Free Christmas At Leo's - Memoirs Of A Houseboy by Gillibran Brown Page A

looking. Whenever I spoke to her on the phone, she claimed to be fine. She wasn’t. She had exit signs written all over her, metaphorically. I went into the kitchen, feeling as if my Adam’s apple was choking me. I took a couple of slow, deep breaths to calm myself.
    I made a mug of tea, going to the fridge to get out the milk. There was a carton of Birds Strawberry Trifle mix sitting on top of the fridge. I picked it up, examining the colourful illustration, smiling as childhood memory surfaced. Mum had always made a Birds Trifle at Christmas. It was a tradition. I used to help her make it on Christmas Eve. It was a lengthy process building up the constituent layers of the trifle: first the sponge and jelly, sometimes tinned fruit would be added, then the custard and finally the cream topping. I could still recall the sweet smell of the jelly crystals dissolving in the hot water and the creamy scent of the custard. I couldn’t wait for the decorative sprinkle bit at the end of the process. Mum would cut open the little packet and I’d carefully shake the chocolate sugar strands over the Dream Topping, a kind of synthetic cream. It would be put in the fridge ready to be served at teatime on Christmas Day. We’d sit on the couch, mum and me, eating it in front of the telly, watching whatever Christmas film was showing.
    After Frank, the tradition changed. The trifle was relegated to Boxing Day. It never tasted the same somehow.
    Putting the box down I opened the fridge. My brows pushed up in surprise. Champagne! Two bottles. Champagne hadn’t been a festive tradition, not one I recalled anyway. Mum had never been much of a drinker. Obviously traditions had changed in the years since I’d last spent a Christmas at home.
    I spotted the drinks the nurse had mentioned, little cartons of vitamin and calorie enriched milkshake style concoctions. I chose a strawberry flavour one, shook it and inserted the little straw it came with.
    Mum grimaced when I held out the carton. “Those things are revolting. Try.”
    I obliged, taking a small sip, suppressing a shudder. “Delicious, like a MacDonald’s shake.”
    “Liar.”
    I wiggled the carton. “It’s disgusting, but you need it. It’s for your own good. Drink it down fast to get it over with.”
    Smiling, she took the drink. “I used to say that to you when you were little and had to have medicine.”
    She drank the shake while I sipped at my tea. I glanced around the small front room, noting the festive decorations. “I see you’ve put up the old plaggy.”
    “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without it.” She laughed. “Frank hates it. He keeps nagging me to chuck it and get a new one, but I won’t.”
    The ‘plaggy’ is an artificial Christmas tree. It had been part of the festivities ever since I could remember. It was made of individual plastic ‘plaggy’ fir branches that had to be slotted into the plastic trunk in a particular order to make a perfect pyramid shaped tree. It was pretty in an obvious fake way. I used to get so excited when the box it lived in was brought down from the loft in early December. I’d beg for it to be brought down earlier, sometimes in October, but mum always held out until December.
    “You used to love dressing it, Gilli, do you remember?”
    “Yeah,” I grinned, “and then you’d redress it when I’d gone to bed.”
    “I tweaked, that’s all. You used to put all the tinsel on the same branch. It drove me mad. I’ve still got all the tree decorations you made when you were small. You loved making things, especially at Christmas. When I picked you up from school you’d be covered in paint and glitter.”
    “I remember making a cardboard star. I wanted to put red glitter on it, but Adam Pitt had used it all, so I had to use blue glitter. I got into trouble for daubing glue in his hair in revenge.”
    She groaned. “You could be so naughty at times. I used to dread seeing your teacher heading across the playground to