Before I start, I'd better apologise for what happens here. Nellie's logic is completely messed up, and she won't be able to properly make up her mind. I'll attempt to excuse that by saying, well, she's pretty much having a mental breakdown/burnout here. She's gone over the threshold of what she can take and she cain't handle no more :P

Also, apologies again for the kids. Every time I write a future fic, I pick a year and somebody's child is six years old. It's getting beyond ridiculous.


Nellie

'Hello, yes?'

'Hello, Mam, it's me.'

She normally loves to hear Joey's voice, but this evening it grates on Nellie. All she can hear is the hateful tone it took on when her eldest son broke her heart, even though she had been quite sure even a short while ago that she had forgiven and forgotten that. Derek's death has changed the way she thinks about everything. Every wound she's ever been given has been torn back open- Freddie leaving her for that TART, Billy getting Julie pregnant and destroying their reputation as an upright family, Aveline marrying a PRODDY VICAR, Joey's betrayal, and every single incident that fell in between these. Every scab has been torn back off. Without that little slice of happiness, all the little hurts the others in her life have caused seem magnified, a hundred- no, a thousand times worse. She's angry with them all right now, even though she doesn't want to be. Part of her knows this isn't right, that it's all over and done with and they're all back, but she hasn't been allowed to properly let out all her hurts, and now she's simply cooking with pain and fury and just about every negative emotion one can put a name to.

Nonetheless, she thinks she does a pretty passable 'cheerful' when answering him.

'Oh, hello, love!' she says, her face wooden as she cracks a smile, 'how are you?'

'Oh, fine, Mam, fine- just lettin' you know about the Christmas arrangements. We are stayin' the extra night after all.'

No if that's all right with you, no please, nothing. Just assuming she'll dish it out for him as if nothing else matters in her life.

A bit of her reminds herself that this assessment isn't exactly fair- she was the one who invited Joey in the first place- it's a long-standing arrangement, and she's never begrudged him a place round her table before. She normally looks forward to his visits, takes comfort in them, even. But right now, after…

'Oh,' she says, 'that's lovely, I, I, I mean that's good, Joey.' She switches the phone to the other ear, wanting to ring off, or better still, to just hang up and be in peace on her own once more, but at the same time longing desperately to stay on the phone with Joey forever, until the overwhelming love she's always had for her son wins out and she's back to her old self.

'How's, er, how's Martina, love?'

'Great, yeah, fantastic!' He seems incredibly happy about something- his voice has picked up with this last remark- and is that a hint of relief she can detect in it? He may be a grown man but Nellie's still his mother, and she can notice a million tiny things about Joey just from a few words. Perhaps they've just resolved a row, or they've had a scare of some sort.

'How's the baby?' is the next logical question.

'Great, yeah!' the cheer in his voice increases another leap and bound. 'Fantastic!'

Oh, Joey. Can't you think of anything else to say?

'We 'ad another scan a couple of days ago,' Joey goes on, much to her relief, as it means she now doesn't have to come up with another question, 'and An- er, the baby's doin' really well, yeah. Not long now!'

He's done that a couple of times, she's noticed- started to refer to his child as something beginning with A. It's as if he's already named it (An…Andrew? Anthony? Andrea? Anne?) - she suspects, therefore, that he already knows what it's going to be. Nellie's unsure whether she approves of this- she doesn't hold with all these modern medical techniques. If God had intended us all to know what sex our babies were before time, she thinks, we'd have been born with windows in our stomachs. She'd always liked the surprise, anyhow.

Even so, if Joey does know, he's certainly going to lengths to make sure nobody else does. That's him all over, Nellie reflects- sneaky and secretive. He never did tell her what he was doing for work- granted, she hadn't wanted to know, but when he was caught for his number-plate scheme, it was Freddie he accepted help from. When he started seeing Roxy again, it was Grandad he told first. When he was hurt or troubled, he always kept it to himself. It shouldn't come as a surprise that he's being incontrovertibly Joey-ish about this, too. Why should he tell her about his baby? she thinks bitterly. She's only his mother, after all.

'No,' she says, knowing she's failing to put in the necessary enthusiasm, 'not long now. Take care, then, love.'

