Not quite the LAST STRAW

Emma was stunned - accused of committing a crime at Midnight Mass

- Gabrielle Mullarkey

It was going to be a quiet festive season for me, just the way I liked it (I told myself).

I'd gone back to spend Christmas with my parents in our small home town. This year, however, Mum and Dad were finally embarking on that cruise they'd been talking about since retirement. They were sailing off on 23 December, leaving me on my tod.

I'd enjoy a solo Christmas and New Year, put away the festive decs and tidy the place up for when they got back in the first week of January, returning to work in London later that week.

‘Sure you don’t mind, Emma?’ Mum asked anxiously. ‘Don’t like to think of you kicking your heels and brooding about, er…’ She trailed off as she finally noticed Dad miming a frantic ‘quit while you're ahead’ gesture.

‘I won’t be kicking my heels,’ I reminded them stiffly. ‘I'll be taking down the tree, wrapping up the baubles, finishing off the mince pies, all without giving Brendan a second thought. You can say his name, you know.’

Brendan, my boyfriend of just over a year, had chosen to announce ‘My heart isn’t in it, Ems’ six weeks, three days and 11 hours ago. But who's counting?

‘I never liked him,’ said Mum. ‘His eyes were too close together.’

Dad came up with, ‘And he wasn’t a rugby man. Highly suspicious, that.’

I felt all emotional at their loyal Bren-bashing, even if it just made me sadder.

On 22 December, in an act of defiance, I put on the Christmas gift jumper I'd bought for Bren back in August and went downstairs wearing it.

Mum offered me a gingerbread man with my milky coffee. ‘Nice knit, in the colours of the season. Isn’t it a man’s jumper, though?’

‘It’s unisex,’ I muttered, just as Dad wandered by and said, ‘There’s a label sticking out at the back. Says Hugo’s House of Menswear, to be fair.’

‘I always buy my jumpers there,’ I fibbed, rather than admit Hugo's was a designer place where anything with an arm and a leg cost that much.