Read My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories for Free Online

doesn’t—they don’t—and she falls asleep on the mouse-eaten upholstery of the preposterous carcass of the Sunbeam Tiger, her head on Daniel’s shoulder, the trapped fox crumpled in her fist.
    *   *   *
    Christmas after, Elspeth is in all the papers. The Tory MP’s husband is divorcing her. Elspeth is a correspondent in the divorce. Meanwhile she has a new thing with a footballer twenty years her junior. It’s the best kind of Christmas story. Journalists everywhere. Elspeth, in the Sunbeam Tiger, picks up Miranda at the station in a wide-brimmed black hat, black jumpsuit, black sunglasses, triumphantly disgraced. In her element.
    Miranda’s aunt almost didn’t let her come this year. But then, if Miranda had stayed, they would have both been miserable. Her aunt has a new boyfriend. Almost as awful as she is. Someone should tell the tabloids.
    “Lovely dress,” Elspeth says, kissing her on the cheek. “You make it?”
    Miranda is particularly pleased with the hem. “It’s all right.”
    “I want one just like it,” Elspeth says. “In red. Lower the neckline, raise the hem a bit. You could go into business. Ever think of it?”
    “I’m only sixteen,” Miranda says. “There’s plenty of room for improvement.”
    “Alexander McQueen! Left school when he was sixteen,” Elspeth says. “Went off to apprentice on Savile Row. Used to sew human hair into his linings. A kind of spell, I suppose. I have one of his manta dresses somewhere in the Hall. And your mother, she was barely older than you are now. Hanging around backstage, stitching sequins and crystals on tulle.”
    “Where’s Daniel?” Miranda says. She and her mother have been corresponding. Miranda is saving up money. She hasn’t told her aunt yet, but next summer Miranda’s going to Thailand.
    “Back at the house. In a mood. Listening to my old records. The Smiths.”
    Miranda looks over, studies Elspeth’s face. “That girl broke up with him, didn’t she?”
    “If you mean the one with the ferrets and the unfortunate ankles,” Elspeth says, “yes. What’s her name. It’s a mystery. Not her name, the breakup. He grows three inches in two months, his skin clears up, honestly, Miranda, he’s even better looking than I expected he’d turn out. Heart of gold, that boy, a good brain, too. I can’t think what she was thinking.”
    “Preemptive strike, perhaps,” Miranda says.
    “I wouldn’t know about the breakup except for accidentally overhearing a conversation. Somewhat accidentally,” Elspeth says. “Well, that and the Smiths. He doesn’t talk to me about his love life.”
    “Do you want him to talk to you about his love life?”
    “No,” Elspeth says. “Yes. Maybe? Probably not. Anyway, how about you, Miranda? Do you have one of those, yet? A love life?”
    “I don’t even have ferrets,” Miranda says.
    *   *   *
    On Christmas Eve, while all the visiting Honeywells and cousins and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and their accountants are out caroling in the village, Elspeth takes Miranda and Daniel aside. She gives them each a joint.
    “It’s not as if I don’t know you’ve been raiding my supply, Daniel, ” Elspeth says. “At least this way, I know what you’re up to. If you’re going to break the law, you might as well learn to break it responsibly. Under adult supervision.”
    Daniel rolls his eyes, looks at Miranda. Whatever he sees in her face makes him snort. It’s annoying but true: he really has become quite spectacular looking. Well, it was inevitable. Apparently they drown all the ugly Honeywells at birth.
    “It’s okay, Mi randy, ” he says. “I’ll have yours if you don’t want it.”
    Miranda sticks the joint in her bra. “Thanks, but I’ll hang on to it.”
    “Anyway I’m sure the two of you have lots of catching up to do,” Elspeth says. “I’m off to the pub to kiss the barmaids and make the journos cry.”
    When she’s out the door, Daniel says, “She’s