‘I want a white Christmas... I’m thinking ski chalet chic and showbiz sparkle...’
I nodded in agreement. That’s all you could do with my sister. She was standing in her hallway by a twenty foot Norwegian Pine, dressed from head to toe in Yves Saint Laurent accessorised with a Chanel-lipsticked smile.
‘It’s exactly like the one in Trafalgar Square,’ she said in her posh voice.
‘Only hers is bigger than the one in Trafalgar Square,’ Gabe, her landscaper, piped up beside me. I smiled, he apparently found her as amusing as I did.
‘Darling... let me ask you something,’ she said, ignoring him, looking at me over her Chanel bifocals. ‘Do you think it would be too much to put the dog in a onesie?’
I looked at her; ‘Seriously Tamsin? Yes.’
‘But it’s a hand-made designer polar bear onesie... it’s Italian!’
‘Italian? Oh why didn’t you say? No, I can’t see the problem putting a big brown dog in a white costume for Christmas, especially if it’s handmade and Italian.’
She nodded, oblivious to my sarcasm – or choosing to ignore it – and began squirting room perfume everywhere – it smelt of fake Christmas.
‘The season in a bottle,’ she smiled coyly.
‘The season in my face,’ I said, wafting the air. ‘God, Tamsin, it’s lethal that stuff.’
‘It just says... Christmas to me,’ she closed her eyes and breathed deeply through elegant nostrils ... the epitome of designer style even my sister’s nose was elegant. ‘It takes you back doesn’t it?’ She looked at me and for a moment I saw a fleeting, unfathomable sadness in her eyes. Now wasn’t the time to ask if she was okay, not with two interior designers, a landscaper, the cleaner and Tamsin’s kids in attendance for her family Christmas card photo shoot.
‘So I assume putting the dog in a polar bear costume is to do with your white Christmas theme?’
‘Yes. Why?’ she replied, already moving on to another item on her to-do list.
I shrugged. What could I say?
She rolled her eyes, ‘Oh it probably offends your Green Peace, hippy dippy values to include my pet in the festive fun.’
‘I’m not sure the dog would see it as “festive fun”, but why ask me anyway? You’ll do what you want to do.' A determined woman, I knew Tamsin was quite prepared to rugby tackle the huge dog into his polar bear costume for the sake of her white wonderland theme whether he wanted it or not.
My sister always embraced Christmas. And this year she was even more stressed and obsessive than ever, not least today as she was ‘dressing the house’ for the family Christmas card photo shoot. She called it her ‘little pre-Christmas tease’, and this year it was all about transforming her 18th century converted rectory into an Aspen ski lodge.
‘I don’t know why you can’t buy a box of mixed cards from Marks and Spencer and send them out like everyone else does,’ I sighed.
‘That’s exactly why,’ she hissed, ‘because everyone else does.’
She marched past me into her designer kitchen where I followed to unload the mini mince pies I’d made. She stood against the counter top, clad in diamonds, perfectly groomed, smelling very French and fretting about her ‘Christmas colours and concepts’.
‘I know you think I’m silly, and it may have escaped your attention but Horatio’s a chocolate Labrador,’ she sighed.
‘I noticed.’
She gazed ahead like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. ‘He won’t look good against a white backdrop. I just wish when we’d told the kids they could have a pet I’d fought harder for a white Persian cat instead.’
‘Mmm it’s tricky, but if he isn’t going to match your interior there’s nothing else for it. You’re going to have to send him to the kennels for the whole of December,’ I said with a straight face. ‘I mean something like that could ruin the season for everyone.’
‘Mmmm, that’s not a bad idea,’ she acknowledged absently.
‘I was joking,’ I sighed, but she was miles away, no doubt lost in St Moritz glitz.
Tamsin’s Christmases were perfect, down to where exactly the turkey was raised (we’re talking a postcode) for the dinner, to the exact hue of each eye-wateringly expensive bauble on the tree.
Even when the kids were little there were no dancing Santas or multi-coloured fairy lights, just a tailored tree that children weren’t allowed to decorate or touch. This was accompanied by perfectly placed Christmas floral arrangements, wreaths on most doors and swags in the accent colour of the season. My sister’s relentless pursuit of the best Christmas began almost a year in advance and themes and shades were tenaciously nailed down six months before.
