A Perfect Christmas

Chapter FIVE


It was with emotions of sorrow and misery mingled with fear that Cait let herself into the house, a gabled four-bedroomed detached property situated in the affluent leafy suburb of Oadby on the outskirts of the city. She took off her coat which she hung on the antique Victorian stand in the imposing hallway and then made her way into the tastefully furnished lounge where she perched on the edge of a chintz-covered sofa. She looked across at her mother, sitting reading in a matching chair by the side of the roaring fire. Cait knew she was well aware of her daughter’s arrival but, regardless, did not acknowledge her.

As she patiently waited for her mother to arrive at a place in the book where she was prepared to stop, Cait studied her. There was no denying the fact that, even though she was approaching her forties, Nerys Thomas was still a very attractive woman. She was tall at five foot seven, and slim. Her fashionably styled dark wavy hair framed a heart-shaped face, and her large almond-shaped eyes were the colour of African violets. Regardless of whatever she was doing she always looked immaculate, as if she’d stepped out of the pages of an upmarket magazine. But strangely she never went out, except to the beauty parlour or to shop for clothes, she had no friends, and didn’t invite anyone into the house but would keep any casual callers standing on the doorstep. With her looks her mother could have had the pick of any man she wanted, so why she had settled for a man like Cait’s father remained a mystery to her. Samuel Thomas was a small, puny man with thinning fair hair, pale blue eyes and a pasty complexion. He was not a good conversationalist but had a whining way of talking which was extremely irritating, had little sense of humour, and suffered from poor health through having a weak chest and heart. Cait strongly felt that her father thoroughly enjoyed his ill health, basking in his wife’s constant attention, and suspected that sometimes he exaggerated his sufferings if he felt he wasn’t getting enough of it. Yet her mother was devoted to him, would immediately drop whatever she was doing at a summons from him, fretted and fussed over him like a mother with her young child, and would have no word said against him. Her efforts to look immaculate all the time were on his behalf also.

Cait would often study her own reflection in the mirror and sometimes feel she had inherited her mother’s looks, sometimes her father’s, but in truth she resembled neither of them so assumed she must take after a more distant ancestor. There was no way of checking that, though, as both her parents were orphans and the past too painful for them to discuss. As far as she was aware her father had never held down a job and it was an inheritance of her mother’s that kept the family in the comfort they enjoyed

Neither of her parents was at all demonstrative towards her. It seemed to Cait that they showered all the affection they had on each other, and had none left to give her. As a young girl she had suffered many rejections by her mother, being told that she was acting selfishly in demanding her time when she knew her father was in need of it, or that Nerys was far too busy suddenly to drop everything on her account. As a result, from quite an early age, Cait stopped asking for any attention from her, to avoid the pain of being pushed away. She did well enough at school but never pushed herself to excel so failed to reach anywhere near her full potential. So long as she got out of the house and went to school, her parents were satisfied. She’d long ago stopped trying to work out what exactly they both found lacking in her that prevented them from showing her any affection, and barely more than their passing attention. Consequently she could only imagine what it would feel like to be hugged and kissed and made a fuss of, allowed into the private circle from which she had always been excluded.

The young Cait had showed all the signs of developing into an intelligent, caring and lovable girl. Unfortunately for her, though, she’d had a mother who stifled all these qualities in her, so the youngster had no choice but to observe Nerys’s ways of doing things and follow her example. Her mother was very brusque and matter-of-fact in her approach to others, especially those who worked for her, and would never allow them any sort of familiarity. If they acted informally with her, she always put them firmly in their place. Since Nerys had no acquaintances with children, Cait was a very lonely child, and when it came to going to school had no idea how to make friends. Her abrupt manner did her no favours either.

One day, though, she was in the playground eating some sweets when a girl approached her, and told her that if she would give her one then she would allow Cait to play with her. Cait was a quick learner. This set the pattern for how she would gain friends in future. Most of these relationships were short-lived, but she would regularly entice people to befriend her by offering them inducements she knew they’d be unable to refuse. That was how she had acquired the two friends she palled around with now, Gina and Clare, who worked with her as typists for a fruit and vegetable wholesaler’s.

As an attractive girl Cait was not short of admirers, but the only way she knew how to treat them was to behave exactly as her mother did with her father. That had to be the right way, surely. Consequently she smothered any man she went out with, knowing what he wanted or was thinking before he did and making herself indispensable to him.

