The crew module was festooned with the decorations she and Astrid had made the night before, delicate snowflakes cut out of silver and grey crepe paper and sellotaped to the windows. Paper chains, and a sign Jesse had drawn that said ‘Happy Christmas’, so that the ‘I’ of Christmas looked like mistletoe.
‘Hey.’ When Poppy turned, Harry was leaning against the door of the boys’ cabin, his eyes still half-lidded from sleep, his hair tousled and flopping into his eyes. Cute and dewy-skinned.
‘I have a present for you,’ she blurted out.
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, I made it.’
‘I have a present for you too,’ he said, flicking his hair out of his eyes. Poppy’s stomach flipped with excitement. This was the day. She replayed a familiar fantasy in her head: Harry, handing her a powder-blue box crowned in a white ribbon, she pulling out a silver charm bracelet or a rose gold pendant, his eyes twinkling with adoration.
‘Don’t you find it a little weird?’ Poppy asked. ‘Christmas without family?’
‘Only a little.’ Harry shrugged. ‘Meet me in the engine room and I’ll give it to you.’
‘Okay!’ Poppy chirped, and she headed back into her room to fetch his gift.
For Poppy, Christmas had never been a joyful time. Over the years they had fallen into a tradition of watching reruns of ER on satellite, bingeing on ready meals and chocolate in the fizzy light of the television. Sometimes, Poppy would take the old tree out of the cleaning cupboard, set it up by the window with fairy-lights. Every year the decorations were fewer and fewer, dusted baubles from Pound-Stretcher that dropped off and cracked like eggs underfoot. When she was young Poppy would push her face right into the plastic pine needles of their tree and breathe in the smell of dust and PVC. She would stare at the lights nestled in it and imagine a happy world bathed in the golden glow of Christmas-tree-light.
That was how she imagined Harry’s whole life. She’d heard that his family owned a few properties across the UK, although she’d only been to his North London house once. It had been an imposing Edwardian house at the end of a leafy lane in Hampstead. She remembered being dazzled by the chandeliers, the sweeping marble staircase. She’d said, foolishly, ‘I thought only people on TV lived in places like this.’ He’d shrugged, and tossed an apple core at the dustbin, missed.
His Christmases were probably around a huge oak dining table, all his blond siblings laughing in the candlelight, a honey-glazed pig in the middle of the table, a seven-foot tree his burly older brothers hauled in from the garden. Poppy liked to imagine snapshots of his old life and was filled with shivers of pleasure when she remembered that, now, she was a little part of it too.
She’d knitted him a scarf, his initials messily embroidered into the corner. A labour of quiet love, and when she handed it to him later in the engine room he said, ‘Wow… good effort.’ Twisted it around his neck and grinned.
‘Mine’s not so fancy,’ he said, and then handed her a bottle of mouthwash.
‘Um…’ Poppy held it up quizzically. ‘Thanks…?’
‘Taste it, silly,’ he said.
‘Listerine?’ She couldn’t help that her heart sank.
Harry grabbed it back off her, unscrewed the top and took a swig, wiped his mouth noisily and smiled, his teeth bright like a wolf’s in the half-light of the engine room. Poppy copied him, and she noticed the burn, the oaky aftertaste, the rush of blood to her head and neck. ‘Whiskey?’
He nodded. She held the blue liquid up to the light and eyed it suspiciously.
‘Food colouring,’ Harry said. ‘An old trick from the Dalton days.’ Poppy laughed and took another sip. It burned going down, and she smiled.
Chapter 33
JUNO
25.12.12
JUNO WAS GLAD TO see Poppy so gleeful again, giggling and pulling Santa hats over everyone’s ears, smiling for the camera as if her teeth were bright pearls she’d been hiding. They wore the hats to record a video for the BBC, stood in two rows in front of the camera as if they were posing for a school photo. Eliot had forced them to practise saying ‘Merry Christmas’ in unison a couple of times, so by the time they were on-air their voices chimed ‘Merry Christmas’ after his signal with the mechanical hollowness of a music box. By that point, it took radio signals from the Damocles almost forty minutes to reach Earth, so they had been instructed to downlink their video early enough for it to be replayed on national television half an hour after the Queen’s Christmas Message.
Igor said ‘S Rozhdestvom’ to his family in Russia, most of whom, he explained, actually celebrated Christmas in January, according to the Orthodox calendar. He looked different, somehow, in the light of the control room. His voice was hoarse, and when he thought the rest of the crew weren’t looking Juno caught him wincing in pain, his face pale.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked. Igor waved a dismissive hand at her and walked carefully over to the door.
Lunch was spectacular. Poppy had done a beautiful job with the decorating. She had plastered silver paper-cuts snowflakes all along the windows, written ‘Merry Christmas’ on a large roll of paper. On the table, Juno’s name was on a place card, next to Jesse’s. It had a fat little drawing of Santa making a peace sign.
The table was a cornucopia of food. It was Cai and Jesse’s first harvest in the greenhouse; there were beets, Brussels sprouts, cabbages and carrots as well as fresh rocket, rosemary and sage. Poppy had laid out their rations in sweetly decorated bowls and plates. Sticky slices of canned peaches and pineapples floated on a lake of syrup, Jesse’s lentil and cashew nut loaf was sprinkled with the watercress that had been growing in the greenhouse and some of them had donated the last of their tuck, so gold and purple packets of fudge and chocolate eclairs glittered amongst the dishes.
Sipping at her glass of water, Juno nudged at the peas, then dropped her fork with a small sigh. Jesse rested his hand on the table next to hers, rolling it over slightly so that his palm was facing up and the little brown hairs along his forearm brushed against hers. She could see the green veins in his wrists, the steel rings on his fingers, the little black infinity symbol tattooed along the wrinkled edge of his thumb where his light-brown skin turned white. When she looked up, he was smiling at her, his lips stained black with wine.
‘What about presents?’ Poppy said. She’d built a little cardboard Christmas tree in the middle of the counter, to lay the presents under.
‘Actually,’ said Jesse. ‘Cai and I have a present for all of you.’
‘Is it under the tree?’
‘No, it’s a surprise. We’ll show it to you after dinner.’
‘Awww…’ Astrid said. ‘I’m excited already.’ She nudged Cai, who had touched little of his food. ‘You’re getting into the Christmas spirit too.’
‘It was Jesse’s idea,’ he said.
‘Don’t spoil it.’ Jesse pressed a finger to his lips.
Juno spooned a couple of ice cubes into her cup and listened to them clatter against the glass. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with her. Jesse’s proximity, next to her at the table, made her stomach twist with excitement. It was as if she’d never seen him before.