While Shepherds Washed My Socks Read online

  “Please,” I groaned into the pillow. “Don’t. I’ve got a headache. The sort that makes your eyes water. It’s awful.”

  “Huh…” she mumbled, and sat down at the computer instead of saying any more.

  That’s right. My Best Friend For Now was content to surf eBay while I cried shamefully on her bed, and I missed you more than ever.

  #15 Less Miserable

  On Crimby Eve evening, we watched The Simpsons as usual. This year it wasn’t the “let’s all be merry in front of Channel 4 because we can’t afford Sky” version – it was a DVD. Sure, me and Charlie had already seen most of it in Art, but it went some way to make us feel less miserable than we had the past two weeks.

  We lounged in the living room, eating mince pies (I say eating, but in reality I mean hoovering up the little left of the 24-pack that the dogs had discovered in the kitchen) and trying not to puncture the eight years new teddy-shaped blow-up chair (Kitty), rustle the beanbag (Zak), or get swallowed up by one of Harry’s daunting leather sofas.

  The last ten minutes or so I’d spent absentmindedly snapping pictures of the decorations (and covert pictures of my siblings) with the phone-camera I’d finally figured out how to use. OK, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t taken a couple of unflattering self-shots with the interior lens upon the unknowing suggestion of Charlie who I could see mooning over his own pimply face on the rug. It was around my fourth try, with the sepia filter on, that his phone emitted a rude Dink! and frightened the fluff out of the seven of us, all three dogs and possibly our unborn sibling.

  I craned my neck as much as possible undetected.

  call me. Jordy. Jordy! Intriguing.

  Charlie tapped out: Nah.

  Trust him to feel the need to respond, because ignoring his best bud flat out just wouldn’t transfer sulkily enough over possibly-undelivered text.

  A moment later the phone rang. Charlie looked a little startled and panicked, dismissing it either intentionally or unintentionally. This was even more interesting than our favourite dysfunctional yellow family!

  Dink!

  Charlie groaned. 1 new voicemail message. He keyed in the appropriate number, still fumbling edgily. What on earth could be his problem? The way I understood it, no one in our year group was on so much as speaking terms with him after his embarrassing moment – why would he be so disgruntled when someone as wonderful as Jordy tried?

  “-ry I said that. Dunno why I did it really.”

  Perfect! He’d somehow hit speakerphone.

  “It’s gettin’ to me cozza Christmas an’ all that, an’ I wannid to say I still wanna be mates.”

  Bless him!

  Jordy, I mean. Charlie looked aghast. Zak and Aimee’s full attention was on the message, and even Kitty had looked up from the television with interest. But it was what came out of that tiny black speaker next that really struck me as special.

  “Coz like, nobody’s perfect and you can’t impress everyone even if you try. Merry Christmas, man.”

  One small, inconsequential thing somebody says can bring you this weird comfort. Somebody who didn’t mean it for you, and has probably already forgotten about it. Somebody like Jordy Johnson.

  I don’t know why it meant so much to me, but less than a day after I’d been curled in a ball on Kay’s bed, lamenting the superficial friendship values of a sister half my age, it was exactly what I needed to hear. I’m not usually the type to take advice that was directed at someone else – the kind of betrayal I’d once committed when your Aquarius horoscope seemed to apply more to myself – but in what I’d come to associate as my forty-eight hours of need, it being Jordy’s voice meant the world.

  * * *

  Some fifteen minutes later, the munching and watching was interrupted once more.

  “What time does Santa come?”

  “Twelve o’ clock, Kit,” Zak reminded her. “It’s twelve in different parts of the world at different times.”

  “So it’s twelve o’ clock now, somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “When is it twelve o’ clock in Australia? If I phone Lioum then he will get to see Santa!”

  “I don’t know! I’m not bloody Jesus,” Zak exploded. “He’ll have to be asleep anyway or Santa won’t come, duhh!”

  “He’s just jelly because I am,” said Charlie, unnecessarily.

  Zak kicked him with a socked foot. “Oh yeah? Look whose birthday is just nine days away!”

  “Yeah, we know…”

  Harry appeared to wither from behind his newspaper. “Not to burst your bubble, Zak, but the pre-order list is about eleven years long. And by then you’ll have a job and a car of your own.”

