Free Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent

reason for his decline.
    I turned eighteen on Christmas Day. Helen and I exchanged gifts the evening before, when she called to Avalon. Helen said I was a cheap date because she’d only had to get me one combined birthday/Christmas gift. It was a
Star Wars
T-shirt (we’d seen
The Empire Strikes Back
by then), but I didn’t dare try it on in front of her. I told her it would be great for the summer. As I suspected, it was too small. I got her a pair of earrings made of pieces of coloured glass. She said they were lovely and that she’d been meaning to get her ears pierced anyway.
    I was angling with Helen to try sex again, but she said I’d put her off. My hand was red from being slapped away. That is my abiding memory of that Christmas Eve – me wheedling, her slapping.
    The big day started out as the usual family affair. We ate in the dining room instead of the kitchen. The table was set with linen and crystal, and Dad, for the first time since, well, since
that
time, made an effort to be on good form. He faked jollity and merriment and read the same lame jokes we’dheard every year from the Christmas crackers. He complimented the food, and although I could see how much it irked him, he ignored the amount I heaped on to my plate. I decided to take advantage of the birthday/Christmas Day amnesty and ate an entire box of Quality Street. Neither of them commented.
    We opened our presents. Among other things, I got a Rod Stewart
Greatest Hits
album that I really wanted. I had bought my mother a charm for her bracelet. I got her one every year. It was a tiny figurine of a ballet dancer. Mum had done ballet when she was young and could have studied it in London as a teenager but refused because she was scared of being homesick. Mum never went on holidays. She couldn’t bear to be away from Avalon for more than a day. As a twelve-year-old child, she had been painted doing exercises at the barre in the manner of Degas, and the large rosewood-framed canvas hung over the mantelpiece. She still practised her steps and did stretching exercises for hours every morning in front of the mirror in the dance room upstairs. She loved her new charm, but then I knew she would. I gave Dad a
Rumpole of the Bailey
book. He liked the television series, liked to complain how unrealistic it was, but would never miss it.
    ‘Thank you, son, very thoughtful.’ He seemed to be genuinely moved, and I began to feel a glimmer of
something
for him, and to wonder if all would be well. And then I thought of Christmas Day in Annie Doyle’s house, and her mum and dad and sister staring at the empty space at their Christmas table. I knew they were not having a good day.
    Dad wanted to make a fuss about the fact that I was eighteen, and gave a nice speech about how I was a man now and that soon I’d be out in the world, in charge of my own decisions, and that he knew I would make them proud. Mum tutted at the bit about me being out in the world, but pouredme a small glass of wine, my first legitimate glass of alcohol, and then presented me with an extra gift, something specifically from her, she said. It looked like a jewellery box, but when I opened its hinged lid there was a solid gold razor inside, nestled in a velvet mould. It was a family heirloom and had been her father’s.
    I knew this was momentous for her and that she wanted it to be so for me, but my father couldn’t help himself.
    ‘For God’s sake, Lydia, that’s ridiculous! Laurence doesn’t even shave yet,’ he said with a sneer. ‘He’s a late developer, aren’t you, boy?’
    It was true that I did not yet need a razor, but I was fully developed in every other way and was sorely tempted to tell him I’d already had sex. Mum was hastily trying to calm things down. Her refereeing skills were second to none. ‘Maybe he doesn’t need it quite yet, but he soon will!’ she said brightly, putting her hand firmly on my father’s arm.
    My father squirmed for a moment and said