Narrow Minds by Marie Browne Read Free Book Online Page B

plastic bag and grabbing one popped it into my mouth, then grinned hopefully at me and said, ‘Your real present’s downstairs.’
    I couldn’t be angry at him, he looked so forlorn. ‘Exactly how long did it take you to wrap up all this coal?’ I pointed to the pile of coal resting in my lap, carelessly dropping black dust all over our blue chequered duvet.
    â€˜About three hours.’ He shook his head. ‘It seemed like such a good idea at the time.’
    The thunder of feet interrupted us. Sam burst into the bedroom waving a DVD. ‘Look, look I got the new SpongeBob film, can we go and watch it?’
    Charlie, following hot on the heels of her brother, sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Thanks for the pressies.’ She grinned. ‘I especially liked the tiny bottle of Irish Cream.’
    â€˜Hmmm,’ I sighed, ‘I take it that’s already gone, has it?’
    She nodded. ‘And the chocolates, and the orange,’ she paused, ‘in fact I feel a bit sick.’ She frowned as she caught sight of the bed covered in coal. ‘What’s that?’
    â€˜Your mother hasn’t been very good this year,’ Geoff muttered, obviously determined to keep the joke going.
    Charlie gaped at the bed. ‘Oh, you didn’t …?’ she stepped around me and picked up one of the unopened presents. ‘Not every one … surely.’
    I scowled as Sam finally caught on to the joke and howled with laughter (obviously the same puerile jokes tickle both father and son).
    Geoff, faced with frowns from both me and Charlie shook his head. ‘Yes, I know, it was a bad idea.’ He climbed out of bed and reached for his jeans. ‘Let’s go and find Mum a real present shall we?’ He scuttled out of the room with Sam following hot on his heels.
    â€˜I thought it was funny Dad,’ Sam said in a loud theatrical whisper as they exited stage left.
    Charlie snorted and patted me on the arm. ‘Don’t worry, I bought you something nice,’ she said, grinning.
    The rest of the morning went fairly well, and after a huge dinner that included slightly burnt turkey and very undercooked roast potatoes, everyone settled down to their various tasks. Sam and Amelia spent most of the afternoon watching SpongeBob, the two of them laughing uproariously at the silly jokes (I do think that Amelia’s extreme humour may have been slightly Southern Comfort-fuelled). Charlie and Huw played World of Warcraft and Geoff played with his new electrical testing gadget. With all of the others engaged, I finally got the chance to set up my new laptop. Well, I looked at it for a while and then called Geoff over to fix it for me; it seemed the right thing to do after all he had put me through.
    That evening, out in the kitchen, Amelia was helping me with the washing up, she was still fairly tipsy but was now sporting a major headache as well.
    â€˜So how’s the boat hunting going?’ She paused to wash a couple of paracetamol down with a large glass of water. ‘Have you got anything yet?’
    â€˜Nope.’ I didn’t really want to talk about this, I was feeling slightly guilty about the money I had spent over Christmas, I knew it had severely knocked our bank account around.
    She picked up a saucepan and began an industrious if ineffectual drying movement. ‘So what are you going to do?’
    Leaning on the edge of the sink I sighed. ‘I don’t know, Mills, I really don’t. Even if I find a boat, I don’t think anyone else wants to move again.’ I tailed off, not knowing what to say.
    Amelia frowned. ‘I didn’t want to be the one to tell you.’ She nodded toward the lounge and its sleepy, overfed occupants. ‘But Charlie was saying earlier that there was no way she was going to move on to a boat again.’
    â€˜I know.’ I stirred the murky water around in the sink, I could feel tears