Tuesday & Max

16

CHESTNUTS ROASTING

ON AN OPEN FIRE

JACK FROST NIPPING

AT YOUR NOSE

When college breaks for Christmas, Tuesday finds herself longing to go back for the first time ever. It isn't the subjects she wants to return to (she sits by herself, doodling absently, in all classes aside from Media, where she sits with Max) but her night-time meetings with the drama club instead.

On Christmas Eve, Julia knocks on her bedroom door and steps inside, feet quiet in their fluffy slippers. Tuesday doesn't look over immediately, knee-deep in material, and finishes what she's doing on one of her mannequins before glancing over.

When she does, Julia is smiling widely.

"What?"

"I dunno, I dunno," Julia shrugs, looking round the room. "It's just nice."

"What's nice?"

"To see you happy. To see you working so hard." She waves at Tuesday's original mannequin, which has multiplied by four out of necessity.

Tuesday rolls her eyes, but Julia's pleasure is contagious. Her chest feels warm, tightens ever so slightly, and she turns back to her work with slightly blurry eyes.

"Do you want your present?"

She looks back. Julia's question is genuine and she leans against the doorframe, eyebrows up.

"No! It's not Christmas."

"It is. It's five past twelve."

Tuesday pauses. Her mother never let her open presents early, maintaining that it ruined the day if there was nothing to open. Then she grins. "Can I?"

Julia backs out of the room, toward the sitting room, motioning wildly. "Please, I can't bear it. I think you're going to love it."

The box sits beside the old, spindly fold-out tree that Julia has decorated in far too much tinsel, the twinkling lights reflecting off its shiny paper. It's big and Tuesday feels her excitement rising.

Why is that? Why does the size of the gift still thrill her the way it did when she was a child?

She sits next to it, tears off the wrapping paper with one more excited nod from Julia, and wants to cry when she sees the image on the side of the box.

It's a sewing machine.

Before college, she'd stitched everything she made by hand, painstakingly. When she started working with the drama club, she got access to the college's textile department and their stained, battered old machines that needed replacing.

But now, she has this one.

Julia has chosen possibly the prettiest machine Tuesday has ever seen. Its background is a clean white, its shape and style a modern-retro clash, and is covered in delicate little pink, blue and mustard-coloured flowers.

"Julia!" Tuesday shrieks, because she can't get anything else coherent out.

Julia darts forward and perches on the couch seat nearest her. "Do you like it?" she asks.

"Do I like it? Are you kidding me?"

Julia laughs.

"Thank you so much."

"You're welcome."

"You have no idea how much this is going to help me with the stuff for the musical. How did you-where did you-?"

"I can't wait to see what you make!"

"How did you afford this?" Tuesday asks, face dropping slightly. Her own gift for Julia - a shower and bath giftset from Boots and some cute office stationary - completely pales in comparison to this, and guilt gnaws away at her belly. Suddenly, sitting there with her aunt, she can think of a hundred thousand more meaningful gifts she could have purchased.

"You can't ask that," Julia scolds lightly. "It's a gift. And it doesn't matter, it's Christmas. You deserve it. You're doing so well at college."

"I don't know about that," Tuesday says, thinking back to the C she recently achieved in her English coursework. "But thanks. Thank you."

Julia scoffs, understanding immediately what Tuesday means. "You're doing your best," she says. "You're doing well enough that you'll get into university when you apply."

Tuesday looks up quickly, but doesn't argue.

"If you apply," Julia corrects herself. "Anyway, we don't need to get into all that again. You're doing so well with the theatre stuff, and it's been nice to have Candice popping over here, and Harry, he's so great, and those nice girls you made all that curtain dresses with. And Max."

Does Julia's smile have a slightly pensive edge to it when she acknowledges Max, or is Tuesday imagining it?

"I'm just glad you're not lonely," she finishes, then leans forward and fishes another gift out from behind the sewing machine box. "Open this one next."

"You got me something else?!"

"It's just something little!"

Tuesday slides this smaller, much squishier gift out of its paper and smiles as soft cloth flows into her lap. She unfolds it to reveal a jersey pyjama set with cuffed wrists and ankles, deep purple with a bright pattern all over them. The pattern is hand-drawn-style blue mountains, connected with little pink ski lifts.

"These are so cool."

"When me and your mom were little, Nan always used to do this tradition where we'd have one present to open on Christmas Eve, and it was always pyjamas." Julia's eyes are faraway, drenched in nostalgia as she shares. "We'd put them on and we'd all change our beds so that we had the comfiest, cleanest, nicest sleep ever before Christmas Day." She meets Tuesday's eyes again. "Your mom never let you open stuff early, but I thought-I thought maybe we could start doing that now. Me and you."

"Okay," Tuesday says quietly.

"Is that okay?" Julia frowns. "We don't have to-if you-if-"

"No. Let's do that. I want to do that from now on."

They smile at each other, and Tuesday notices Julia's old, frayed, faded and mismatched pyjamas. Even the front lips of her slippers are worn, coming apart beneath the pink fluff.

"But you don't have new pyjamas," she points out sadly.

Julia shrugs. "That's okay. I like these. They're all worn-in and comfy now." She smiles forcefully, as if to prove it really doesn't matter, and motions toward their bedrooms. "Want to change the beds?"

☂

An hour later and both beds are fresh.

Tuesday and Julia sit beneath a newly-washed blanket on their old, battered sofa. Max's present, his Blu-ray copy of The Sound of Music, plays on the PlayStation. They barely watch, tuning in only to sing along loudly to every song.