Making A List

What would her family say if Sonia gave Carol a gift this year?

- 

ONE dull November afternoon, Sonia was making her Christmas present list.

She had in front of her a little pot of tea and a notebook, with a pen that worked.

However, even after half an hour's thought, the white page was still blank.

What to do about Carol? Last Christmas she was Bill's wife, but now . . .

What was left of the tea had gone cold.

She considered the fat little pot, a Christmas present from her daughter two years before.

It was adorned with strawberries so ripe you felt you could pluck one off the china surface and pop it in your mouth.

This inexpensive gift had become a constant companion.

It reminded her every time she used it that young Beth had the same kind of generous spirit that Sonia liked to think she had.

herself.

She'd chosen a little gift, just right for her mum.

Just on a thought.

She tapped the pen on the page, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Then she looked at the pen itself: a seaside souvenir from . . . where? Ah, the Mont-St-Michel.

A present from Archie when he went there with the school.

For a while, she sat staring at the rain coursing down the window-pane.

In her mind, she saw young Archie trailing with his noisy schoolmates up that cruel slope in the fairy-tale town on the shore, all crowding into the souvenir shop.

And he'd still thought to bring her back a small token of the trip.

Sonia struggled to bring her mind back from the rushing tides of Normandy and to concentrate on the job in hand.

"Of course coming up with the Christmas list is a 'job'," Sonia had argued when Jack scoffed.

Her husband had just laughed and jangled his car keys.

"Suit yourself." He'd wound his football scarf round his neck.