they slipped under the duvet. Anne Ashdown would be downstairs cleaning or baking late at night usually. Very distracted. Martin Ashdown would watch TV late into the evening, a whisky in his hand, the ice cubes clunked together as he sipped it.

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