Read Dying for Christmas for Free Online

a button on the carpet, unattached, I screamed and couldn’t go back in there until it was gone. About how once we went to dinner at the house of one of Travis’ old friends and they’d put up a decorative clock made entirely out of buttons of different sizes and I’d had to position myself facing the other way so I wouldn’t have to look at it. Sonia Rubenstein listened to me, while her fingers played with the end of her orange or pink or emerald-green scarf, and didn’t laugh, and at the end she said, ‘You know, sometimes you just have to fake it to make it.’
    Sometimes she talks like an American self-help manual. She went on to explain that when you don’t have any choice, you have to just adopt a different mindset. So I’d adopt the mindset of Travis. I’d imagine myself walking into the room with his step. Imagine how I would feel, with my eyes gliding right over the front of a jacket or a coat without even wondering how big they were (the small ones are scarier) or how many there were. ‘By thinking yourself into someone else’s skin,’ Sonia said, ‘you’ll learn to control your fear.’
    So that’s what I did now. Because I could do nothing else. I imagined myself into the skin of someone who ate meat. A habitual carnivore like one of my brothers. Someone who was so used to eating meat that a plate of stew sitting there right in front of them wouldn’t even register, and when they put it in their mouth it would taste of nothing in particular.
    I dug into the stew, pulled out a steaming forkful and shovelled it into my mouth. I chewed without thinking. Because if I thought about what I was eating, I wouldn’t be able to swallow it, and if I didn’t swallow it, something would happen.
    All the time I was eating, Dominic was watching me. ‘Much better,’ he said.
    When I’d finished and put down my fork, my stomach was protesting as if the cow I’d just eaten had got loose in there and was bucking around. Dominic still had half his food left.
    ‘See how hungry you were, after all that fuss?’ he said.
    I nodded.
    Suddenly he stood up and picked up his plate and scraped the rest of his food on to my empty dish.
    ‘You wolfed that down so quickly, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t let you have more. It is Christmas, after all.’
    * * *
    In. Out. In – just the slightest of pauses – out. In. Out.
    Kim thought she could watch her daughter breathing all night and not get tired of it. Sometimes when she looked at her children sleeping, she felt like her heart would explode with love.
    At five, Katy was no longer the chubby toddler she’d once been, but she still had the plump pink lips of babyhood. Kim lowered her face so it was just a few centimetres from her daughter’s and she could feel her hot breath on her cheek. She inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of toothpaste and bathtime and that other scent that was uniquely Katy’s.
    If only they could always be asleep, none of this would be happening.
    Instantly she berated herself for the thought. What sort of mother was she?
    The sort that was about to lose her children.
    Though she was objectively aware of Sean’s ultimatum, and knew he wasn’t the type to deliver empty threats, still she would not allow herself to believe it. He wouldn’t take them away from her. Not when she was just doing her job. He would see sense. It wasn’t her fault she had to work tomorrow. ‘Crime doesn’t stop just because it’s bloody Christmas,’ she’d yelled at him earlier. ‘Burglars and rapists don’t just decide to give themselves the day off.’
    But her face had burned with guilt.
    Tearing herself away from Katy’s bedside, she crossed the landing and nudged open the door of Rory’s room. He’d insisted he was staying up all night, so he could prove Father Christmas was actually his mum and dad, but he’d been exhausted by eight and asleep by nine thirty. Now he lay splayed out on his bed, one pyjama-clad leg clear of the