Christmas, but for New Year. No way was she going to let her sister bully her into spending any of the festivities with her.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it was only Ann and her husband, Paul, and their two children, but the whole Brown clan would be there – Paul’s parents, plus a stray uncle and Paul’s ultra sensible brother, Robert. Ann had some crazy notion that Robert was perfect for Floriana and that she was a fool not to appreciate how fond Robert was of her and that at her age she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Mum and Dad never went on about her still being single, but Ann had an unhealthy fixation about it and could always be relied upon to know why her younger sister was incapable of finding a decent man. It came down to many things, but chiefly it was her ‘ridiculous dress sense’ as Ann saw it. ‘You’re not a student any more,’ she would say in exaggerated bafflement at the latest quirky outfit Floriana had put together. ‘It’s time to grow up and settle down,’ was another refrain.
Settling down implied settling in Floriana’s mind and she didn’t want that. The sad truth was, for the last two years she’d lived with the realisation that if she couldn’t have Seb, she didn’t want anyone.
She certainly didn’t want her sister’s brother-in-law. In his late thirties – going on fifty – Robert was a personal injury lawyer and in the light of her accident, which Ann had admitted yesterday on the phone she had mentioned to Robert, she could just imagine what the hot topic of conversation would be if she joined the Brown clan for Christmas.
Now dressed, she took the stairs slowly – her head still ached and if she moved too quickly she felt dizzy. The swellings on her face had gone down a bit, but the technicolor bruising was increasing. Just call me freak-face, she thought as she reached the bottom step and winced as a sharp pain shot through her hip and back. She was beginning to worry that she wouldn’t be well enough for work tomorrow. She hoped she would be; she hated letting people down. She also needed the money. But the thought of wandering round the streets of Oxford in the cold in her present state didn’t feel like the most sensible thing to do.
Making herself some breakfast, she recalled Adam’s words of caution yesterday, and his kindness. The kindness of strangers, she thought, was so much more palatable. Often benevolence from closer to home was harder to accept, mostly because it frequently came with too many strings.
Yesterday her sister had kept her promise and duly phoned to see how she was, but her main concern, apart from badgering Floriana about Christmas, was that under no circumstances was she to let on to their parents about the accident. Feeling that she was being warned – no, lectured – like a naughty child to do the right thing, Floriana had regretted she’d ever mentioned it to Ann.
Usually there was no problem with Christmas, because normally it was under Mum’s control and they all went home to her and Dad and Ann’s need to boss everyone about was held in check. This year Mum and Dad would be somewhere between Borneo and Vietnam on Christmas Day, on their way to Ho Chi Minh City. Mum had been unsure about being away during December – she had been all for choosing a different itinerary for a different time of the year – but in a rare moment of unyielding strong will, Dad had held firm and gone ahead and booked the cruise, saying Ann and Floriana were old enough to organise themselves in their absence. Which, of course, they were. Floriana had at once got it all perfectly planned, she and Sara would spend Christmas together, but then Sara’s family in Argentina had insisted she go back to them for the whole of December.
Plans, thought Floriana as she cautiously chewed on a piece of soft buttery toast – her jaw was still very tender – was there any point in making them? Before Seb’s card had arrived, she had planned to
It wouldn’t be so bad if it was only Ann and her husband, Paul, and their two children, but the whole Brown clan would be there – Paul’s parents, plus a stray uncle and Paul’s ultra sensible brother, Robert. Ann had some crazy notion that Robert was perfect for Floriana and that she was a fool not to appreciate how fond Robert was of her and that at her age she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Mum and Dad never went on about her still being single, but Ann had an unhealthy fixation about it and could always be relied upon to know why her younger sister was incapable of finding a decent man. It came down to many things, but chiefly it was her ‘ridiculous dress sense’ as Ann saw it. ‘You’re not a student any more,’ she would say in exaggerated bafflement at the latest quirky outfit Floriana had put together. ‘It’s time to grow up and settle down,’ was another refrain.
Settling down implied settling in Floriana’s mind and she didn’t want that. The sad truth was, for the last two years she’d lived with the realisation that if she couldn’t have Seb, she didn’t want anyone.
She certainly didn’t want her sister’s brother-in-law. In his late thirties – going on fifty – Robert was a personal injury lawyer and in the light of her accident, which Ann had admitted yesterday on the phone she had mentioned to Robert, she could just imagine what the hot topic of conversation would be if she joined the Brown clan for Christmas.
Now dressed, she took the stairs slowly – her head still ached and if she moved too quickly she felt dizzy. The swellings on her face had gone down a bit, but the technicolor bruising was increasing. Just call me freak-face, she thought as she reached the bottom step and winced as a sharp pain shot through her hip and back. She was beginning to worry that she wouldn’t be well enough for work tomorrow. She hoped she would be; she hated letting people down. She also needed the money. But the thought of wandering round the streets of Oxford in the cold in her present state didn’t feel like the most sensible thing to do.
Making herself some breakfast, she recalled Adam’s words of caution yesterday, and his kindness. The kindness of strangers, she thought, was so much more palatable. Often benevolence from closer to home was harder to accept, mostly because it frequently came with too many strings.
Yesterday her sister had kept her promise and duly phoned to see how she was, but her main concern, apart from badgering Floriana about Christmas, was that under no circumstances was she to let on to their parents about the accident. Feeling that she was being warned – no, lectured – like a naughty child to do the right thing, Floriana had regretted she’d ever mentioned it to Ann.
Usually there was no problem with Christmas, because normally it was under Mum’s control and they all went home to her and Dad and Ann’s need to boss everyone about was held in check. This year Mum and Dad would be somewhere between Borneo and Vietnam on Christmas Day, on their way to Ho Chi Minh City. Mum had been unsure about being away during December – she had been all for choosing a different itinerary for a different time of the year – but in a rare moment of unyielding strong will, Dad had held firm and gone ahead and booked the cruise, saying Ann and Floriana were old enough to organise themselves in their absence. Which, of course, they were. Floriana had at once got it all perfectly planned, she and Sara would spend Christmas together, but then Sara’s family in Argentina had insisted she go back to them for the whole of December.
Plans, thought Floriana as she cautiously chewed on a piece of soft buttery toast – her jaw was still very tender – was there any point in making them? Before Seb’s card had arrived, she had planned to
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