Fortunately I was merely ‘backstage staff’ in Tamsin’s life and able to dip in and out of the Angel-Smith family’s festive activities. Our family name was Angel, Tamsin’s husband’s was Smith so they’d hyphenated their surnames. I wish I could say this was Tamsin’s stand against paternalistic social power, and a rejection of outdated social constructs - but it wasn’t - it was just desperate social climbing because she thought it sounded posh.
So luckily I was merely an onlooker, but I felt for my niece and nephew who, at nineteen and twenty-one, came home from their respective universities to be manhandled into animal onesies and ‘Christmassed up’. My brother-in-law Simon, Tamsin’s husband of twenty years, was never around and when he did turn up was always late and never really engaged with what was going on.
‘No one seems to be taking this seriously,’ Tamsin snapped, in between barking orders at children, the dog and Mrs J, the cleaner – who’d wandered in around 1992 and never left. I wasn’t quite sure how Mrs J found time to do the cleaning, what with reading tea leaves and Tarot cards and giving an often uncomfortable running commentary on what was going on in the house. This was invariably followed by her unique brand of advice and a Q and A debriefing with everyone in the village. Tamsin was horrified when complete strangers approached her in the street and discussed in detail the most intimate aspects of her life. When the vicar had asked Tamsin if she was still getting ‘hot flashes’ and a low libido it looked like Mrs J was finally for the high jump.
‘That’s it. She’s done it this time, discussing my perimenopause with the vicar – in depth if you please. I feel like I’m starring in my own reality show,’ she’d complained. But despite her brittle exterior and the vicar’s apparent intimate knowledge of her hormones, Tamsin didn’t have the heart to let her go. ‘That woman’s a pain in the bum but she’s the salt of the earth,’ she’d say with a fond smile.
Right now Mrs J was standing, hands on hips, surveying the scene before her.
‘Oh Mrs J, there you are. Now, would you be kind enough to wipe the dog’s paws, he’s about to be photographed, it’s bad enough he’s brown he doesn’t have to be dirty too.’
‘Dog racist,’ proclaimed Hermione, my beautiful niece. She’d wandered into the kitchen and was now on autopilot peering into the fridge. ‘Anything to eat?’
‘No,’ Tamsin snapped, ‘not until the photograph’s been taken.’
Hermione rolled her eyes and tried to slope off but Tamsin was on her. ‘So please spend the next few minutes doing something useful... like getting the dog into his onesie.’
Hermione scowled and picked up the dog outfit between finger and thumb making a half-hearted attempt to catch poor Horatio who was now hiding under the coffee table.
I’d made the mince pies (which Tamsin refused to call mince pies using an unpronounceable French name for them instead) and all I wanted to do was deliver them and leave. But as always I’d become embroiled in what my sister referred to as ‘creative chaos’.
‘Don’t leave the mince pies in the oven longer than a few minutes,’ I warned.
‘Can’t you stay and take care of them, sweetie?’
‘No I have to pick Jacob up from the childminder.’
‘Oh Sam, she won’t mind having him a few more minutes, he’s so delicious... let’s have a quick sherry,’ she said, grabbing the bottle. ‘We can talk about the Christmas confections you’re creating for my festive soiree.' I declined a drink as I was driving but she poured herself one anyway. ‘I don’t know what Heddon and Hall are up to in there,’ she said, referring to her interior designers, whose camp and unbridled enthusiasm for Christmas equalled my sister’s. ‘I’ve left them to it – I can’t bear to have one more conversation about swags, balls or fucking garlands.’ The posh voice made way for the broad Manchester accent – which it often did when we were alone and she’d had a couple of sherries.
I smiled at her outburst.
‘Oh our Sam, why do I do it? Every year it’s the same. I decorate, organise the photograph, while I’m planning the Christmas drinks, the party...the bloody nibbles.'
‘Yeah,’ I added. ‘Nibbles? What the fuck are nibbles anyway? Just fancy crisps.’
‘Now now... that’s enough,’ she started. Drinks and nibbles were sacred to Tamsin, like communion bread and wine.
‘You can’t possibly enjoy Christmas, you’ve turned it into a career,’ I continued, ‘and all your “friends” are just competitive couples trying to outdo each other, from who has the best canapés to who has the biggest balls – and I mean that in every sense.’