One day when Cait was sixteen, Nerys had sat her down and bluntly informed her that, although the age of majority was twenty-one, her parents would consider themselves free from any responsibility for her once she reached the age of eighteen. They’d expect her to leave home and make her own way in the world, which was why she was being told in advance so she’d have plenty of time to make arrangements. Nerys informed her that she had been given no choice but to make her own way in the world when she was the same age, and had done well for herself. Now it was time for Cait to do so too instead of always relying on her parents. She had thought at the time that this statement was not entirely true as her mother had had her inheritance to fall back on whereas there was no mention of settling any money on Cait to give her a start. Before she could make any sort of response to this unexpected and shocking announcement, her father had summoned Nerys and without hesitating she had leaped up to see to him.

Cait had been left feeling terrified about how she was going to fend for herself on the money she could expect to earn as a typist. Her mind had turned somersaults, trying to work out how she was going to manage. There was one obvious answer. Whether or not she wanted to tie herself down so young, she had no other choice that she could see but to find a husband to support her.

Through going to the local youth club she met several likely candidates, but they all proved unsuitable. For them marriage was something far away in the future, after they had grown tired of having a good time and sowing their wild oats. With her eighteenth birthday just over a year away, Cait was starting to panic that she’d never find herself a husband before her parents’ deadline arrived and she found herself cast out on her own.

By now she had teamed up with Gina and Clare, using her usual method of buying their friendship by paying for most of the drinks and their entry into the dance halls they would all visit together twice a week. Though they had no idea why Cait was so focused on finding a husband, her forwardness with young men was extremely useful to her friends. When Cait spotted a likely prospect and was busy charming him, his mates often turned their attention to her companions and both young women had secured themselves quite a few dates that way. Like all of Cait’s other relationships, though, these flirtations were short-lived because most young men couldn’t stand her smothering ways and marriage wasn’t of any interest to them until way into the future.

It was on a night out with her friends that Cait first noticed Neil. She had just entered the Wine Lodge in the marketplace, a dive of an establishment which still sprinkled sawdust on the floors and sported strategically placed spittoons, but the drinks were cheap and that was why the younger generation were willing to mix with the older clientele whose drinking hole it had been for decades. There was one young man present who stood out from the rest. He was tall, good-looking, had an intelligent air about him and was smartly dressed. Cait was immediately attracted to him.

Heading straight for the part of the bar where he was standing, she purchased drinks for herself and her two friends and she turned purposefully towards him so that she could break the ice by asking him to excuse her. Her ploy worked a treat and moments later she was deep in conversation with him, her two friends with two of his associates. Within twenty minutes Cait had gleaned Neil’s name, how old he was, what he did for a living, and was able to calculate his future prospects. She also learned that he lived with his parents in a good area and, the most important bit of information to her, that he had no girlfriend at present. To her relief, she knew she had at last found her man, someone suitable and also someone with whom she knew she could fall in love. She couldn’t believe her luck.

Before the two groups of friends went their separate ways Cait had charmed Neil into asking her out on a date the next evening. All she had to do now was pray he fell in love with her and wanted to make her his wife. She knew a proper woman pandered to her man, made him feel like the most important person in her life, was constantly at his beck and call, organised every aspect of his life for him. Well, that was the way her mother treated her father, and he lapped up the attention. Confident that Neil would too, that was how Cait always acted with him.

Five months into their relationship, one evening while they were at a Chinese restaurant, she’d misconstrued a comment Neil made and believed he had asked her to marry him. When Cait broke the news to her parents on arriving home that evening, she had hoped that for the first time ever they would find it possible to lend her some support, especially her mother. Perhaps Nerys would help her organise her big day, like other mothers were delighted to do? Instead, while her father sat coddled warmly in a blanket on the sofa, never taking his eyes off the television, her mother’s reaction was to offer lukewarm congratulations, tell Cait not to expect any help from her as all her time was commandeered by caring for her husband, and then return to reading her book. There was no mention of their contributing to the wedding or how much money she could spend on her special day. This troubled Cait. She wasn’t in any position to fund it on her wages and nor could she expect Neil or his family to pay for it. This customarily fell to the parents of the bride, as far as she was aware. She therefore assumed her parents would step in.

