The Great Christmas Breakup Read online

  The Great Christmas Breakup © Geraldine Fonteroy 2012.

  Published by Furrow Imprint 2012.

  All rights reserved in all media.

  The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  No reproduction in any format, electronic or otherwise, including via shareware is allowed without the express written permission of the author and/or publisher. Contract via Twitter: @furrowimprint.

  PROLOGUE

  Christmas Day, December 25

  EVERY MEMBER OF THE hideous Teeson family was there to greet us on our arrival at the hospital. I felt the demon-like stare of my mother-in-law before I saw her. Then a sound, like a chainsaw stuck on metal, began its customary crescendo. My head, bandaged and bleeding, began thumping in tune with my elevated heartbeat.

  ‘What have you done to my baby!’ The question was rhetorical, because Cecily Teeson always had all the answers.

  I grimaced as the newly dyed magenta hair and red booze face came towards me. The look was offset by a nauseatingly twee festive jumper embroidered with what looked like fornicating reindeer. Her usual shiny blue eyeshadow had been replaced with a color somewhere between orange and dung. Some sick hairdresser had put so many gold highlights in her light-globe hair that I noticed Cecily 2’s long-suffering husband Rufus put on sunglasses to protect himself from the glare.

  ‘I want an ice cream,’ said Rufus’s son and Carson’s nephew Howie, making rapid eye movements as he tried to source a kiosk.

  ‘No, ice cream,’ screamed his mother, Cecily 2. Pencil thin, with absurdly huge ears and a bulldog nose, Cecily 2’s festive jumper was black with a huge cherry on it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yeeeeeeees!’

  ‘Noooooooooo!’

  I had begged to die many times before, but this time I meant it.

  Closing my eyes in preparation, I was forced to open them when the voice of doom spoke again.

  ‘What did you do now, Scarface?’ As she came closer to the gurney, the familiar scent of knock-off designer perfume only added to the urge to throw up.

  So I did.

  On her, which would have been satisfying had she not immediately spun about, spraying goop back over me and half the A&E.

  ‘Errrrr!’ Cecily Teeson hopped about like she’d been infested with conservatism. ‘What have you done to us? To my darling son?’

  ‘There is a canteen on the fourth floor,’ Howie declared, ignorant of the chaos.

  ‘No,’ said Cecily 2.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I said NO!’

  Was Cecily for real? What have I done to him? What about what they had done to me?

  I wanted to kill her.

  And him.

  Only I couldn’t move either of my arms, which was more that slightly worrying.

  Carson was being wheeled in. He gave me a sympathetic grin.

  How dare he smile!

  I may have deliberately driven at a body of water at high speed, but this was all his fault!

  Suddenly, the painkillers the paramedics had given me at the scene of the accident began to kick in.

  ‘Aren’t you gonna answer me?’ the putrid mother-in-law barked.

  ‘Are those reindeer fucking?’ I replied, pointing at Cecily’s foul festive garb.

  ‘Yes,’ said Howie.

  ‘No,’ said Cecily and Cecily 2 in unison.

  ‘Yes,’ I told Howie.

  And then promptly and conveniently, I passed out.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wednesday November 22

  The problem with marriage is that when you think you’ve had enough,

  the best is often yet to come.

  Jocelyn Priestly.

  CARSON HAD GIVEN ME the Jocelyn Priestly calendar for Christmas the year before. It was a complete load of rubbish – the most horrific of eleven years of utterly pathetic and unromantic gifts.

  Then, this morning, I’d gone to my re-gifting box, to plan how I would redistribute the awful, and in some cases offensive, gifts we’d received from the previous Yuletide. That’s when I’d found the stupid thing.

  Worse, I began to read it.

  Apparently, if you read the blurb on the second of the flippy little pages of the cheaply made tat, Ms Priestly is some sort of marriage guru.

  My motto, the bog standard and poorly spaced Helvetica typeface read cheerily, is that any marriage can be resuscitated. It just requires the spiritual knowledge.

  What the hell does that even mean?

  Carson’s mum, or mom, as they say over here, bought it for him to give me. She must have done, no doubt during one of her charity shop expeditions.

  I know what you’re thinking – that’s nice, supporting charity. It would be, if Cecily didn’t just nick stuff straight from the bags of donations left out front of the shops overnight.

  That’s the family I married into: thieves, hooligans, and staunch Lefties who hated everything about me, including what they perceived as my privileged upbringing. Because they are American and I am English, they assume I am posh because of my accent. I’m anything but – my dad worked as head of the Gardens department of Bath Council, my mother’s mother was a maid servant and the women of the family hadn’t worked since.

  However, I did come from Bath, which was, according to the Teesons, posher than Boston.

  Whatever that meant.

  Cecily Teeson, her daughter Cecily 2 and her long-suffering and selectively deaf son-in-law Rufus imagined that, since my parents had never known the delights of a trailer park except for holidays to France, I considered myself too good for them.

  Carson Teeson, however, is about as far removed from a trailer park as you can get. Having inherited the shrewd, calculating mind of his mother, and scored some genetic throwback in terms of brains, my darling husband somehow convinced Harvard that he was a diamond in the rough. Scholarship in hand, and in the face of his mother demanding he become a doctor so that she could sell illegal prescription drugs at his grandmother’s care home, he earned a doctorate in law and became . . . a teacher.

