Merry Christmas

All the message said was ‘Hi, Merry Christmas. How are you?’

That’s all. As content, nothing could be less threatening. A casual greeting, an expression of seasonal appropriateness. She had a colleague at work who greeted her every morning with ‘Hello, How are you?’ to which, without fail, she replied ‘Fine thanks, and you?’ which drew the textbook response ‘I’m fine, thank you’, delivered as they disappeared into their office, formality completed. Yet this message was not casual, this was not a formality. The centre of gravity of the message was not in the text at all, but in what is now called the meta data, the innocent part. The part that can apparently be collected by the state with no infringement of our privacy, the details that aren’t incriminating.

What was significant was the sender and the date sent. Nothing else.

It was over thirty years since she’d last seen or spoken to Dan. She’d accepted his request to be a friend on Facebook over a decade ago, but he, like she, rarely posted anything, and the promise and ease of communication offered by social media had never materialized.

How should she reply? She had to reply, didn’t she? Not to reply would be impolite, would imply a haughtiness on her behalf. That was not how she’d been brought up, not how she saw herself. She should reply, give Dan a summary of where her life is now, but what would she say? Should she mention her children? He’s never met them, perhaps doesn’t even know of their existence, and now they’ve already moved out, so what should she say? She’d have to start with her partner. Could she say Partner, that sounded so formal, and ambiguous, like are you having sex together, or meetings? Lucky they weren’t married, because she could never say husband, she hated that word. The ‘band’ part sounded to her like ‘bound’, like she was tied to him or something; it made her sound like an appendage to the man and she certainly didn’t want Dan to get the impression she had become some sort of submissive spouse. She had not. She wasn’t. She wouldn’t.

And he had asked how she was. Not how her family life had panned out. He surely didn’t want to hear about the new extension, and can’t know what work she is doing now, so filling him in on how the construction of the new tramway was making it harder for her clients to find her door was off the cards too. Should she say something about how the news on all fronts makes her anxious for her children, for their health, their sanity and wellbeing. How the individualism she and Dan had opposed so vehemently back in the day, had taken a stranglehold globally. She recalled the demonstrations they had gone on together, how angry they’d been when their banner had been ripped from their hands and then trampled on by the riot police, as they’d fled a baton charge. Back then nuclear weapons had been the only technological threat, which sounds almost quaint now. She had tripped as they, and maybe two hundred other protesters, scattered from the police, but Dan, who was holding her hand as they ran, held tight, and yanked her upright before she’d hit the road. He’d taken a chance on an alley that led down to the Thames, you never knew where you’d find scaffolding or barriers blocking the way, but they’d been lucky, cut back behind the police lines, and emerged on the ‘civilian’ side, from where they’d watched random protesters being arrested, and rough handled into the back of armoured police vans. Thatcher’s troops were doing their job. That night they’d swapped tales of outrage with their fellow squatters over a few beers while passing around spliffs, before sleeping together on the mattress on the bare floorboards of their room on the second floor, a candle burning on a cracked saucer beside them.

No, she wouldn’t say anything about the state of the world, that was all obvious, wasn’t it? It’s not like Dan wouldn’t know all that, he’s probably still beating his drums at climate rallies and Pride marches.

So how was she? What could she say?

After all this time, she couldn’t say how she was thinking of getting a new haircut, that would be trivial. Or how she wasn’t sure of her daughter’s new boyfriend, that’s so stereotypical, even if it’s true. She couldn’t say how the mechanic seemed to be taking the piss with how long he’s taking to fix her car. She must be overthinking this. How was she is what he’d asked, so how was she?

She’s worried about her father. Yes, ever since he had a minor heart attack she’s worried about him. He just won’t take things easy. She’s glad he’s active, but wishes he would learn not to try and lift the heavy stuff, and wouldn’t go up ladders any more. But Dan doesn’t know her dad, never met him. When they were together, their parents were a distant part of their lives. Parents, pretty well a species unto themselves, were guilty of creating the problems that they, the young, were now having to put right. Their generation had let the cold war get hot, let Israel trample all over Palestine, persecuted gays and lesbians and discriminated against anyone not white, or who sounded common, i.e. who had the misfortune of being born in the regions and not having gone to private school. No, he didn’t know her dad, she didn’t know his, it would be weird to bring up dads out of the blue.

