Page 80 of Five Gold Rings
‘So I’m a dick.’
‘A very tiny dick,’ she says, gesturing as much with her little finger. ‘You’re back tonight? Definitely? In time for cheese and mince pies?’ she tells me, as she takes refuge on the stairs.
‘Definitely, I’m all set.’
‘You sound sad. Have you been dumped by some mystery girlfriend?’ she says, unsympathetically. It’s possibly the searing realism that I need in this very moment. I need someone to give me perspective and make me laugh but what’s sad about all of this is that in order to have been dumped, Eve and I would have had to have been in a relationship first, and that hasn’t happened. But Eve is exactly where she needs to be. She’s safe, she’s with her people, she’s happy, and there had to be a point where I let her go.
‘In a way…’
I sit there in my car wondering how much to say because Carrie will go one of two ways. She will either mock me or show rage towards a woman she’s never met before, and I don’t think I want either. But in a moment where I’m deciding to flee, I felt like I needed to speak to my sister, the person to whom I’d be fleeing. I’ll never tell her that much.
Carrie senses me being ponderous about disclosing details of my love life to her. ‘Then come here, come and be surrounded by people who love you unconditionally. We have so much cheese.’
‘Brie?’
‘We’re not amateurs. Of course.’ Carrie spends a moment looking at my face, trying to work me out. ‘What’s up, little brother? You’re giving me sad un-Christmassy vibes here and youareChristmas.’
‘I am. But I’m just single at Christmas, and a girl I like doesn’t feel the same way. I’m allowed to be a little melancholy about this.’
‘Why doesn’t she like you? Is it your feet?’
‘What’s wrong with my feet?’
‘They kind of smell and you have unusually long toes. Did she get creeped out by them?’
I pause for a moment, adjusting my toes inside my shoes. Really?
‘Well, now I’m paranoid about my feet…’
‘The rest of you is very loveable though.’
It’s a strong line of banter between me and all the sisters that never grows old, that may be the one thing that carries me through Christmas. I always miss it, those sibling bonds because they are like glue; they are part of what raised you and understand you completely. A few years ago, when Dad got ill, those women became the reason I’m still standing. Carrie and I were on the frontline dealing with the emotional impact and trauma of it all. Carrie saw what it did to me, how it broke me, how it made me pull away from a profession I thought was my calling. She was there and present and got me back on my feet. She might just do the same now.
‘I just have one more thing to do before I set off,’ I tell her.
‘It’s not to do with the girl who’s possibly dumped you?’
‘No. I’ve spent the last two days delivering five last minute rings to people and I have one more to deliver.’
‘Rings?’ she asks, her face all scrunched up on screen. I shouldn’t tell her she has crow’s feet when she does that, should I?
‘As part of my gig at the jewellery shop. For proposals, weddings… ’Tis the season of last-minute romance…’
She smiles for a moment, and I realise that it’s been pretty special, to have witnessed all that love, all those grand gestures of romance, to have been a small part of all these relationships moving into new dizzying heights.
‘It’s taken you two days to deliver five rings? That’s a sucky delivery service. You’d not get a UPS job, that’s for sure.’
I laugh loudly and see her glad to have cheered me up.
‘Well, I get the dinner jacket now – it’s you trying to be fancy. You should have dressed up as Cupid, with a bow and a toga…’
‘That’s less fancy,’ I mention.
‘So, tell me, why the hesitancy?’
I look up at the building again. ‘I’m delivering it to a hospital.’
Both of us are silent and ponderous. I hadn’t even recognised the address when I was driving here. It’s not just any hospital, it’s one in Hammersmith where I did a rotation for three months, so I feel I know the bowels of this building intimately. However, going into any hospital always feels like trauma to me now. It makes me relive my dad’s suffering, the uncertain fragility of life, moments embedded in my mind for an eternity. She’s one of the very few who get it.