Read Online Dying for Christmas by Tammy Cohen - Free Book Online Page B

sweetheart.’ He was magnanimous now and I felt a pathetic twinge of gratitude that his earlier anger had gone. ‘You’re all the presents I need.’
    Like all the gifts under the tree, this was beautifully wrapped. First there was a gossamer ribbon, so sheer that when I undid the bow, it slid open like it was made from air. Then there was a white-silk ribbon threaded through with gold. I had to pick at the knot for a while before it would untie, my fingers stiff with tension.
    Finally the ribbon fell away to reveal the paper – thick and white and encrusted with silver glitter in the shape of snowflakes. I rubbed my finger over the raised granules, wanting to delay opening the present.
    But Dominic was like an impatient little boy. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Get it open!’
    I slid a finger under the tape and opened up the paper. Inside was a small round silver box, about three inches in diameter, with on the lid a fairy made from what looked like solid silver. It was satisfyingly heavy and quite attractive in its own way. There was a name engraved on the side and a date: Dominic Lacey 29/7/77 .
    I looked up at him and smiled, suddenly giddy with relief that it wasn’t anything more awful. ‘It’s beautiful.’
    ‘It is nice, isn’t it?’
    I basked in the beam of his approval.
    ‘Open it! Open the lid!’
    Gently, I raised up the silver fairy by the tips of her silver wings. Inside, the little box was lined with purple velvet.
    And nestled on the velvet were five tiny teeth.
    Dominic’s eyes scanned my face, but the truth was I didn’t know how to react. The silver box had clearly been a christening gift of some kind. And as soon as I saw the teeth, I realized the significance of the fairy on the lid. There was nothing untoward about it. The grown man, keeping his baby teeth all these years.
    ‘Are these yours?’ I asked, because he was waiting for me to say something.
    ‘Of course they’re mine, Jessica,’ he snapped. ‘Why would I keep a box full of someone else’s teeth? Do you think I’m some kind of weirdo?’
    I fell silent.
    ‘Pick them up,’ he said.
    I picked out the tiny nuggets of enamel and held them in the palm of my left hand where they formed a kind of circle like a mini Stonehenge. In the split second before I slammed down the shutters in my head, I heard a baby crying.
    ‘It was a christening gift.’ He indicated the box. He sat back against the cushions of the huge sofa. ‘I don’t know who it was from. Maybe my aunt, may she rest in peace. My mother is the one who would have kept the box, and collected each tooth when it fell out.’
    I allowed myself a smile. It’s the kind of thing my mother might have done. ‘I bet she’s also got a lock of your hair somewhere.’
    He nodded, gazing into the far distance as if lost in nostalgia. ‘And my foreskin.’
    I wasn’t sure I’d properly heard.
    ‘My foreskin. After I was circumcised Mummy kept that too. Much later I found a box labelled Dominic’s foreskin although there was nothing in there, just a hard, yellow gnarly thing. Same with the umbilical cord stump. That was stored in a Ziploc bag in a wooden box. It was just a black nub by then, like a raisin.’
    I felt sickened, although it occurs to me now that, as an archivist, I should have appreciated Dominic’s mother’s actions. ‘She must have loved you very much.’
    Dominic laughed as if I’d said something very funny. ‘Oh, she did. Yes, she really did. Only it’s a weird thing, isn’t it?’
    ‘What’s weird?’
    ‘Love.’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘When I was little, I slept in Mummy’s bed.’
    ‘Well, that’s not weird, I …’
    ‘And when I got older, she slept in mine.’
    I looked away then, not wanting to see his expression. My stomach was pulling and twisting inside me and making a noise, and I felt stodgy and bloated from all the food. Dominic leaned forward and I had a horrible lurching feeling that he was going to kiss me, but instead he took the