Fragment #19 - The red card

…while the door opens on choir singers. Carols. Obviously. Children sing carols for Christmas. They begin with a four-voice Gingle Bells. Hurray. Don’t they have something more intelligent to do? I slam the door on them.
“What was it? Granny asks.
“Carols singers.”
“Did you give them money? You know it is bad luck not giving them money, honey.”
Granny runs to the door and opens it. The children were leaving. She asks them to come back, and asks for several songs. The Twelve Days of Christmas is her favourite. When they have finished, after having given them a tenner, she comes back in.
“That was gorgeous. They had angel voices.”
“Well, maybe.” I answer moodily.
Ariane leans towards me and whispers in my ear: “You thought it could have been Julian coming back?”
I nod.
“I don’t want you to feel desperate, but he won’t. He’s a coward.”
“Don’t speak of him like that.”
“Well, it is what he is.”
“Ariane, please,” I say, my voice getting tinted with anger.
“Stop you whisperings, children, it’s Christmas.” Father says.
“And?” I snap angrily.
“Jed, please…” Mother whispers.
“Ok, fine.”
The dinner goes by in a sort of holy silence. I keep thinking about Julian. Ariane’s right, anyway. He won’t come back.
“Let’s go to the tree now. I can see plenty of presents waiting for you.”
Mother is the first to run to the presents, in her very own childish manner. She opens hers, tearing the paper. It is a blue scarf Granny bought at Harrods.
I open my present from Granny. It is a scarf. Exactly the same scarf as she did to Julian. A deep purple one. My eyes become humid. I run to her to hug her.
“Thank you so much!”
Vincent next to me opens his present. He’s got CDs from his favourite group, Tokyo Hotel; and a collector DVD of Sin City.
Ariane gets a DVD of Pam Ann show. She is an Australian actress, doing a show about stewards and stewardesses. Airplane humour, she can only love it.
There is under all this, a last present for me. From Father and Mother. It is very thin. When I see how strongly they are staring at me, I open the red envelope. Inside is a card. A very simple card, featuring the naïve drawing of a train. I recognise in it the drawing I did when the first explained me we would cross the channel to go live in France. I open the card. In it is Mother’s writing. I can see it from the curves and angles.
I don’t understand the meaning of all this.
In the card are only written those few words: