The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

not help thinking). Only when all the other gifts had been opened and the sitting room floor was covered in torn paper and bits of sticky tape, did Bruce take her by the hand and lead her across the hall and into the dining room, where he had secretly hung the Morisot reproduction on the chimney breast late the night before.

Wendy was speechless. She could only turn and bury her face in his chest, as Bruce’s parents and the children crowded into the room behind them. It was the clearest possible sign, she thought, that she had been forgiven.

The celebrations were such a success that if Bruce’s mother considered anything sub-standard, she did not think to mention it. Christmas lunch was perfect, there was no squabbling over Monopoly or Charades, and no one cavilled about joining in with the Boxing Day walk, regardless of what was showing on television. When Tara insisted on telephoning ‘Bob’ and his family on Christmas morning, no one made a big thing of it. It was only after Bruce had set off to drive Tara and his parents to the station – the senior Thorntons homeward bound, Tara on another trip south to see in the New Year with Robert and his family – that Wendy had a real opportunity to stand before the fireplace in the dining room and have a long, uninterrupted look at her picture. She had read somewhere that the positioning of a painting is all important. It had to be hung in the right light, and surely that must be the explanation here. The painting was evidently in the wrong place. How else to explain the way the woman’s expression was so sad, the way she looked so tired as she rested her face against her hand while she watched over the sleeping infant? It was only when Wendy gave her full attention to the child, lying unnaturally pale behind the drapes, that she suddenly understood. The baby was dead.

Silly, she told herself. It’s just the light.

She decided to put off stripping the bed in the guest room until tomorrow. Nor would she get the hoover out and deal with the day’s shedding of needles from the tree. (A real tree was all very well, but it did dry out fearfully quickly in a room with the benefit of both central heating and a log fire.) It was still the holidays – the more so with the departure of Bruce’s parents – and she was entitled to a break. She would go and make herself a well-deserved cup of tea. She paused to glance in at the sitting room where Jamie sat cross-legged on the rug, watching some old adventure film – Jason and the Argonauts perhaps? The 7th Voyage of Sinbad? It was such a lovely scene, she thought. The room decorated with their own evergreens, the tree dripping with baubles and twinkling fairy lights. The Ashes lent itself to moments like this. There had been a scattering of snow on Boxing Day – nothing to get excited about, not enough for a snowman or a snowball fight, but enough to outline windowsills, to make the view from the gate like something from the front of a Christmas card. She had always known the house would look wonderful at Christmastime.

The kitchen bore evidence of the season too, dotted about with the detritus of that period between Christmas and New Year. A discarded novelty from a cracker lying on a windowsill, the big platter which they only ever used for the turkey standing out on the surface, waiting to be put away on a shelf that only Bruce could comfortably reach, and a part-eaten box of cheese biscuits, for which there was no space available in the cupboard, standing alongside it. When she opened the fridge, she was confronted by various clingfilmed leftovers which no one was ever likely to eat. Who wanted cold stuffing?

As she shut the fridge door, milk in hand, she glanced around the room and smiled. It had come to life, she thought, this once sad, neglected building. Their very first Christmas here. Full of warmth and happiness, just as she had imagined. ‘Thank you, house,’ she said.

‘Mam!’ The urgency of Jamie’s yell sent her racing back to the sitting room, still holding the container of milk.

‘Oh my God! Jamie, get back.’

For a few seconds she stood transfixed in the doorway, staring at the surreal site. Where a few minutes before there had been one fire cheerfully burning in the grate, the original now had a fellow, a much smaller blaze, centred on the hearth rug.

‘Quickly, to me.’ She beckoned her son urgently as he skipped across the room to join her. ‘Run upstairs,’ she ordered. ‘And tell Katie to come down. Then you are both to go straight outside. Both of you, do you understand?’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to put out the fire.’ I have to, she thought. If I don’t do it right away, it’ll get across to the Christmas tree and that will go up like a torch and set the whole house ablaze. Having sent Jamie on his way, she raced back to the kitchen, grabbed the biggest vase from the cupboard and filled it with cold water. As she ran back up the hall, she heard the children’s voices on the landing.

‘Hurry up!’ she shouted. ‘Get out of the house!’

In truth, the fire on the rug was a small one. A single vase of water quenched the most serious flames, though it created a billow of smoke, through which she could still see glowing embers. She passed the children in the hall as she was dashing back to the kitchen. ‘Get outside,’ she repeated, not pausing for discussion or explanation.

A second vase full of water appeared to extinguish everything, but she made sure of the job, retracing her steps another three times. By now the sitting room was full of smoke – or more likely steam – and