It wasn’t until the bills started to arrive a month or so later that a fuming Nerys informed her daughter that she had no right whatsoever to be spending money that wasn’t hers. Just because she had decided to get married did not mean her parents would automatically pay for everything. Thanks to her selfishness a trip to a special clinic in Switzerland, which would greatly have improved her father’s poor health, would now have to be put on hold. Nerys didn’t seem to consider the fact that Cait had known nothing of this planned trip. But at least she wasn’t ordered to cancel all her purchases. Thankfully the ceremony and reception were paid for, her dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses, the flowers and transport. Cait strongly suspected this was because her mother would not run the risk of diminishing herself in the eyes of several high-class business people in town by cancelling her daughter’s orders.

She became so wrapped up in the arduous task of perfecting her wedding preparations without any help from her mother or her two friends, who always seemed to be busy, and also trying her best to finance these little extra touches out of what little she had left from her own weekly wage once she had paid her dues at home, that she had failed to notice her intended husband was becoming increasingly preoccupied and distant from her as the date for their wedding drew closer.

Learning that the man she loved and had planned to spend the rest of her life with didn’t feel the same about her was devastating enough for Cait, without the terrifying prospect of being thrust out into the world to fend for herself on top of it. The only morsel of hope she’d had left was that, despite his denial, Neil was in fact suffering from pre-wedding nerves and might be regretting his actions. So after she’d left the church Cait had gone round to his house, in the hope of a reconciliation.

It was his mother who answered the door to her. Neil had asked her to pass on a message if Cait turned up as he didn’t want a direct confrontation with her. She was told that he had nothing more to say to her and that he’d meant what he’d said in the church. His mother sounded sincere and there was a sympathetic look in her eyes when she told Cait to make it easy on herself and accept her son’s decision, as he had asked her to.

Cait was in total shock as she made her way home afterwards, dragging one foot after the other, unable to understand why he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with her. Hadn’t she done enough to prove to him that she would look after him, run his house for him, take on all the stresses and strains of everyday life by dealing with them herself, just like her mother did for her father? She couldn’t leave the situation, walk away from Neil and get on with her life alone. She needed advice on how to put matters right between them. The two girls who were supposed to be her friends had turned their backs on her at this moment of crisis, showing that their friendship was merely superficial and they were only in it for what it brought them. This meant that there was only one other person she could turn to for advice on how to resolve her dire situation.

Waiting patiently for her mother to finish her Chapter finally proved too much for Cait. ‘I really need to speak to you, Mother,’ she blurted out. Before Nerys had chance to refuse, Cait told her that Neil had called off their wedding and asked, ‘I treated him like you do Father, and you are both happy together, so where have I gone wrong, Mother?’

If she had been expecting Nerys to impart her worldly wisdom and inform her what she could do to make amends with Neil, then she was to be cruelly disappointed. Nerys’s matter-of-fact response was, ‘Samuel and I were destined to be together, you and Neil obviously were not. You’ve got plenty to do before next weekend, to keep you occupied and help you over it. You’ve still got all your packing to do and things to arrange in the new house, to make it ready to move into.’

Cait stared at her in astonishment. ‘Live in the house that Neil and I were going to share! Oh, I couldn’t. It would be too much of a reminder for me . . .’

Nerys cut in, ‘It’s a house, isn’t it? And you need somewhere to live. If you don’t want to live there on your own, find someone to share with you. Be a pity to waste the month’s rent that’s paid on it, as I doubt it would be refunded.’ She then picked up her book and began to read again, her way of informing her daughter that as far as she was concerned there was nothing more to discuss.

Cait lay in bed, staring up at the shadows cast on the ceiling, fighting to concentrate her thoughts on the shifting shapes instead of dwelling on what had transpired tonight and its very serious repercussions for her. She was failing miserably. All the shadows seemed to have Neil’s face in them. She heaved a sorrowful sigh, doing nothing to wipe away the flood of tears spilling down the sides of her face. It was ironic that last night she couldn’t sleep through excitement and nerves about her forthcoming wedding, and tonight she couldn’t because she was feeling utterly desolate that there wasn’t going to be one. Neil had made it very clear that there would be no reconciliation.

She wasn’t just having to deal with the heartbreak of a failed romance either. In seven days’ time she would be thrust into the world to fend for herself. Believing she had saved herself from that fate by finding Neil, she had no idea how she would cope with living alone and doing all the things she’d never had to before. This house was the only home she had known. She might most of the time feel like an intruder here, due to the way her parents were, but at least she’d had a certain amount of security, knowing a meal would be on the table for her, her washing done, her bedroom cleaned, albeit by Agnes Dalby, the daily her mother employed, who saw to these household chores.

She felt that she was being forced headlong towards a closed door, her unknown future concealed behind it, with no one to offer her comfort or support, let alone love.