Page 61 of Break the Ice

‘Watch me,’ she says, reaching for the phone.

I hold it high and she grits her teeth but then tickles my armpit, and I cave and laugh, and she stops for a moment as if surprised to be close to me again. She sticks her tongue out at me and, despite wanting to kiss her again, to have the weight of her body on mine again, I shake my head. Not here, not now. There are children in the immediate vicinity. Instead, she grins and plants a slow but soothing kiss on my forehead that is strangely intimate and needed.

‘LUNCH! LUNCH IS READY! COME GET IT!’ a voice thunders up the stairs, and there’s a collective sound of footsteps and people gathering in the hallway.

I turn to look at Phoebe, my arm still outstretched. She grins and pulls the tie from her hair, and her curls spring to life again.

‘You are spared, Avery. I will go for her another day,’ she says. ‘The girl is a damn fool for not wanting to marry you.’

Really? I want to say, but the word sticks in my throat because that was nice, kind – spiked with real authenticity. I think also it can so easily feel like you were the problem, the reason why it ended. She punches my arm playfully and flashes her trademark smile, wide and full of unbridled emotion. ‘Come on, we don’t think about shitbox exes on Christmas Day. We think about turkey and cranberry and big fat roasties.’ She pulls me out of bed and gives me one last hug and I find myself holding on to her embrace warmly.

‘Thank you,’ I mutter.

‘For what?’ she says, taking a step back to look me in the eye. For this, for warmth, for being the ultimate Christmas distraction. For being unlike any other person I’ve known. But I’m wary of saying something even remotely gushing for fear of her ribbing me.

‘For letting me borrow your dad’s pants, of course. I like the stretchy waistband,’ I tell her.

‘Amen to that, Americano. Come – let’s EAT.’

TWENTY-NINE

PHOEBE

‘What do you mean you don’t have crackers?’ I ask Joshua as he sits looking down his cracker like a telescope. Theo, on the other side of him, laughs. There is always an air of bedlam about our Christmas dinner table. It’s three tables pieced together; my dad’s normal dining room table, his wallpapering table, and a plastic table from the garden that we rely heavily on during barbecue season. But we cover them and make them look fancy. Skye always writes our names on home-made tags – this year she has attached them to candy canes – and it’s a big assorted mishmash of crockery, glasses, napkins and jars of old mustard that I suspect have been in my dad’s fridge since the dawn of time. But there is something very vibrant about it all, how it’s filled with life and conversation and giant mounds of roast vegetables. Such is the way of having siblings who own a restaurant; the food will never ever disappoint, and that is something they learned from our Spanish mother.

‘I sincerely have no idea what that is. Is my cutlery in here?’ Joshua says, still looking in the cracker.

‘The cutlery’s on the table,’ I tell him. I don’t know why he sometimes does this and makes me question his supposed genius. ‘Try again?’

‘Is there candy in here?’ he asks, shaking it.

But he’s not joking, he really does not know what that is. I get him to cross his arms. ‘After three, pull.’

‘Pull?’ he says.

I do a yanking action with my hand. ‘Pull, hard.’ Because there is nothing more embarrassing than losing your end of the cracker to a nine-year-old.

‘Are we all organised down there then?’ my dad says as we all arrange ourselves. ‘Three… two… one!’

I laugh at Joshua’s shocked expression when there’s a collective bang, like he didn’t expect that at all.

‘What did you get, Joshua?’ Theo asks, and helps him unfurl the contents of his cracker, and I see that silly happy expression on his face again as he looks around the table to see what people are doing. I take out my purple paper crown and put it on.

‘You must also wear yours, ’tis the rules,’ I tell him. He rests the hat on his tousled hair and then looks through the rest of his cracker winnings. ‘Look at that, you got a mini calculator. Dad!’ I shout down to the end of the table. ‘These crackers are giving luxury.’

‘It’s on a keyring! I can wear it on my belt loop!’ Joshua says, a little excitedly. I really hope he doesn’t. ‘What did you get?’

‘I got a very little pack of playing cards,’ I tell him.

‘It’s like Christmas wedding favours,’ he says, picking up one half of his cracker and examining it again. ‘I also got a joke.’

‘As is the tradition. Go on, hit me,’ I say.

‘What do you get if you eat Christmas decorations?’ he asks me and Theo. We both shrug and shake our heads. ‘Tinselitis! Get it?’ He laughs raucously and I see my dad chuckling. ‘Tell me yours?’ he asks.

‘Who is Santa’s favourite singer?’

Joshua shakes his head.