Poppy declared, with the spasm of a triumphant smile, ‘Their machines were switched off at the exact same time, at my request.’
Brianne ploughed on. At what time did they die?’
‘At ten o’clock this morning,’ said Poppy.
‘In Dundee?’ checked Brianne.
‘Yes,’ said Poppy.
‘So, how did you manage to get from Dundee to Leicester by six thirty on Christmas Day? There’s no public transport, is there?’
‘No,’ said Poppy. ‘I caught a cab.’
Brianne, sounding increasingly like Inspector Morse, said, ‘In deep snow? There are blizzards up there. Whiteouts.’
Poppy said, ‘We must have been lucky with the weather.’
‘Did you stop to eat?’ Brianne hectored.
‘No, I’m starving,’ said Poppy. ‘I feel quite faint.’ She gave a little stagger and sat down on a vacant chair at the end of the table.
Brianne said, ‘What did you really do with the money my parents gave you to fly to Dundee?’
Brian snapped, ‘That’s enough now, Brianne!’
The microwave pinged.
Alexander took Eva’s plate of food out and put it at the end of the table, then turned to find a tray. Poppy pulled the plate in front of her, reached for a clean knife and fork and said, ‘Thank you.’
Everyone watched in horrified silence for a moment, as she began to cram food into her mouth, then they all shouted at once that it was Eva’s food. Poppy picked up the plate and hurried out of the kitchen.
Alexander shouted after her, ‘I hope you’re taking that up to Eva!’
Brian Junior said quietly, ‘Why did she come back? She’s going to spoil everything again.’
Alexander ran upstairs.
Eva was lying with her face to the wall. She turned to him and, seeing he was empty-handed, turned away again and said, ‘I’m so hungry, Alexander. Have I been forgotten?’
Alexander sat on the edge of the bed and said, ‘Not by me. I think about you all the time. Feel my heart.’ He took her hand, placed it over his white shirt front and said, ‘Hear the rhythm? It’s saying “Eva”.
Eva said, trying to lessen his intensity, ‘I could eat your heart right now – with ginger, garlic and chillies.’ She thought, ‘Oh no, now there’s a situation, and I’ll have to manage it.’
He turned her hand over and kissed the palm.
She examined his face, noting the age spots around his eyes and the grey stubble on his cheeks. She said, ‘All I can think about is food.’
He got up abruptly. ‘Turkey sandwich?’
When he got downstairs, he saw Poppy in the sitting room. She was cramming the last of the food into her mouth with her fingers.
34
At lunchtime on Boxing Day, Brian laid a big wooden tray on Eva’s lap. On it was the Beavers’ traditional Boxing Day meal.
He said, ‘It’s like fucking Groundhog Day down there. Same faces, only the food is different. They’re all Billy No Mates with nowhere else to go.
Brianne had invited Alexander and the children back, despite Brian’s disapproval, and Alexander had accepted because he wanted to spend as much time with Eva as possible before he went to visit his ex-mother-in-law.
Stanley was there at Ruby’s invitation. She said it made a change to have a gentleman in the house.
Only Poppy was missing. She had left early in the morning to ‘feed the poor’, she said, at a warehouse run by Crisis at Christmas in the city centre.
Brian said, ‘That kid has got a heart of gold.’ The twins had simultaneously put their fingers down their throats.
Eva said, ‘This salad looks lovely.’
‘My mother pillaged Sainsbury’s this morning,’ said Brian. ‘There was no flesh left on that turkey.’
Eva looked down at her plate, which was layered in cold meats. ‘It all looks very pretty.’
‘Your mother was fart-arsing about with it all morning,’ said Brian, contemptuously.
There was a small bowl of salad arranged in concentric alternating circles of tomato, cucumber, beetroot, large radish and bumper spring onions. In another bowl was a huge steaming baked potato, cut with a cross, revealing in the centre a quickly melting slab of butter. A small oval dish held a tiny peaked mountain of grated orange cheese. Two slices of pork pie were flanked by carrot sticks and crooked half-moons of green pepper. An egg cup was full of HP sauce. Her napkin had been folded into a fan. Eva was pleased to see a large glass of rosé wine.
Brian said, ‘Alexander’s boy is wearing a pink tutu, but nobody has mentioned it yet.’
‘Your mum told me that after you’d seen The Wizard of Oz you wanted a pair of Dorothy’s red shoes,’ said Eva.
Brian said, in a resentful tone, ‘But I didn’t get them, did I?’
When Brian went downstairs to join the others, Alexander asked him, ‘Eva all right?’
Brian said, ‘Why shouldn’t she be all right? She’s waited on hand and foot. If she’s not careful, she’ll lose the use of her limbs.’
Yvonne put a wafer-thin roll of ham in her mouth and said, ‘Now, I don’t agree with most of what you have to say, Brian, but I’m in full agreement with you about Eva. It’s sheer laziness. What would happen to her if we stopped feeding her? Would she starve to death, or would she come downstairs and feed herself?’
We ought to try it,’ said Ruby.
Alexander said, ‘Don’t try it for the next week, because I’m going away.’
Brianne was alarmed. Where are you going?’ Venus answered, We’re going to see my mummy’s mummy.’
Thomas said, ‘And we’re going to put some flowers at the place where our mummy’s under the ground.’
Yvonne turned to Alexander and said, ‘You’re not dragging these little children around graveyards, are you?’
Alexander said, unsmilingly, ‘No, only the one.’
Brian Junior was tweeting to the worldwide twitterati:
Worst xmas dinner evar. It was actually carbon, dudes. Now boxing day, bored – sitting with living dead, desire zombie apocalypse.
He said to the room, ‘At the moment, mine and Brianne’s priority is getting rid of Poppy.’
‘The child is ill,’ said Brian, in Poppy’s defence. ‘I spoke to her this morning. She offered to leave this afternoon, but I said she must stay until she feels able to cope on her own.’
Ruby said, ‘It took me years to get over my main’s death. I used to think about her hanging out the washing on a windy day. Let’s hope that poor little Poppy has a lovely memory of when her main and dad were fit and well.’
Venus said to Stanley, ‘Your face is getting better.’
‘I’m very pleased to hear that,’ said Stanley. Turning to the others, he asked, ‘On the subject of Poppy, did anybody else notice that she has a swastika tattoo underneath that gaudy ring she wears? I wonder if she realises the significance of such an emblem.’
Brian said, ‘Young people flirt with all kinds of shock imagery, it doesn’t make her Eva Braun. She’ll have a place in this house for as long as I’m living here.’
Stanley said, ‘You surprise me, Dr Beaver. Are you not offended by fascist symbols? I wouldn’t have marked you down as a Nazi sympathiser.’
‘A Nazi sympathiser!’ retorted Brian. ‘She’s eighteen years old, flirting with different philosophies.’
The doorbell rang. Thomas climbed down from his chair and went to answer it.
‘Ahh, bless his little heart,’ said Ruby, ‘he won’t be able to reach.’
Thomas stretched up and, with both hands, pulled down on the front-door handle.
Dr Titania Noble-Forester was surprised to see a small black boy wearing a pink tutu and ballet shoes.
Thomas said, ‘Have you been crying?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I have.’
‘I was crying in the car for ten minutes.’
‘Why?’
‘I had nothing else to do,’ said Thomas. ‘How long were you crying?’