Love, Unscripted Page 5

  But I can’t sleep.

  So I take the pad out again.

  And then I start to write something else.

  The Girl and the Boy had been together just seven short weeks. For the first time in a long time, he felt confident in himself and his ability to be the equal half of a whole. While her happiness did not peak into giddiness as his did, she had discovered within herself and within their early coupling a peace she too hadn’t felt for some time.

  When the subject arose of where Nick and Ellie would spend their first Christmas as a couple, it was difficult for Nick to keep himself together. He dug deep to display a cool, carefree attitude to the entire event, but his mask was immediately seen through by Ellie. She sensed he’d need reining in from being completely overwhelmed by the season (and what it might signify), and so offered the compromise of “family for the day” and “together for the evening.”

  In the former half of the bisected Christmas Day, Ellie opened another item of clothing from her mother. It was pretty, like many of the things her mother gave her, and therefore, without some major modifications, would never be worn. She smiled all the same, knowing that the thought very much counted.

  It was just Ellie and her mother, Margaret, in the living room, tiny figures under the high ceiling. A gigantic, perfectly decorated tree, delicately positioned in the corner of the room, added to their lack of scale. Richard, her father, was in the kitchen and would remain there until the food was ready, save for the sporadic announcements that dinner would be served in x number of hours.

  Ellie watched her mother opening the gifts she’d bought and looked for the same signs that might have given her away. Was her smile genuine enough? Was her response too quick? How much of her mother was in her?

  They should have had the same dark hair, but neither had been happy with what nature had given them. Instead, they found comfort in a bottle, Ellie’s a vibrant red, her mother’s a platinum blond. They both had dark eyes and perfect skin. So fair, it’s not fair, one former classmate had told her.

  Margaret opened a present. It was a scarf with foxes on it, alternating brown with white tails and white with brown tails. She wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Ellie, it’s perfect,” she said. And Ellie smiled, thinking: if she really doesn’t like it, she’s an incredible actor.

  “How are things going with Nick?”

  “Really well,” Ellie replied, burying deep that uncomfortable feeling born out of never having really discussed dating with her mother.

  “Oh, good.” Margaret left a pause before adding another “good” for good measure. She motioned to the record player, a top-of-the-line, minimalist contraption that screamed, “Yes, we live very comfortably, thank you very much.”

  “Shall I?”

  The silence before the music kicked in was tremendous. As soon as the choirs started singing, in came Richard.

  “Dinner will be served in one hour.”

  * * *

  —

  THREE HOURS EARLIER and one hour and fifty-three minutes away, dependent on traffic (he had Google Mapped the distance on multiple occasions, accounting for everything from traffic jams to global catastrophes), Nick ticked down the moments until he could be with Ellie.

  He’d accepted his parents’ invitation and, along with his sister, Gabby, and her fiancé, Andrew, had spent the night of Christmas Eve in his family home as he had almost every year since he was a child. That all four of them would burst through his door at seven a.m., a good four hours earlier than he would usually wake, was as annoying as it was predictable.

  “Come on, come on. It’s present time,” his dad bellowed.

  Nick struggled to open his eyes and comprehend the avalanche of good feelings and happy faces. Even Gabby, who prided herself on her indifference to most moments of joy, marked December 25 as a day to purge all misanthropy. Twenty-four hours in which to revel in pleasure and play.

  He clocked the clock, moaned, and buried his head under the pillow.

  “Just five more minutes.”

  “Just five more minutes,” the quartet chorused back.

  “Tradition is tradition,” his mum said, and nudged her daughter, who thrust a carefully wrapped gift into his hands.

  Curiosity won out over fatigue and Nick sat up, the enthusiasm of the group as infectious as a zombie plague.

  “It’s a book,” he deadpanned.

  “Well, duh,” Gabby replied, and he peeled back the wrapping paper with glee, like a puppy trying to open a chew toy he can hear but can’t see. After seconds of paper-ripping rage, he revealed a compendium of the films judged most essential to any cineast, its title the rather ominous-sounding 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

  “Thanks, sis.”

  “Don’t be dying before you’ve seen them all!” she said, a manic grin on her face.

  “Time to get up!” His dad’s voice getting increasingly louder.

  “No!” Nick protested strongly as the others tugged at his covers.

  “Come on!” they yelled back, starting a to-and-fro pulling of the duvet.

  Finally Nick shouted, “I’m billy bollock naked, all right?”

  One by one they jumped off the bed, their faces turned to mild disgust. All except Andrew, who didn’t know where to look, finding some solace in his feet.

  His mother was shaking her head as they filed out.

  “I know what to get him for next Christmas,” added Gabby.

  * * *

  —

  FOR ELLIE AND her parents, Christmas Day was a day to get through rather than look forward to. The specter of the past was amplified by the season. Sitting at the table, she had noticed more and more that her mother and father barely acknowledged each other.

