Christmas at the Edge of the World

“I don’t hate you,” Laurel said automatically. Her sister was crying quietly, shoulders shaking, tears streaming down her face, making no effort to compose herself. “Abby, I’ve never hated you.”

“I’ve hated myself,” Abby said through a hiccuppy sob. “For so long.”

“Oh, Abby.” Laurel sat on the stool next to her sister’s, daring to lay a hand on her shoulder. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d touched, but it felt right now. “Why?”

“Why?” Abby looked up at her, blinking through her tears. “Can you really ask me that?”

“You mean…” Laurel hesitated, feeling as if she were stumbling through the dark of her own ignorance. “Because of… me?”

Abby sniffled and nodded. “I just left you.”

The words thudded through Laurel in a way she didn’t expect. She hadn’t realised until that moment how much she’d needed to hear Abby acknowledge that that was what had happened, that all the excuses she’d given and Laurel had accepted were just that. Excuses.

“Why?” she whispered. Now she was close to tears too, swallowing hard and swiping at her cheeks to prevent a total breakdown.

Abby let out a long, raggedy sigh. “I never meant to, you know. I know that sounds cheap, but it’s true. In a way, it just happened. At least at first.”

“Tell me,” Laurel instructed, because now they were here, actually talking about this stuff for the first time ever, she knew she needed to know. For her own peace of mind, and also for Abby’s.

Abby drew a shuddering breath in an effort to compose herself. She wiped her cheeks and tucked her hair behind her ears, and then took a sip of tea, while Laurel waited, her heart starting to hammer.

“It was so hard after Mum died,” she began quietly. “I know it was hard for you, too. Harder in some ways. You were so young. But for me…” She paused, pressing her lips together before blowing out a breath. “Dad just checked out,” she said, her voice turning soft and sad. “I know he was never the most involved dad, but he was still there. You still felt he cared. But after Mum died…” Her face crumpled a bit before she smoothed it out into hard, determined lines. “I know he had his own grief. I understand that, I do. But he still had two daughters at home, one little, and one not as old as all that. And it was as if he didn’t care about either of us.”

“I don’t remember,” Laurel admitted sadly. The days and weeks after her mother’s death were a blur of confusion and sadness, interspersed with happy moments she did remember—Abby taking her to Kinderland in Scarborough, her face sticky with candyfloss.

“I’m not surprised. Eight isn’t that old, after all, and you’d only just had your birthday.” Abby sighed. “But the truth is, it was affecting you. Dad was, with his distance. You didn’t understand. And I couldn’t stand that, so I tried to do stuff with you.”

“Kinderland,” Laurel said softly, and Abby nodded.

“Yes, we took the bus. I think you enjoyed that as much as the play park.”

“You were so good to me, Abby…”

“But I did it for me, too. It helped, you know. It took the edge off my grief. It gave me something to focus on, and I loved being able to make you happy.”

“I loved it, too,” Laurel whispered. Which was why it had hurt so much when Abby walked away.

“But as the months and then the years went by, it felt like too much. I couldn’t handle it all, and there was no support. I was doing my GCSEs, and then my A levels, and meanwhile I was basically raising you—giving you all your meals, helping you with your homework, washing your clothes. When I tried to get Dad more involved, he’d get angry with me. Not in an…an abusive way, but it still hurt. This was his job, and I was doing it for him.”

“I’m sorry,” Laurel said. She felt horribly guilty, for taking so much from Abby without ever truly realising it, at least at the time. “I made so much work for you…”

“It wasn’t your fault, Laurel. You were a kid. I actually considered not going to uni so I could stay with you, or at least going somewhere local and living at home. Maybe I should have.”

“You had to live your own life at some point.” Laurel had never expected to justify Abby’s actions to her, when they’d hurt so much at the time. But her sister had only been eighteen. Like she’d said, it hadn’t been her job to raise Laurel.

“I told myself that thirteen was old enough.”

“Almost as old as you were when Mum died.”

“And that you’d be okay, and I’d come home on weekends, and maybe Dad would step up and this could all be a good thing.”

“I can see that,” Laurel said, and finally she could. She could see Abby’s perspective—how trapped she

must have felt, longing to finally live her own life, and yet beholden to Laurel. She’d been in an impossible situation, trying to make the best of it.

“But then I got to Sheffield…” Abby drew another ragged breath. “And it felt so wonderful, Laurel, like I could finally breathe. And everyone else there was so unbelievably free—they didn’t have a thing to worry about. Clubbing every night and struggling to do their own laundry… they had no idea. But then I started to feel resentful. Bitter about how my life had turned out. And when I went home and saw how you were struggling to step into my shoes—making the meals, doing it all for him, I felt so guilty. And together, the guilt and the resentment, felt like this weight that I couldn’t live under. I couldn’t carry it.”

“Oh, Abby,” was all Laurel could say. It sounded so very awful.