Tamsin pursed her lips disapprovingly. ‘Trust you to bring balls into it. How’s Richard by the way?’
‘He’s fine,’ I said, ‘still handsome, still likes it and wants to put a ring on it.’
‘Well, you could do worse... I’d get a ring on it before he finds someone else he wants to put his ring on... that came out wrong, but you know what I mean.’
‘I know, but it’s not about Richard, it’s about me – you know that. I don't think anyone can ever take the place of Steve.’
She nodded. ‘I know, but that’s not what Richard’s asking for. He’s not trying to take the place of anyone he just wants to be with you... and I don’t like to think of you alone.’
‘I’m not. I’ve got my beautiful son and my precious memories.’
It was silent for a moment and Tamsin put down her glass. ‘I don’t want you to spend another Christmas feeling low and wondering what might have been, Sam,’ she said, looking at me with a sad expression on her face.
‘Don’t worry, I’m determined to make the best of things and try and move forward. I feel more positive than I have for years and I really want to enjoy Christmas this year.
‘Yes love, you have to embrace Christmas for Jacob’s sake, I mean he’s six, he wants to get excited about Santa – he doesn’t want his Mummy sobbing all Christmas Eve.’
I felt uncomfortable, and guilty. I still thought about him, but hadn’t actually cried over Steve for quite a while now. Perhaps time had finally begun to anaesthetise some of the pain?
‘I wonder what Christmas carnage the boys are creating in my living room?’ Tamsin said, sensing my unhappiness and changing the subject. She glanced towards the living room where Heddon and Hall, Tamsin’s interior designers, were embarking on her winter wonderland of impossible feats and ridiculous demands. This ‘photo shoot’ was the preamble to her annual ‘event of the season’, the Christmas party held three weeks later. Always perfectly managed, smoothly executed, lavished with as much preparation and money as Elton John’s Oscar’s after-party, it was, she insisted ‘the event of the season’. My sister loved Christmas and had to squeeze every cinnamon and clove scented ounce from it – but the irony wasn’t lost on me. Tamsin spent so much time and money attempting to ‘capture the Christmas moment’ that what she actually captured was high-pitched anxiety and hair-on-end trauma. My sister wanted her kids to have everything she’d never had, and I got that, but somewhere along the way I felt it had lost its meaning and joy for all of them.
Looking at her now, all stress and self-importance, it was hard to imagine her having a laugh and letting her hair down. As her sister, I knew Tamsin had the capacity for ‘fun,’ it was just executing it that was a problem for her.
‘Tam, do you really think it’s worth all the stress? There are better things to spend money on, surely?’
‘Oh I know it’s meaningless and my head tells me there are children dying of hunger when I’m spending all that money on a few decorations,’ she said, taking a large glug of sherry. ‘So I buy more baubles, write a cheque to Oxfam and have another fuckin drink.’ She was now full-on Northern accent, all the clipped tones and long vowels disappeared in a puff of sherry.
‘Ok love, just write that cheque, get through December and worry about global hunger in January – you’ve got canapés to think about,’ I laughed.
‘Yeah, well you can laugh, but imagine if my party didn’t go ahead?’ she said aghast.
‘Oh stop, that’s too horrific to contemplate,’ I joked, but she nodded like I meant it.
‘I’m not like you, Sam. I can’t throw a few mince pies in the oven, put me feet up and call it Christmas.’
‘Thanks!’
‘Oh you know what I mean. You just let Christmas happen, you were never one for big Christmas events and parties... even before.’
I nodded, and it hung there a few seconds until Tamsin moved on – as she often did when faced with something less than perfect. So she put on her posh voice again, despite the alcohol, and increased it by ten decibels.
‘This year I want glittery, celeb-drenched glamour... my soiree will be the swirling centre of Cheshire’s social scene,’ she half-joked.
‘And you’re hoping to achieve that in three weeks with a box of expensive baubles and two inebriated old queens?’ I said, but she just gazed ahead. Perhaps she was suddenly too overcome with her Christmas plans to respond? Her phone tinkled and she checked her messages; ‘Great, Simon’s working late again... today of all days. He knew it was Christmas family photograph day.’
I rolled my eyes and made a sarcastic comment as she read out his latest lame excuse for not being there for her.