'Oh…okay, then.' It's clear enough it had not been Joey's intention to ring off, that he's mildly taken aback by her abrupt shooing of him off the line, but he goes anyhow, with a happy ciao, then, see you in a few days.

'Ta-ra, love,' Nellie says into the empty receiver, and puts it back down.

Well, then. He's coming in a few days. By which time, she'll be on a train, the city dissolving into countryside and hills. Joey will be all right- he'll look after them all. He'll keep them all together when they realise their slave has disappeared- he'll stop Aveline and Adrian getting emotional, try and tell Freddie off if he tries to use that as an opportunity to sneak off back to the TART, and do his best to shut Billy's gob before her youngest starts suggesting all the gruesome things that might have happened to her and describes in detail the white slave trade, constantly citing 'something he's read somewhere.'

Ah, Joey. She can picture him raising his hands and hushing them all, calming them. She can picture him struggling to get some food together, organising everyone who's around into some sort of production line to make sure that everyone is taken care of, trying to make Christmas nice for them while their mother is missing.

Ah, Joey.

If only she could erase that incident from her mind, or at the very least, file it back away. She wants to ring him back and tell him all her upsets, and hear him say calm down, Mam, you know we love you, as he inevitably would. He'd probably even drive out right now to see her and tell her in person that her fears are unfounded, comfort her about Derek if she chose to tell him, help her with a few final preparations. Her hand hovers over the receiver.

And then she puts it down and goes upstairs instead.


'Another cup of coffee, my darling?' Derek smiles, his impish eyes alight.

Nellie smiles back at him, unable to stop herself.

'Please.'

Derek flags down the waitress, and Nellie holds her still-warm first cup to her lips, breathing in the steam that's still rising from it and cupping her hand around the porcelain as she sips, watching him in happy disbelief.

'You always take such good care of me.'

Derek reaches his hand across the table, taking hers and holding it tight.

'I always will.' (Mam?)

'When I'm with you…' Nellie begins, her heart fluttering as he squares his shoulders in hopeful anticipation of whatever she's going to say. (Mam?)

'I feel I…' (Mam?) 'I…'

'Mam?'

Nellie blinks. Derek vanishes.

Aveline is eyeing her oddly, and it occurs to Nellie that for the past few minutes she's most likely been wearing the soppiest, most pathetic daydreaming face there ever was. She shakes her head and puts her cup down.

'Sorry, love. I was somewhere else for a moment there,' she laughs, and Aveline returns to her prattling at once.

'As I was sayin', Mam, the thing is, I don't know if Ursula and Nick should be made to go to the midnight mass…'

'It's not a mass,' Nellie cuts in, the fierceness welling within her and springing to her voice without much encouragement. 'Haven't you learned the difference yet, my girl? When a priest speaks at mass, the whole church lights up with the presence of the Holy Spirit. When Oswald speaks at one of those pathetic services, you feel like you've been left in the dark and the damp!'

'Mam,' Aveline coaxes, but Nellie keeps her lips pursed and she soon gives up. There's no use bothering to spoon feed her things about it being the same God and the same sort of service. She knows what she knows, and no Proddy, even if he is her son-in-law, is going to worm his way in and convert her to the other side.

Aveline goes back to her original thread. 'Thing is, Mam, if Ursula's gonna grow up a model, stayin' up that late on Christmas Eve's gonna ruin 'er career! She's gonna wind up with bags under 'er eyes and deathly pale skin, and…'

'Aveline, she's not even seven yet! She's got years ahead of her to scrub herself and paint herself and pretty herself up if she wants to be a…' Nellie shudders slightly, 'model.'

She's not at all pleased that Aveline's decided Tracey Ursula will follow in her footsteps. It's not the child's decision at all- she can tell from the girl's miserable sigh every time Aveline gets her into another breakfast commercial or photo shoot- and every time she spots her granddaughter in another children's sleepwear advert in a catalogue the thought that immediately springs to mind is not one of pride, but poor little thing. She'll end up rebelling, will that girl, and go in for science at university or an office clerk's job or something else along those lines, no doubt.