  “You can’t mean the Wii!” Zak wailed. “Most people are saving up for the PlayStation! You mean you haven’t got it yet?!”

  As far as I knew, he hadn’t got anything yet. This was the first I’d heard of Harry having some sort of present plans.

  “’Fraid I do.” Harry shrugged.

  Zak fell off his beanbag theatrically. “Nooooo! That’s not possible! This is the first time anyone ever offered me something so expensive!”

  “We’ll try our hardest,” said Mum, flatly, looking about to nod off right there.

  “Hang on! Aren’t those things meant to be radioactive?” panicked Charlie.

  Harry was starting to deflate as well. “Charlie, what?”

  “Wireless things…” mumbled my anguished twin. “Like wireless internet and wireless controllers and Bluetooth and stuff… I’m not sleeping in the same room as something that gives you cancer!”

  “It’s going on the downstairs telly,” laughed an equally tired Harry, taking him exactly 0% seriously. “Anyway, it wouldn’t be like that when it’s switched off.”

  “I’m not giving myself a brain tumour to play wireless tennis indoors!” Charlie whinged, slamming up to his room, probably to get an early night and nightmare away about all the latest technology in private.

  Harry smirked. “D’you think he’d stop wasting so much credit if I told him that new phone of his was also carcinogenic?”

  “Is it?” Kitty asked, suddenly, after a couple of minutes figuring out what he’d meant. She shuffled away from the charger which was plugged into a socket on the extension cord under the TV cabinet.

  Great, I thought. Even seven year olds go all panicky over tech rumours these days.

  “No, Kitty…” I just about crumbled, not entirely sure that this was true. I simply didn’t want to give my lil sis a chronic fear of telephones for the rest of her life; I have a tough enough time myself with my nervous phone disposition whenever it’s time to ring up the library for overdue or even the speaking clock. I blame the majority of my life up until Harry being spent discouraged from going near the phone, and not to mention the amount of time it was cut off for.

  #16 My Very Own Almost-Secret Santa Mission

  “Has Santa been yet?”

  “No,” I croaked. “Probably not, Kit.”

  “What time’s it?”

  I leant over and bleep!ed my phone alight, far too tired to care if it might be radioactive. It said 2:00am. “Eleven o’ clock.”

  Of course “Santa” hadn’t been yet. But if Kitty thought that he always came at twelve, and nobody had tiptoed in yet to stuff our stockings, then she’d probably remain awake until she spotted such an intruder. I counted on her finding her way to the land of nod sometime before the first cracks of light made their way past the curtains.

  “S’it twelve yet?”

  “No, it’s still eleven.” I turned over and put the pillow over my head.”

  “Now?”

  “One minute past.”

  “You didn’t even look at the clock!”

  “I’m counting in my head,” I promised, leaning over to the table again. “And I was right – one minute past.”

  “Now?”

  Hastily I turned the phone over, not trusting it to dim down before she came over, nor avoid bleep!ing a
nd illuminating with any lost “Merry Crimcrim” midnight texts still lurking on the airwaves. “Come and get in my bed. Santa won’t visit unless you’re asleep, y’know.”

  “But what if I can’t sleep?” she wavered, hovering beside her bed as if to say she wasn’t sure how many Beanie Babies needed to join us tonight. “What if I’m an unsongkneeapp?”

  “You’re not an insomniac,” I reassured her. “Your cuddlies can keep watch for Santa. They’ll tell you that they saw him. Hop in.” I shuffled over a bit and pulled the pillow, half the duvet and my Bagpuss-cased hot water bottle over my head, burnt my ear, and sighed. “Now remember, go to sleep,” I added as I felt a warm sister land on the mattress and heard the tissh! of at least eight beanbag kittens plop beside my head.

  At around ten past three, a quick kick in the stocking direction let me know that still nobody had been. That or the Grand Authority had searched by mobile number and mistaken me for a bad, bad girl. (Keisha.)

  I slid out of bed and into my slippers, giving Kit’s stocking an experimental pat just in case my nutsest nightmare had come true, or we’d been given only vouchers.