‘There’s always something to do late at the office, isn’t there?’ I said sarcastically.
‘Yes – as you know, Simon is very conscientious and never clocks off,’ she shot me a look.
I could have made more remarks, but left it, the mood she was in it was probably best not to pursue that one.
Tamsin poured herself another sherry. ‘Oh dear, I was hoping Simon would be home to get the dog into his onesie. That dog will do anything for Simon, last year he let him suspend him from the roof by his back legs for our charity performance of Peter Pan.’
‘Yeah, but he wasn’t the best Tinkerbell I’ve ever seen. The dress was lovely but those big brown paws... they were a bit...’
‘What?’
‘Butch? Brown...?’ I offered.
‘God, you two are gender stereotyping him now,’ Hermione piped up from behind her iPad. She wandered in and leaned on the kitchen island and looking up at Tamsin with feigned disapproval. ‘Ma... get a grip, wasn’t dressing him up as a dog tranny enough for you last year? Does poor Horatio have to suffer further mortification and be dressed as another species this Christmas?’
‘Yes he does. That dog lives in the lap of luxury and he’ll earn his keep, Hermione.’
She pronounced her daughter’s name ‘Hermiuney’ and I smiled again on hearing the forgotten flat vowels of the working class Manchester girl that once was. This was the girl Tamsin had locked away a long time ago – she rarely made an appearance in these leafy Cheshire lanes lined with £2m plus homes. Tamsin looked at me, and I knew what she was thinking, but there was no way I was grappling Horatio’s huge chocolate thighs into tight-fitting white fur – Christmas or not.
She sighed, climbing down off the kitchen stool, propelled by sherry, and landing rather abruptly. ‘Cum on, our Sam, let’s see how far the boys have got with me Winter Wonderland,’ she said, swaying slightly into the living room.
Heddon was whipping around the place like the sugar plum fairy as Hall draped the tree with giant white satin bows. Meanwhile Gabe, who’d been hanging around since October, was sitting on her Paris chair eating Monster Munch and flicking through Vogue.
She huffed when she saw him and after unsuccessfully attempting to dress the dog herself she demanded Gabe help her. He was understandably reluctant to get involved but my sister was determined he would do as she requested. After Horatio was dressed, Gabe said something to her and she wafted him away embarrassed. Then she rushed over to Heddon and Hall who were clambering up trees and along pelmets in the pursuit of Christmas style.
Peter Heddon and Orlando Hall decorated Tamsin’s homes every season. She’d fly them out to her holiday home in France each summer, the apartment in Miami every January and they’d style all her other ‘events’ throughout the year here in leafy Cheshire. Today they were getting ‘White Christmas ready’ and to say they were on a Christmas high would be an understatement.
‘Oh that wreath’s not working... and the glitter to white ratio is all wrong,’ Tamsin was wringing her hands – a storm was brewing and I just didn’t have time for one of her dramas over the technicalities of a wreath gone wrong. There were plenty of people on hand to support her and I needed to return to the real world where people cooked their kids’ teas, put a wash on and didn’t obsess about ‘glitter ratios’ or dress their dogs up as polar bears.
I sometimes wondered what it was that Tamsin was looking for. To me, it seemed she had a perfect life; a husband, two great kids, plenty of money and several homes dotted around the world. Yet my sister was always searching for the next high and Christmas just seemed to bring out the worst in her. For example, a Christmas turkey was apparently ‘out’ this year and she was desperately trying to get her hands on an organic goose. I mean that literally – she would have chased the right goose and caught it herself if she thought it would look good on her table – or ‘table-scape’ as she called it.
Along with her Christmas goose, Tamsin also chose ‘the right’ friends. Wrought from a shared love of materialism, multiple homes and absent husbands, her friendships were with women who’d been spoilt by money. They spent their days in the spa, shopping in town or eating leafy lunches in glamorous restaurants. These women talked only of the next dinner party, their newest designer dress, who their husband’s latest mistress was – and more importantly, where the mistress got her nails done.