  Yes, that’s right folks, a teacher.

  What do you do when you’ve grown up dealing with ranting lunatics, uncontrolled bullying and disgusting food throughout your entire childhood? You seek out the same by working at a local, not particularly exclusive, private school.

  It was the one thing that Cecily Teeson and I agreed on. Someone with a Harvard Law degree should not be teaching at Frithington Lodge. He should be ensconced in a cosy partnership somewhere on Madison, while I ran around Central Park with the dogs and a nanny took Jessie and Joey to school in a limo.

  Instead, I ran around Flindes, the local cut-price supermarket, doing price checks and Carson took the kids to school on his way to work.

  All in all, life wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t for the fact that Carson and I no longer had a relationship to speak of.

  Sometimes I thought I hated him.

  Perhaps hate was actually too kind a word.

  Disgust and complete distain were better ones.

  But it hadn’t always been that way.

  Had it?

  - Cue melancholy memory number one:

  ‘Excuse me, what exactly is that garment for?’ I knew, before I’d even turned around, that I was going to like the face, because the voice was knee-buckling. Deep, rich and intelligent sounding – a miracle in the New York street where I lived. I was surrounded by would-be gangsters who specialized in vocabulary exclusively populated by the words ‘fuck’ and ‘mother’.

  Th
e market stall I worked at and co-owned sold dresses made by local fashion students. It was a joint venture between me and my best friend, Lolly. Lolly had managed to develop a distinct talent for sourcing hip products while scoring As on her college assignments. I scored Cs, so my contribution was wearing a fanny pack and collecting the income.

  It transpired that the face was as delicious as the voice. It was one of those faces that wasn’t too handsome, but masculine, with a hint of stubble. I guessed the stubble was necessary because the guy had cherubic blond curls that were cut tight in an attempt to keep them under control.

  He was tall too, about six two, which suited me. I liked tall men, because I was vertically challenged and could never reach the top shelves in shops without help.

  Then I noticed that the lovely man was shopping for dresses. That meant one of two things: he was a cross dresser (the more likely option in my neighborhood); or he had a girlfriend.

  ‘So, is it a teapot cover?’ he asked again.

  I looked at what he was pointing at. A knitted beret. In purple.

  Must be shopping for a girlfriend. No self-respecting cross dresser would wear that!

  Still, girlfriend or not, I had discovered the first flaw.

  Bad taste.

  My partner Lolly had made the purple beret as a joke. We’d taken bets on who would buy it – I said demented granny; she went for no-idea boyfriend buying a Christmas gift for the girlfriend.

  It seemed Lolly was right.

  ‘It’s a hat,’ I said.

  He smiled, and with the exception of one tooth on his top row that stood out a little from the others, the effect was dazzling.

  ‘I need to buy something for my mum. She’s a little crazy, so I think she’d like it. Is it a one of?’

  Ah. His mother.

  ‘You think people would manufacture these in great quantities?’

  ‘They manufacture bombs and those trousers with room for a football in the crotch, don’t they?’

  As he spoke he looked me up and down. I was petite and pretty reasonable looking – people said I reminded them of a cross between the brunette lead from Gossip Girl and the chick at the local McDonald’s who was generally considered ‘hot’ amongst my housemates.

  My eyes, a dull brown, were helped along by enormous lashes that never needed mascara and the look was completed by mountains of long, curly auburn hair. I managed, with great effort and self-sacrifice, to keep my weight to about 52 kilos.

  I laughed, and because I hadn’t laughed in about a year, I did something I never, ever had done before.

  I asked a guy out on a date.

  52 kilos! Hah. Melancholy memory? Deluded longings, more like. Had I ever really been that slim? Now, I was trying to ease on size 16s, while telling myself I had to get the dryer serviced because it was shrinking my jeans.

  Definitely deluded.

  Some people eat when they are depressed.

  Some people eat when they are happy.

  I don’t seem to eat much either way and still pile on the weight.

  Once, even though we couldn’t afford it, I went to a doctor to make sure I didn’t have a thyroid problem or some other condition to account for the weight gain.

  ‘Donuts,’ the doctor told me. ‘That’s the probable cause.’ The words were accompanied by a solemn, accusing glare.

  After which he charged me a week’s worth of groceries for the sage advice.

  ‘Never go to a doctor,’ Lolly told me, when I complained. ‘Look it up on Google.’

  It was okay for her – Lolly had trouble putting weight on.

  ‘What if it’s something serious?’

  Telling me as gently as possible that serious things made you lose weight, not gain it, Lolly suggested jogging, or stomach crunches.

  ‘I’ve barely got time to put a pair of trainers on, let alone run about the park in them.’

  ‘Well, forget it then. If Carson doesn’t mind, why should you?’

  Good question. I suppose because I didn’t feel like myself anymore; hadn’t felt like myself since I’d crawled into size 14 territory.

  Carson continually told me my weight didn’t matter, but then I’d see him eying some size 8 on her way to work.