  Ellie was selected for both cracker pullings and asked to pass all food items, from sprouts (complete with bacon and sweet chestnuts) to gravy (never granules, always homemade). All conversation was directed through her, and this soon became exhausting. She wondered if this observation—that their intimacy was flatlining—was due to her having finally found someone she could be intimate with. Or whether there was something on the horizon between them. A grand finale to a union defined by its mantra of keeping calm and carrying on. She waved away the thought, reminding herself that the occasion—fake tree, fake snow, fake smiles—always brought with it melancholy and temporary sadness. Always only temporary.

  Focusing on the positives, her thoughts turned to Nick. Knowing him as she did in such a short space of time, she was already well aware what this evening would mean to him. He would be planning and thinking and worrying and aiming for perfection, so she had put in the same level of commitment that she predicted he would.

  Presents had been chosen in direct response to what she guessed he would get her. He would, she surmised, not be one to spend vast sums of money on “things.” Events, possibly. Gestures, almost certainly. But not things. And so she had preempted any extravagance by placing a £10 limit on their gifts. This, she countered, would mean that time spent would be the true test of the gift’s worth.

  Her thought train was derailed when the family cat, a tabby by the name of Ophelia, leaped onto the table. Without raising his voice or swiping at the animal, her father calmly pushed his chair out, put his large hands around Ophelia’s waist, and placed the cat back on the floor.

  “While I’m up,” he said, “would anyone like anything else from the kitchen?”

  Margaret shook her head, and so Ellie invented a request simply to make him feel useful.

  “Some water with my wine would be great, thanks, Dad.”

  She studied her mother’s face, long enough to elicit an inquiry as to whether anything was wrong. Ellie shook her head no and offered a quiet “It’s nothing.”

  Richard came back in, placed the water in front of Ellie�
�s plate, and sat back down. Ellie looked away from her mother and over to her father. Then she stared directly ahead. To where his chair should have been.

  Without knowing it, she was soon hypothesizing what he would look like now. Would his cute button “dinosaur nose” have been the same? Would he have had acne scars from his teenage years? Would he have kept his hair long or buzzed it off like every other boy in town?

  Just how unique would he have been?

  This Christmas daydream triggered a memory from his first day of school. With Ellie having been through it all two years ahead of him, he looked to her for her worldly wisdom and came through the momentous occasion with flying colors. He glowed with pride as he returned triumphant and placed his schoolbag on the kitchen table. His proud parents waiting.

  “What did you learn on your first day?” Richard asked.

  “Erm”—at that age he always started his sentences with erm—“I learned the boat song and that Billy Simpson likes turtles.”

  Ellie remembered Richard smiling at Margaret with devotion and pride, the woman who had brought this little boy into the world for him. In this memory her dad took his son’s bag and prepared it for the next day. He was surprised to discover the sandwich he’d made seven hours earlier still intact, if a little flat.

  “Why didn’t you eat your sandwich?” he asked patiently.

  “It’s yucky,” came the swift reply.

  To show the boy the error of his ways, Richard took a huge bite and rubbed his tummy. “No. See. It’s yummy.”

  The four-year-old looked to his mother and then to his big sister.

  “No, it’s yucky. I dropped it in the mud and Billy Simpson stood on it by accident.”

  Margaret clasped her hands over her mouth. Six-year-old Ellie’s mouth fell wide open. And then the laughter started. It was a laughter like she’d never known and had never been able to replicate since. Their bodies convulsed. There was genuine pain in it. But a perfect joy of pain. Her father, who was in many ways the butt of the joke, laughed hardest. Her brother was now rapturous at having brought this fun into their home.

  Back at the table, Ellie studied her mother’s face again, this time looking for laughter lines. She found none, but became fascinated by the lines above her nose. Two horizontal, two vertical. Join them up and you’d have a square the size of a locket. Ellie knew the picture that would fit perfectly between those lines.

  * * *

  —

  NICK’S MUM WAS singing frantically in the kitchen. There was a direct correlation between the pitch of her voice and her stress levels, and right now, if dolphins lived next door, they’d be banging on the walls. It didn’t help that, even though food was yet to be served, his father, Harry, was already asleep.

  “Sorry it’s taking so long,” Karen called through. Before adding with a peevish discontent, “Obviously, if I had another pair of hands…”

  “We did offer,” Gabby reminded her.

  “I wasn’t talking about you. You are our guests.” And with that, she drained her glass of red, shot her sleeping husband another set of daggers, and disappeared back behind the beads that separated the kitchen from the living room.

  Because they rarely had guests, there weren’t enough chairs to go around. Nick was sitting on the floor while his sister and Andrew claimed the sofa. Between them was a coffee table upon which sat a half-finished game of Trivial Pursuit. To their left, in his tatty brown recliner, was their napping father.

  Nick was taking on the two of them, who had decided to work as a team. As Gabby and Andrew were soon to be married, they felt it necessary to do everything as a team. They had been engaged just a few short months.

  Because Andrew had picked Paris for the proposal, Nick had this weird feeling of having the upper hand in the relationship with his soon-to-be brother-in-law. As if this one clichéd action would always make Andrew predictable.

