Nan started giving me money for Christmas when I was 9. Every year when I open the card she asks, “How do I know what a girl like you wants these days?” Money’s okay but it’s the way she says “a girl like you” that busts my baubles. Shouldn’t she know me by now? I mean she’s lived with me and mum my whole life. The worst is, I couldn’t tell you what I’ve spent the money on. Until this year. In January my class is going on an overnight trip to London. School is paying for most everything but Mrs Core said we’d each need at least £30. Ta nan.
In October me and mum were spotting good stuff and rubbish in shop windows, when she saw these ruby earrings and freaked. She was positive they were the same ones nan sold when I was born. Baby-me’s pram was bought with money from the earrings, mum said. They go with a ring nan never takes off. My granddad, who died before I was born, bought the set for her. We got really excited but mum said I’d have to stump up too. She put £7 down to hold them.
“How do I know what a girl like you wants these days?”
Mum, on it, got me a job walking dogs. She cleans holiday cottages; the families who own them never stay in them and can’t always walk their own dogs. Almost every week until Christmas I put a fiver on the earrings. Mum put more money on them but she said I made the difference. I also earned enough to buy mum the fiddle leaf fig plant she’s wanted since she saw them on Insta.
Christmas day and I was dead excited. Nan’s cringey boyfriend wasn’t coming over until later and mum was happy because her boss gave her cash instead of a turkey. She woke us up, made a big pot of tea and put out a plate of toast with marmalade. I popped across the hall to the neighbour’s who were keeping the plant for me. Mum went mental when I walked into the flat with it. After she’d kissed my head like 20 times, we had to give nan the earrings or we’d explode. The weird thing was, you’d have thought we’d handed her a box of broken glass by the look on her face. She mostly ignored the earrings, set them aside and excitedly gave me a box. A box rather than an envelope. I stopped giving a toss about nan’s jewellery because she’d only gone and bought me a pair of expensive headphones like my friend Casey’s. Stupid cans; nan was right, she didn’t know what a girl like me wanted these days. We all sat round the tree, quiet like, while the toast went cold and hard.
Later me and mum noticed that nan wasn’t wearing her ruby ring. Neither of us said it. But we knew.
by Anmarie Bowler, Ryde, inspired by O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi
Brevity 