  And the look in his eyes was unmistakable.

  Longing.

  - Cue conversation that very morning:

  ‘It’s not the weight, Scar, it’s your attitude. Mom is okay, this is all you.’

  ‘How, exactly, Mr IAmSoFuckingCleverBecauseIWentToHarvard, is your mother telling me her ‘son could do so much better than an oompa loompa’ related to my attitude?’

  ‘Let’s see?’ Raising his index finger to his lip as if pretending to ponder a serious and important subject, Carson said, ‘Maybe because you said you wouldn’t take the kids to visit unless Cecily cooked what you wanted?’

  ‘The last time they deep-fried the entire meal, including some leftover sushi rolls I’d got on sale from Flindes. It’s not me I worry about – I don’t eat when I go there in case I catch something – it’s the kids. Jessie is already showing signs of being a bit meaty.’

  ‘Can you hear yourself? If our kids are fat, that is down to you, Scarlet. My side of the family is slim, or haven’t you noticed?’

  ‘Well doing hard drugs and the occasional stretch in prison does tend to help keep the weight off,’ I snapped.

  Carson shook his head. ‘I can’t talk to you anymore.’

  And slamming the door behind him – which he never does because the frame is wobbly and he has no aptitude for home maintenance – my dear, darling husband exited, stage centre.

  A few moments later, the door let out a pitiful creak, and fell outwards into the communal hallway.

  As I sat, thinking about my pathetic existence and listening to the grammatically challenged rap penetrating the ceiling from Hammertro’s apartment above me, I wondered whether I should do more to help myself.

  And our marriage?

  Carson may be twat and a mummy’s boy, but he was the father of my children, and I did love him once.

  Didn’t I?

  Sighing, I flipped over a few more pages of the calendar. But when I got to ‘Marriage is the dreams we have when we are awake’, I gave up, put the calendar on my bedside table and pulled out a foot circulation device I’d been given by Cecily two years previously.

  It wasn’t something a decent shop would sell – clearly, from the label and the finish it was a copy of a better quality original.

  I should give the damn thing back to her.

  Hmm. Sod it, I would.

  My mother-in-law resolutely hated everything I gave her, so what the skinny crack mare would have to say about her own gift should be priceless.

  Let’s see her try to ridicule her own gift.

  Taking out some leftover paper and ribbon from the bottom of the re-gifting box, I began my bitter task.

  Tape. I needed tape. Standing, I walked into the hall, to be confronted by my neighbor peering through the open doorway.

  ‘Yo, Mrs T, you moving? You getting’ evicted?’

  Hammertro, the closest thing I had to a friend in the building in Brooklyn where we lived, followed me into the kitchen diner.

  His look was fashioned on members of his ‘crew’, and included numerous items of ‘bling’, and the latest designer gear.

  As far as I knew, he was its only white member, and he looked up to his mates with a profound and worrying sense of hero worship. Strangely, the carefully styled light brown afro worked, thanks to his clear-skinned face and light grey eyes, although he really couldn’t pull off the trousers that hung near his knees.

  ‘No, the door fell off its hinges. And my husband is a bloody bastard.’

  ‘You English are so polite. I be tellin’ him he is a cheating mo-fo if I was you.’

  ‘I don’t think he is cheating, Hammertro. He’s just an arsehole.’

  Carson had been distant lately, but he’d been working every hour at that stu
pid school. There was no time for cheating.

  Hamertro came further into the room. ‘I like that word, arse.’ He tried it out a few times, trying to wrap his tongue around the ‘r’. ‘Much more punchy than ass, ain’t it?’

  I wound tape untidily around the gift, but it got stuck in my ridiculous needs-a-cut-but-can’t-afford-it hair and I had to begin the whole process again.

  Hammertro came over and ogled the blue and white box with its fake medical crest. ‘Cool, a circu-boosta. My mom got one from my uncle and loved it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Hah?’ Hammertro looked confused. Despite the language and the gun carrying and the continuous arrests for making threats with menace, the twenty-something wasn’t deep down nasty.

  Unlike my in-laws.

  Plus, he had a positive attitude, which was more than could be said for me at that point in time.

  ‘You sure she wasn’t just lying?’ I asked.

  ‘No, she’s a bit chubby, like you, and couldn’t walk it off because her feet hurt. That,’ he pointed at the half-wrapped device, ‘helped and she lost two stone. Two fuckin’ stone. Lost some of that arse!’

  ‘Really?’

  This information simply served to annoy me further. Cecily was always having a dig at my weight. No doubt a bunch of her old moonshine cronies had told her it was a weight-loss wonder machine. So she’d rushed out and nicked one for me.

  ‘You wanna help?’

  Hammertro was eyeing the fridge and as much as I liked him, I couldn’t afford to feed us all properly, let alone a rap artist in rude health.

  The amount of exercise Hammertro did was incredible. If the noise from his flat above was any indication, he either spent a good five hours a day working out in a gym upstairs; or he had some sort of sexual addition.

  ‘Gotta go and work,’ he said, when no offer of food was forthcoming.

  ‘You, work?’

  ‘On my discs, honey buns. And after that, it’s time to make nice with da ladies!’