She was also worried about John. He’d been very stressed recently. He was failing more than usual in leaving work at work, and had confided in her that the cases he was defending played round and around in his head giving him no peace. The guilt he felt when a client was given a harsh sentence was extreme, and he always felt his clients were given harsh sentences. Whenever one of them was led from the dock on their way to prison he imagined how things would have been different if the prosecutor had been born into the same world as the defendant, how that would have changed their tune.

But recently he’d had problems getting it up. She could see the sorrow in his eyes. She told him not to worry. She was sure it was only something temporary, though they both knew it had never happened before, so her words expressed kindness, not facts. She would find a specialist, explore possible causes, act, as she knew he would simply wait and worry, and feel worse following each failure. She loved John, she wasn’t going to share his health issues with an ex of thirty years.

Was there anything she could say to Dan? Something honest and relevant, something between the trivial, the universal and the intimate? She remembered how freely the conversation ran around the table in the kitchen they all shared. She, as often as not, perched on the old red armchair by the window, while the others, each on random wooden chairs, planned trips to the vegetable market, passed on rumours of an upcoming rave, or spoke about a guy someone had met who’d moved into to a squat round the corner who could weld, and had promised to look at the exhaust pipe on the old Nissan. There were always folk making plans to leave, to the west country, to Spain, to Berlin, and sometimes they left and never returned, or returned but found the building sold, renovated and the area gentrified, and everyone gone. How many of the people she knew then was she in touch with?

And why had Dan writen anyway? Why is he getting in touch after all this time? Why this Christmas? How many Christmases have passed unacknowledged since they split? Where does his interest come from? Last she’d heard, which was years ago, he’d had a child, a son she thinks, though she can’t be sure.

Somehow, if he’d been a girlfriend she had fallen out of touch with, it would be easier. She would have got back to her, suggested they meet for a coffee or a drink. They’d have told stories about the scrapes they got into, the people they knew, the ones who had now settled and those who’d gone off the rails entirely, like poor Stef. They’d have welcomed a guided tour back to a past life, each contributing half-forgotten details, incidents, bringing the tales to life. It would be innocent fun.

But she couldn’t write and tell Dan how glad she was to hear from him. Suggest they meet for a drink, talk about old times, could she? She didn’t want to sound flirty, available, so what would she say? ‘Hi, nice to hear from you. I’m fine. I’m working in education and paying off my mortgage, with my partner (ugh) and we’re good.’ That just about covers it, but she hated the way she sounded, like a mortgage slave, like half a something, like she’d given up on the person she used to be. And she hadn’t, she wasn’t. Pride wasn’t the word, but she wasn’t sorry for what she’d done with her life. She had done what she thought was right, had listened to her heart. True, the dreams she had, of trekking in the Andes or of buying an old farm in Spain and living there with the others, perhaps even bringing up her kids there, hadn’t happened. But she had given her kids love, and independence, and watched as they became decent aware adults and gone their own ways. Her relationship had survived twenty-three years not because she and John were comfortable, bored, and disinclined to rupture, but because after reaching edge after edge they had found a way to more intimacy, more vulnerability, more honesty. No, she would not make excuses.

She was curious about how Dan was, though, and what had happened to him. Only last year she had heard of the death of a girlfriend she had spent one summer with during her uni days. They had worked in a hostel together, part receptionists, part chamber maids, part serving staff. They’d had a lot of fun, regularly being chatted up by the young guys who stayed for a day or more, then making fun of them in their room later over a bottle of wine. They had a competition, trying to guess which of the single male guests would hit on which of them. They had exchanged postcards now and again, over the years, until one of her postcards was returned in an envelope with a letter saying that they were very sorry, but Louise had passed away following a late diagnosis of ovarian cancer the year before. She had stood, letter in hand, looking out into her garden, remembering the look on Louisa’s face as she’d turn her back on the latest guest to hit on her, put her fingers down her throat and pretend to vomit, before bursting into laughter, then turning round again, straight faced, to answer their excuse of a question. She smiled to herself, but it was a patch of happiness in a sea of sadness. Louise had gone; and she hadn’t known. Perhaps Dan was getting in touch because he had some news, because there was something important she needed to know. She wished Louise had contacted her, had let her know, but wasn’t sure if she’d have done so in her position. She tried to remember when she’d last received a card from her, and whether she’d kept it. She thought she would know Lousie forever, that the brief summer they had spent together was simply the trigger for a lifetime of brief interventions, observations and sharing, but she had been wrong.

She turned back to the screen, and settled on ‘All good here. Merry Christmas.’ And pressed send.