'And I don't think Nick's well enough to go to church at night,' Aveline continues. Here, at least, Nellie can agree with Aveline's line of reasoning. From the moment he was conceived, it seemed like things were going wrong with Nick- there had been two miscarriage false alarms, a whole host of complications surrounding the birth (she'd ended up with an emergency Caesarean, which, Nellie knows, was necessary, but it still makes her feel odd, all this cutting people open and sewing them up as you please. She never went through it with any of hers. Martina's considering one. She intends to talk her out of it.) And then the poor little thing had come out with asthma, a hole in his heart and the lowest immune system of anyone in their family. Nobody else on either Nellie or Freddie's side was born sickly- it must be that Oswald and his hoity-toity relatives who've bestowed it on the little boy.

And the thought of the dear little thing falling under the weather- and all for the sake of a Proddy Christmas service, no less, makes her feel mildly ill. She doesn't like to play favourites, but little Nick, whether she decided it on her own or not, has got to be her favourite grandchild by far. He's such an adorable little child- probably half the size of Adrian's Jimmy, though he was born six months before- with a lovely little smile and a wobbly walk on a bandy pair of legs, and a little ringing voice that reminds Nellie of a cross between Joey and Adrian at their cutest ages. Only a couple of weeks ago, when she'd gone round to visit, he'd clung to her leg and said, lisping through his teeth, can you come back and see me soon, Nan?

'Good gracious, no,' she says, in response to Aveline's statement. 'He could get pneumonia or worse!' She's not sure exactly what might happen to him, but that seems a fair guess. 'I'll tell you what, love, I'll come and see you in the evening, before the service, and I can take Nick back with me. You can come and pick him up on Christmas morning- and Ursula's more than welcome, too- then neither of 'em will 'ave to stay up late!'

What? What? That lot has all just spilt off her tongue without warning, so easy to articulate and to mean. She'd love to have Aveline's children around her- it would be nice to have some childish excitement in her household again, and it'll save both them and her from having to endure Oswald's ghastly, Protestant idea of Christmas church. It'll help Aveline out- she still rues the day her only girl moved out of the family home to go and live in a cold, impersonal vicarage, and, though she was happy for Aveline and Oswald's marriage, secretly she rues the day Aveline and Oswald sorted things out and Aveline moved back out of Kelsall Street into the vicarage. She misses having her daughter around. She misses being able to look after her the way she used to. And the idea that now, she can still do this warms her heart.

Wait a minute, though.

She's already rung up and confirmed her room at the hotel. She's already bought her train ticket. She'd been firm in the decision that she was going away for Christmas no matter what, and that nothing was going to sway her- that she needed the time on her own to revitalise her and prepare her for her remaining years of family life. And all of a sudden, she's been tethered here once again by her children, has offered her services, rent-a-Mam, for their convenience. Her sense of motherly duty is suddenly making her feel guilty for even thinking of walking out on her children.

But why shouldn't she walk out on them? They've all walked out on her at one point. They returned to the fold, of course they did- they can't really live without her, try as they might- and Aveline returned home multiple times after getting fed up with Oswald, Billy returned home after Connie got fed up with him, Joey returned home after Roxy got fed up with him, the others kept on dropping in. But why was that? Was it because Nellie was always there, because she provided free care and rent-free lodgings?

Or was it because, perhaps, deep down they were drawn to her, just knowing, the way she just knows it, that despite how much pain they caused her, and despite how much she wants to make them sorry for that pain at times, she loves them more than anything? There's some sort of invisible thread- not the type Adrian always describes, weak and barely able to hold a person's sanity or manhood or whatever else up, but a strong one- between Nellie and all her brood, which wraps around the group of them and stretches, sometimes threatening to snap, but which never does. Joey likes to call it unity, but Nellie thinks it should have a new name, something that adequately describes its elasticity. They stretch away from each other, but this thread, this thread of love and of togetherness, keeps bringing them back to one another no matter how far they run. They'll always be a sort of unit, even if one of them went to the other side of the world.

