Chapter 20: Christmas, Late

I answered him on a card, in pencil, and I gave it to Margaret on her front step.

It had three words on it.

"She was a girl."

Margaret read it and pressed her lips together hard.

"I'll take it to him myself," she said. "I won't read it aloud.

"And I won't let him say anything to you about it."

"Thank you."

"Come in. You're letting the cold into my hall."

Margaret held her Christmas on the third Saturday of January.

She said we had spent the real one in a fight, and the turkey had been wasted on a lecture.

This time the table was laid for five, and she had made Gethin carry in two extra chairs.

His father arrived first, from Swansea, in a good tweed jacket, with a carrier bag of Welsh cakes.

He was a big, slow, cheerful man who had driven buses for forty years.

He took Margaret's hand in both of his.

"Mrs Wrenfield, lovely house," he said. "We came in by the side gate. I thought it was a shed."

"It is a gate," Margaret said.

"I'm sure it is. I'm a visitor."

Gethin's sister came behind him, with a green scarf and her brother's exact jaw.

She looked me up and down once.

"So you're the lodger," she said.

"I'm the lodger."

"He said you'd be thin and sad. You're only thin."

"Come on," Gethin said to his sister.

"I'm only saying she's taller than he said," his sister said.

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