  I crept out of my room and down both flights of stairs into the kitchen. Through the window I could see that Santa’s milk and one salvaged whole mince pie still lay on the patio table untouched. Mum and Harry were asleep in the living room in front of pro wrestling – my best bet was that they’d noddled in front of the DVD, as the player switches back to TV as soon as it’s finished the Play All run. (Which is definitely better than sitting idle on a repeating menu screen, or showing that zebra documentary you get after a video.)

  They looked knackered. I didn’t want to wake them up. In a way I thought they would think me selfish for waiting up all night in case of presents. I was just so certain that nobody else knew how responsible I felt for Kitty’s happiness. Instead, in a marvellous and delusionally kind state of mind, I pootled off upstairs to the airing cupboard and brought down the sack of Zodiac Pound Shop stocking fillers, each in a sandwich bag with a name on, and tiptoed around the house delivering them to their rightful recipients. I stuck a Post-It note on Harry’s forehead, saying:

  I’ve delivered the presents; don’t panic – Harley.

  With that, I felt so much better about sleeping, even if it had to be in the vacant and cold sister-smelling bed, due to a Kitty and her litter now stretched out over my entire mattress.

  Or would’ve done, if I hadn’t stumbled into Kay on my way for a wee.

  “What’re you doing here?!” I hissed, paranoid that she’d been perving on Charlie while he slept.

  “I felt bad…” she mumbled, tiredly. “And I couldn’t sleep. So I switched the present I bought Kitty with the one from you.”

  “Why would you do that?” I asked, incredulously. The philanthropic intentions flew right over my head in my sleepy panic. “Why, why, why would you sneak into our house at gone three in the morning and do that?”

  “Because my present is better, OK!” she explained, tactlessly. “It was more expensive and I didn’t think, and I was just lying awake imagining how she’s going to like me better than you come morning, and how it isn’t really fair. On you, I mean.”

  After that, it was a miracle I got any sleep at all. It was probably four before I managed to stop wondering what on earth she’d even bought. If my presents hadn’t been so piddly cheap, I’d be worried about my reputation for purchasing a Devon gift, but in the end I had to figure it was safe to assume Kay was right about this.

  #17 Long-Suffering Sibs, More Tortoises, & 50% More Free!

  “Santa’s been!”

  “Has he now?” I murmured, hoping I sounded like a half-asleep but well-rested, sweetly-nice older sister, and not a grouchy, grumbly, groggy grump of a girl.

  “Yes, he has! He HAS!”

  I couldn’t really be awake – my thirteen-and-a-bit year old twin brother was bouncing up and down on the end of the bed fully-clothed before eight on a Monday morning in the holidays! (As opposed, of course, to his usual position still sprawled out in his own bed in his –yeurgh- boxers, dreaming radioactive dreams and refusing to leave his scrungy-grungy lair even for a family Crimby.)

  Oh, hang on. This was real life. Real life, just the way it is in a real(ly dysfunctional) family.

  “Look, Kitty! Santa’s been!”

  Ah, right. Charlie was doing the long-suffering older sibling bit so I could sleep more.

  Or maybe not:

  “Mmm, choccy coins…” he teased, trying to get me out of bed by eating my food over by her side.

  I launched myself over there and swatted him. “Get your own.”

  He disappeared, only to reappear with his own stuff. “And a remote control mini!” he enthused. “With a Union Jack on top!”

  “It’s only a mini mini,” said Zak, who’d sprung into the room with him in genuine morning bubbliness.

  “What’ve you got, Kitty?” I asked. (Even though I knew.)

  Kitty scrambled out of my bed, and rushed to investigate. She tipped her stocking out onto the warm spot I very much I wished to occupy again. A Bratz mini-makeup kit, matching chocolate coins (matching both with ours and with each other – these cheap 99p store versions didn’t even vary in size), a pink and purple slinky, a pair of stabilised roller skates?

  So someone had been in…

  “Photo! Say cheese!”

  “No way!” squealed Aimee, as Harry shot her in the face with Zak’s new water pistol camera. “I hate you all!” she bawled, going to haul the duvet back over her wet, blonde head – but she didn’t get that far.

  Something clicked in the background, and Aimee froze.

  “That was the real camera!” Zak cackled. “And it plugs straight into the computer to email to all your mates. And Ben.”

