'The bank will put everything in order once they hear from you. I've got enough to tide us over till the New Year, or if there's any need we can always go to my parents for a loan.'
The prospect seems to release my words, and I have to suppress my reaction to it for her sake and Mark's. 'They've already heard from me,' I object, 'the bank. He was acting stupid. No wonder I gave up when he made me feel I couldn't get through to him.'
Natalie gazes at me for a long pale breath that reminds me of an empty speech balloon, and then she says 'I couldn't follow you either.'
'I did a bit,' Mark says and grins in some triumph.
I don't know which of them is more disconcerting. As my teeth start to chatter with exhaustion and the icy night if nothing else, Natalie says 'Try to calm down, Simon. No more scenes.'
'Scenes,' I protest, at least approximately.
'Like that, and they aren't going to forget you in the library either. You don't need to act like that, do you? Your book's the way you want to be known.'
My chattering teeth leave me unable to reply, if indeed I want to. She takes my arm and Mark holds my other hand. Our hats flop about as I'm led away from the bank. 'Let's have peace now,' Natalie says. 'It's that time of year.'
FORTY-THREE - ST SIMON'S
'I'll bet my pension you've never been out driving so late before, Mark,' says my mother.
'Only on my computer.'
Natalie frowns across me at him. 'It's news to me. Just when was that?'
'When I was looking for things for Simon.'
'That's kind of you, Mark,' I say, 'but you mustn't lose your sleep at your age.'
'I couldn't anyway.'
'I'll bet you've never been out at midnight, though,' my mother insists. 'You're going to be in at the birth.'
Mark giggles with embarrassment or in case her comment is a joke, and Natalie sends him another frown as she sits back. I wish we'd used her car, but I didn't want my father to think we didn't trust his driving. With three people on the rear seat the Mini seems insanely straitened, as Thackeray Lane might have put it while he was coherent. I feel as if I'm being transported in a cell along a barely distinguishable route – glimpses of houses clogged with darkness, the flickers of lit windows, the occasional reveller who grins at the car. 'How far are we actually going?' I ask.
'Listen to him, Mark. He sounds younger than you, doesn't he?' says my mother.
Didn't she make a similar quip last time they took me for a drive? As if the memory has created a physical link, a Christmas tree rears up beyond the windscreen. I could imagine that its lights are trying to fend off the darkness that leads to it along five roads. 'Isn't this where you brought me before?' I protest.
'You've been here before all right,' my father says and laughs.
When my mother joins in I have the unpleasant idea that they're trying to project their confusion onto me. The tree brandishes its glaring multicoloured branches as it pirouettes with massive sluggishness while the Mini takes the first exit, beyond which I can't see anything except two ranks of houses squashed tall and thin. Curtains seem to shift as if we're being watched, but perhaps that's the restlessness of Christmas lights. 'It does seem rather a long way to come to church,' Natalie says.
'We thought we'd give you an extra treat,' says my mother, 'since we've got a bit of time.'
'We'll show you where he came into the world,' my father says.
For a moment I'm unable to ask 'Who?'
'Now who do you think?' cries my mother.
'Is it Tubby?' Mark responds with at least as much enthusiasm.
'Lord love us, no,' my father declares. 'Don't tell me Simon's got you as obsessed as he is.'
My mother twists around to smile at us. 'Who else is it going to be except Simon?'
'I don't remember this,' I say like a contradiction of my ringtone.
'Of course you don't, you silly boy. How could anyone?'
At once the car is flooded with illumination that suggests spotlights have been turned on. They're lamps on a street that crosses the one we're following. As the car swings left my mother says 'Here it is. Do you think they'll put up a plaque one day, Mark?'
Both sides of the road are lined with pale misshapen bungalows approached and separated by a maze of paths sprouting toadstool lights. I might be amused by the appearance of a gnomes' village if I weren't so troubled. 'We never lived here,' I risk saying.
'Isn't this it, Bob?' my mother pleads. 'I was sure it was.'
My father glares at me in the widescreen mirror. 'You're doing it again,' he mutters.
Is he accusing me of making the car veer as he looks away from the road? 'Be careful, Bob,' my mother exhorts. 'You've got a child in the car. You should have let his mother drive.'
'You can't, Sandra.'
If he was blaming me for confusing her, I could equally blame him as she says 'That's where I used to hold Simon up for you to see.'
She's gazing at the window of a bungalow. Despite the pallor of the curtains, the room appears to be dark. As the car slows to give everyone more of a look, Natalie says 'I thought you said he was born in a hospital.'
'I'd have been frightened to have him at home,' my mother says and laughs. 'They've pulled it down and built these.'
'She's not that far gone yet,' my father says.
The relief I was starting to feel snags on his comment. As the car regains speed, Mark wriggles to keep the bungalow in view. 'Was that Father Christmas?'
Perhaps somebody's acting the role. The curtains have parted to let a watcher peer out at the car. The face seems more than fat enough for the image of the Christian saint. It will be wearing a false beard. No whitish mass is foaming out of the enormous grin, no wadding has burst out of the stuffed white face. The next moment the occupant of my birthplace is out of sight, and my mother says 'You'll have to sleep as soon as we're home or he won't come for you.'
I would happily have nothing for Christmas except sleep, but not if it invites the visitor I just glimpsed. The more distance the car puts between us the better, and I'm uneasy when it halts further up the road. 'Aren't we going to our church?' my mother says.
'We've no time, Sandra. This'll have to do.'
She emits disappointed noises as he kills the engine outside the rudimentary church, which is little more than a concrete tent topped by a token cross and extending a long concrete block, breached like the tent by a few stained-glass windows. Then she claps her hands as if a performance is about to begin. 'Why, it'll more than do. Did you know where you were taking us?'
I've no idea why she has changed her mind until I see that a board names the church as St Simon's. I find this less worthy of celebration than everyone else does, even my father. 'Hurry,' my mother urges Mark. 'We don't want you turning into a pumpkin.'
While I realise she has Cinderella and midnight transformations in mind, I can't help thinking of grins carved for Halloween. I would rather not imagine Mark's face swelling up to pumpkin size and expanding its grin to match. My mother waddles rapidly to the open door, half a pointed arch, in the blunt end of the building, and the rest of us straggle at various speeds in her wake. The inside of the small stark porch is decorated only with posters, all of which look old for the church. Before I can read any of them my mother blunders through the inner entrance and pokes her head out. 'It's starting,' she hisses.
A large robed figure and another half as big are indeed proceeding down the aisle to the altar in the middle of the concrete tent. The pews on either side of the aisle are almost full of a decidedly well-fed congregation. My mother flaps a hand at me and indicates the back row. The first part of the gesture sprinkles me with water from the font beside the door as if I'm being rebaptised. Mark follows me so closely that he almost pushes me against the solitary occupant of the pew, a corpulent woman whose face is concealed by a headscarf. Natalie comes after Mark, and then a disagreement is expressed by much pointing with upturned hands before my mother precedes my father. We're all taking black missals from the ledge in front of us when the priest turns to the congregation and intones 'I go to the altar of God.'