  Another playing wedge was placed in Nick’s wheel as a torrent of profanities came from the kitchen. The final “shit” was accompanied by a clattering of pots and pans. Nick and Gabby gave each other the familiar look of “here we go again” as Harry finally stirred.

  “It’s all ruined. The spuds are spoiled and the bird’s burnt. You might as well order a pizza!” Karen cried out, making for the stairs.

  Leaping from his seat and taking off after her was par for the course. It was a familiar dance, but no less painful for their offspring to watch. If Gabby was worried how this snapshot of their family life would seem to her partner, she didn’t show it. Perhaps, Nick thought, because Gabby was so far out of Andrew’s league, it would take cold-blooded murder for him to ever think her unworthy of his love.

  Even in such an event, he would probably help dig the grave and take the blame.

  Brother and sister entered the kitchen to see a very mild state of disarray. The bird that was labeled burnt had a slight charring, the potatoes were certainly edible, and the clattered saucepans were tidied in minutes. It was an overreaction they’d encountered a thousand times before and so they set about making it just so.

  As quickly as the parental hysterics had begun, they were over and forgotten. It must have seemed strange to an outsider like Andrew, thought Nick, but melodramas like this were part of the Marcet tradition. It was who they were. If Andrew was to be part of this family, he’d best get on board.

  * * *

  —

  ELLIE ARRIVED JUST after seven armed with two presents. One small and one so monstrously large it caused Nick’s jaw to meet the floor.

  “Happy Christmas!” she exclaimed, brandishing her gifts.

  Nick took the parcels from her and kissed her passionately before adopting a broad northern accent of origin unknown. “By ’eck, love, step inside. I’m not paying to heat the street.”

  Ellie looked at him like he was insane, and laughed. It was a one-two he was familiar with and one he adored.

  Navigating her enormous gift up the stairs proved not without its difficulties. His shared accommodation was big enough for two people to live comfortably, or for four to live awkwardly. His landlord had opted for the latter. The lengthy expedition to the third floor did allow Nick time to wonder what the hell Ellie had gotten him, and if she’d broken the present budget rule that she had herself insisted upon.

  Once inside his tiny room, a room that shared more in common with student digs than the home of a man in his mid- to late twenties, they were caught wondering whether they should tear into the presents or tear off their clothes.

  Half an hour later, they opened their gifts.

  “We agreed on a ten-quid limit, right?” Nick asked, nervous of the answer.

  Ellie nodded as he ripped away what might have been more than £10 worth of wrapping paper from a promotional DVD standee of one of his favorite recent films.

  “Technically,” she said, “I didn’t pay anything for it. I fluttered my eyelashes at a very nice checkout girl in Sainsbury’s and she said I could have it for a small donation to charity.”

  Chuffed by the gift and the thought behind it, Nick made the obligatory remarks to temper expectation—“This smashes my present out of the park,” “What I got you doesn’t compete,” etc., etc.,—and handed her a carefully wrapped package that he’d asked his sister to carefully wrap for him the week before.

  “It’s a book…” she said, in that way people do when you’ve obviously bought them a book. A panic set in that it wasn’t good enough and he began speaking at the speed of light.

  “Because you were telling me how much you liked the band when you were younger.”

  She lit up as she saw the front cover, a pensive picture of her favorite singer. She managed to squeeze in “It’s great” before he came back with the usual refrain of “You have it already, don’t you? I can take it back.”

  To put a stop to it, Elli
e grabbed his face and told him, “No, I don’t, and you can’t. It’s very thoughtful, and in a weird coincidence…”

  She presented him with the smaller second gift. A mix CD labeled My Phonic Youth. She explained, “These are a few of the bands I loved when I was younger. It has loads of this guy”—she held up the book as a cue card—“and loads of bands that inspired him. The Vaselines in particular are awesome and weird and weirdly awesome.”

  “I also made you a present,” Nick said, locating a second package he’d hidden away just in case he’d gotten the mood of the gift-giving wrong.

  “If anybody saw us they’d puke, right?” she asked, not without reason.

  She opened up the little shoebox to discover trinkets from their first few months together. She went through them one by one.

  “Our first cinema trip…a map from the museum…It’s got everything. This is so nice.” She paused. “You didn’t keep the condom wrapper from our first night, did you?”

  “Even I’m not that sentimental,” he lied.

  Ellie sat up straight in his bed and started flipping through her new present, occasionally holding up random pictures of her childhood hero looking young and full of life.

  “How are your folks?” Nick asked.

  “They’re okay. Christmas is always tough. Things are always a little…staged? Yeah, a little staged.”

  It was quite early in their relationship to form such an ability, but Nick was already pretty skilled at figuring out when Ellie wanted to open up about something and when she was just looking for him to skip over a moment. He felt this might be the latter and was instantly validated when she breezily intoned, “Soooo, what’s the plan?”

  He jumped out of bed and grabbed his props.

  “Food.” He held up a bag of fancy crisps and a box of Maltesers. “Drink.” A bottle of red and one of white. “And for our entertainment, my favorite Christmas movie.”