  “No!” she gasped, soggily, outraged and unable to take a joke.

  So Zak had been the first to make any light of the four of us sharing email…

  * * *

  After Crimby lunch (i.e. a Morrison’s microwaveable roast dinner each, as Mum was far too tired to cook and Harry didn’t trust himself to transition to our gas stove yet), we sat around (what was left of) the Christmas tree to open the big presents.

  The presents that hadn’t been there the night before. They were now perched on cardboard boxes to keep them off the carpet (which still smelled badly of wee), but they were very much there, and they were many, compared to any year before.

  Kitty went first, being the youngest (and if all went to plan, that would no longer be true this time next year). She got a children’s cook book, paint-your-own pony, and a pencilcase with cats on from Mum and Harry – and then on top of that, her big present was a girls’ Meccano set (a Harry idea, obviously out of total sickness about how Aimee turned out). Next, she unwrapped the lucky bag, sticker book, and tiara.

  “You’ve still got a big present left, Kit,” said Zak, helpfully, after five minutes of patience. He was twitching to get to his turn, and I was on his side, because I really, really wanted to know what Kay had bought for her that was so much better than my gifts.

  Kitty ignored him. She was by now wearing the tiara, had her lucky bag candy hearts arranged by colour (undoubtedly to force me to read out the phrases later), and was already engrossed in designing her dream house with the sheaths and sheaths of stickers in the laminate fold-up house that had turned out to be well worth the £3.50.

  “Kitty…” said Mum. “You need to unwrap your prezzie from Harley so that we can move on to Zak’s turn.”

  “Is Devon coming today?” asked Kitty, blanking Mum and Zak.

  “Probably,” I sighed. It would be very unlike her to shy away from the festivities in our tumbledown house. Next door, Eileen had a pre-lit white plastic tabletop tree, and she kept all the presents hidden under the coffee table out of sight and out of mind. Kay’s room was practically Narnia all year round, but she’d made clear quite how lonely that was.

  “Yay!”


  “Perhaps she can have it later,” suggested Harry, realising that it might be a bit unfair to prise Kit away from her enjoyment of the presents she already had.

  I felt mixed up and sick, really. I had been the one who purchased the things she was ignoring us for, and it hurt to think that she might’ve dismissed them rudely if she knew that they weren’t from Kay. Sure, she looked like she was having fun, but it had to be the wilful misunderstanding keeping her from being remotely as curious as I was.

  “Yeah, my turn!” announced Zak, boisterously, tearing the wrapping paper off the empty game box that was already in his hand. (It had a piece of paper slipped under the plastic protector with “I.O.U one Wii game” written on it in Harry’s handwriting.) “Thanks Mum! Thanks Harry!” With that, he was on to the next one. (Prying Aussies should note that Zak has always been the sonic-speed gift unwrapper – I remember how the year he was nearly three, he burned through everyone’s gifts as soon as he got downstairs.)

  Once finished, he proudly produced the present he had got for Charlie. I held my breath. Last year when he’d got Kitty, he’d tried giving the rest of us a prank present on top of the Secret Santa, but since it had to be from things he could find around the house, his ideas were less than funny. Mum’s had been an empty chocolate box, and Charlie’s had been a Baby Born nappy, while mine was a box of dog poo bags.

  Charlie gave his best poker face as he carefully removed the giftwrap to reveal … his own copy of Pokémon Ruby. “Ha ha, very funny,” he tutted.

  “No, you have to actually look on there. I caught Groudon for you!”

  Charlie and I had never been very good at Pokémon, so it was a legitimate gift where Zak was concerned – no matter that neither of us had touched the games since we started Year 8.

  “Oh, well that’s cool. Thanks man.”

  Mine and Charlie’s other presents were basically underwear, fleeces, wellies and money, as much as we cringed at the first part in front of Harry. I guess at least I just got stripy knickers and white bras – Charlie’s Superman pants were easily more embarrassing.

  Charlie presented Aimee with a roll-on deodorant, “because if we absolutely have to smell you, please don’t give asthma attacks to people who don’t even have asthma”.

  Aimee bought me a Pound Shop periscope. Charming. And that was pretty much it.