Aphrodite's Hat Read Free Page B

…’ Emily’s heart, bunched hard, was hurting under her ribs.
    â€˜Yes, but Lionel … you know, Mum. It’s better, really …’
    â€˜It looks as if it’ll be just the two of us for Christmas. What would you like to do?’ she said that evening.
    â€˜Nothing. Christmas is best avoided.’ He didn’t even call it ‘humbug’, a word which at least has a touch of life to it.
    â€˜We could always go to church.’
    â€˜Over my dead body!’
    â€˜You don’t want me to make any preparations?’
    â€˜You please yourself. You always do.’
    How has this happened? she asked herself, putting on her old coat to creep out to the park. It was as if she had been in an accident so serious she had not even noticed she was damaged until she tried to walk. Something drastic seemed to have occurred in the region of her spine. Returning home she rang Deb, but a message announced she would be away till the New Year. Once she and Deb had not gone out for an evening without informing each other of their respective movements.
    I am alone, Emily said to herself, kneeling by the phone still in her coat. And I have done this to myself. The admission of responsibility made nothing better.
    On Christmas morning, Emily woke before Lionel, whose body lay in the bed, well away from hers, his mouth a little open and a slight dribble of spittle visible on his chin. In the past, she might have felt tender at so naked a show of vulnerability. Now she didn’t even feel disgust. Anxious not to wake him, she slid out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen to make herself tea. Outside there was a thick rime on the lawn and she watched a coal tit peck ferociously at the bacon rind she had hung for the birds on the lilac tree. A white lilac, which she had bought when she and Lionel married. It had never bloomed.
    A card – one of the few they had received that year – from Beth and Kate, of the magi, on camels, following the star, was propped on the table. I’ll go to church, she thought. That at least will be some kind of celebration.
    Having nothing better to do, Emily washed the kitchen floor before putting on boots and gloves for the walk to church. She thought of popping back upstairs to say where she was off to. Maybe better to leave a note which he could ignore if he chose. On the back of the envelope from Beth and Kate’s card, she wrote, ‘Gone to church’. Then, after a moment’s reflection, she added, ‘Join me, if you like’.
    As is so often the case when one has all the time in the world, by the time Emily set out for the service she was pressed and had to hurry. The pews were already packed when she arrived. She squeezed her way past a row of unyielding knees to a seat near the back of the church and knelt and made a silent prayer: Please, let it come right in the end.
    She was singing ‘O Come All You Faithful’ when she saw Lionel. He had obviously arrived after her and was standing unobtrusively in one of the side aisles. Well, what a nice surprise – so prayers were sometimes answered. He had repented and come after her. They could walk home together, arm in arm, maybe through the park, and have a companionable Christmas after all.
    After the service, Emily looked about for her husband but he must have slipped away. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her to know he was in church. But at least he had joined her, which was a start.
    Emily’s heart was uncommonly buoyant as she walked back beneath the bright December sky. Never say die, she said to herself. Back home, she lit the oven for the farm chicken she had bought just in case. Looking out of the window, she saw that the tits had finished off the bacon rind and the lilac had blossomed, a delicate white, the colour of the frost. But that was strange. And when she went upstairs in search of Lionel, she found him where she had left him in bed that morning – stone