I suppose they were all seeking fulfilment in their own way, too, but recently I’d begun to think my sister might need more than this. She’d seemed agitated and I worried there were things about her life she wasn’t telling me. Only a few days previously she’d announced over a glass of Chardonnay that she wasn’t sure about her future. ‘I sometimes feel like I’m in the wrong life, one I don’t deserve and I feel like I’m on a treadmill, only as good as my last lunch, my last dinner party – I wonder where I’ll be ten years from now,’ she’d said.
I was surprised at her honesty. ‘Tamsin, stop looking over your shoulder to see who’s coming up behind you,’ I’d said. ‘Life isn’t about who throws the best dinner party,’ though I suspected in her world it probably was. ‘Stop judging yourself against everyone else – there’ll always be someone more stylish, more wealthy, more accomplished than you...’
‘Who? Where?’ she said. ‘I’ll hunt that bitch down.’ She was joking, but I couldn’t help but feel that a little part of her meant it, because personal perfection and being the best had always mattered so much to her.
When we were kids we’d loved to try and catch snowflakes in our hands, twirling around with our arms outstretched just waiting for one to land. From an early age I was aware that the delicate snowflakes would melt as soon as they landed on our warm palms. But Tamsin, who was six years older than me, never quite seemed to comprehend this and she’d lunge for them, screaming in surprise, almost tearful, as they disappeared at her touch.
It seemed to me that she’d been trying to catch and keep those snowflakes all her life. She would grasp at things, ideas and people and like a snowflake, she wanted to touch them, possess them, keep them in the moment - but just like when we were children, they always melted in her hand and she was left with nothing.
The photo shoot was a perfect example of Tamsin’s futile ‘snowflake chasing’. She was desperate to get the best shot, to seem like the perfect family having the perfect Christmas. She wanted so much to present this image to her friends that she made everyone – including herself – stressed and miserable in the process.
I put my jacket on, stage one of my escape from the madness.
‘Oh I don’t know how we’re going to get this photo done,’ she was stressing.
‘Why do you need to even take a photograph? Why not just live it, you don’t have to record it for others to see you’re a happy family,’ I said, fastening my jacket. But she’d grabbed a passing Hermione and was virtually holding her down whilst applying glittery eyeliner to her lids and made some enigmatic remark about even though we were sisters I didn’t really know her.
I hadn’t the time or the inclination to start bickering. ‘I’m going now – those fish fingers won’t grill themselves,’ I smiled.
‘Nicole Scherzinger's personal trainer says eat nothing white after 6 p.m.,’ Hermione added mock-earnestly.
‘Oh no... how’s that going to fit in with your white Christmas?’ I asked. My niece snorted, we often teased Tamsin, who was usually a sport about these things.
‘Close your eyes Hermione, and close your mouth Sam... I’m not such a pedant that I will make everyone eat white food,’ then she winked at me. ‘But now I come to think of it... you’d look pretty in my winter wonderland eating only egg whites Hermione.’
‘Ha ... Ma you’re so random. One man's LOL is another man's WTF.’
‘I’m not quite sure what she just said,’ Tamsin looked at me, puzzled.
I shrugged, ‘Nor me. I’m getting off now guys...’
‘No. You can’t, Jesus is here... I heard him at the door.’
I’d had enough of Tamsin and her Christmas circus, and Jesus’ arrival was like the second coming – literally. In any other household, the announcement that Jesus had arrived may raise a few eyebrows, but not in my sister’s insane universe. Jesus was the appointed photographer, who also happened to be an old friend of Tamsin’s and like all her friends wasn’t quite what he seemed. He was small, dark and brooding with a morose manner and a faux accent – and I really didn’t have time for that pantomime today. I had to tackle the oncoming snow and collect Jacob from the childminder before the weather set in.
‘Come on, just say hello to Jesus, we’ll do the “switch on” and you can get off,’ she smiled. Tamsin always got her own way, particularly with weaker mortals like me, so I agreed, and as Jesus whipped out his camera and started snapping, Tamsin walked up the central staircase in the main hallway. It was a beautiful wide staircase with wrought iron banisters sweeping downwards in a curve. Tamsin loved playing the film star and as she slowly walked down the stairs like Gloria Swanson, Jesus was shouting ‘oh yes, go baby go...’ like he was in the throes of sexual abandon. He was winding himself in and around the banister, his camera strap now almost choking him, but he carried on snapping and ‘yes baby’-ing.
‘God help us if Jesus gets his Nikon. . .
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