And maybe they've sometimes wished it wasn't so. She knows Joey has, at times. She's almost sure about Billy and Adrian. Probably the others, as well. Freddie has tried to make it not so. But so has she, at times, on a park bench with Derek or in his car, longing for the freedom to up and go off with him and live the sort of romantic life she dreamed of as a girl but never found within her grasp. She's one of them, a part of them, in every way- and that includes the occasional resentment at the special bond they share. She's just doing exactly what the rest of them do- but when it comes down to it, as it does for all the others, family still wins out.

'Aw, hey, really?' Aveline is visibly excited about her suggestion, and Nellie doesn't really want to consider why. 'Aw, thanks, Mam! They'll love that- they really will!'

She stands up to lean right across their little table and kiss her, leaving, Nellie knows without having to look, a big lipsticky mark on her cheek. And as a smile comes to Nellie's face, she feels an odd tugging, as if her heart is smiling, too.

Well, then. She's staying for Christmas. She'll do it for her family, because she has to, and because, she supposes, love comes out on top when all's said and done. She loves them- Joey and Jack and Adrian and Billy, Aveline and little Ursula and Nick, and, even, she supposes, that Freddie Boswell, at times. And deep down, she doesn't want to miss out on seeing them all at Christmas.

But that doesn't mean she won't cry. It doesn't mean she won't allow herself to wallow in the disappointment of the situation, the fact that she won't get a bit of luxury for herself, after all. The two conflicting feelings- the love for all of them, and the misery that Derek isn't there, that she doesn't get a Christmas on her own, that she is, still, to some extent, being used, are slapping against each other, colliding and then bouncing apart like magnets forced together. Nellie doesn't know how she's supposed to reconcile the two, but she supposes this is what being a Boswell is- this is what all of them do, all the time. They can live with both. And so can she.

She can love her children and still mourn what she could have had. And what's more, she will. She'll still feel a bit down on Christmas Day, and a bit unappreciated, and a bit regretful, but she'll still light up at the happiness of her loved ones. She can be both the Boswells' mother and herself. She can do it.

Aveline is still gushing, but a fair bit of it's going over her head. She's still trying to process this train of thought. She understands it, and yet she doesn't. It makes sense, and it doesn't. She's happy with her spur-of-the-moment decision to stay, and she isn't.

'Come on, then, Mam,' Aveline gets up, and Nellie follows her to the counter in mild bewilderment, 'I wanna show you what I got for Ursula for Christmas! There's still one on display in the shop window- I want you to see how much it'll suit her!'

Clothes, then, judging by Aveline's description. Poor little thing, she thinks for the umpteenth time. She should be allowed dolls and toys at her age- Aveline should let her be a child for a while. She'll rectify that as much as she can, she decides, already planning out last-minute presents she can have ready for Aveline's children when they come round. She's still thinking about this as she watches her daughter click up to the café counter on her high-rise shoes, earning a wolf-whistle and an offer of having both their coffees on the house by the man behind the counter, who's too busy drooling over her legs in their coloured tights to be doing his job properly.

Nellie would go up and make a point of discussing Aveline's husband in front of the young man, but as she does, the part of her brain that's been considering Ursula's present lights up with the memory of something else.

'Just wait a minute, love,' she says, catching Aveline by the arm as she's beginning to lead her out into the street. Now she's staying, there's something she wants to do, and she might as well do it while she's out.

There had been no point in giving her son a thoughtful gift if she wasn't here. She wouldn't have been able to see if he liked it. But she is staying now.

'What's the matter?' Aveline asks, suddenly concerned, and Nellie shakes her head, grimacing and disguising it as a smile.

'Oh, nothing, love, really!' She squares her shoulders, knowing she's making a bigger deal out of it than the whole thing requires, but knowing that, once she's said it, she'll be confirming to herself that she's staying, that she's putting the family above herself.

'I just want to dash and get a new Walkman for our Billy.'


Yeah, sorry about the logic being so utterly messed up. Nellie is a mixed-up and lost woman at the moment, so she will have some ambivalent thoughts. Loss and stress do that to you.

It's a disappointment that she's not going, but believe me, Nellie's disappointed too (and who's to say she might not get to go. anyway..? You'll have to see. :P) Everything will make more sense at the end of this fic...I hope XD The way I've been writing it, it's supposed to, anyway :P We'll see how it turns out.