Dying for Christmas by Tammy Cohen Page A

laying it on thick about how the bird was a present from the baby and wasn’t it kind of the baby. They were thrilled at how well I’d bonded with the bird. They thought that would make me even better disposed to the baby when it came.’
    ‘And did it?’
    ‘All in good time, sweetheart.’ Dominic looked irritated.
    ‘When my sister was born, I was horrified. You’d have thought I might be glad there was someone else in our dysfunctional family, but I wasn’t. I’d been so used to being the centre of my parents’ attention – for better or for worse – that I couldn’t get used to this needy little creature who was suddenly the focus of the whole household. For years I’d been smothered in love and now it was like they didn’t even bother to find out where I was half the time. It was Annabel this and Annabel that, and is Annabel hot, does Annabel need changing? She even slept in the bed with them and if I tried to get in, they’d say there wasn’t room. I remember one night I started screaming about how I hated the new baby and I wished they’d take her back where they got her from. You know, how kids can get.’
    I thought of my own brothers to whom I remained a constant conundrum and had been, as a child, a constant disappointment.
    ‘My parents were trying to calm me down. “But Annabel loves you,” my mother said.’ Dominic put on a creepy high-pitched voice for this bit and I wondered how much of it he could really remember. He’d been so young after all. ‘“Remember, she’s the one who brought your canary?” They wouldn’t call him by his name, Dominic. They said it was weird.
    ‘So, can you guess what happened next, Jessica? What might an angry little boy do with the present his enemy had given him?’
    He was looking at me, expecting an answer.
    ‘Set it free?’
    He looked at me with disappointment in his eyes. ‘I couldn’t set him free, Jessica. That would have been cruel. He wouldn’t have survived a single night out there in the wild. I took him out of his cage, and held him gently in both my hands, so I could feel his little heart right through his soft furry chest. And then I snapped his neck.’
    He’s lying, I told myself. Children that young don’t do things like that, let alone remember them so vividly. Still, my stomach rolled over.
    ‘That was my first experience of loss. I cried for days. I told Mummy and Daddy what I’d done so they’d know I didn’t owe the baby anything, but they insisted on blaming next door’s cat. They knew it wasn’t true, but that’s what they always said. “Remember when your canary was killed by the cat from next door?” It drove me crazy.
    ‘After a while they forgot about Dominic, but I never did. Each man kills the thing he loves. Who said that, Jessica? You must have that stashed away somewhere in your archive of a brain?’
    ‘Oscar Wilde.’
    ‘There. I knew you’d know it. It was a tough lesson to learn at five years old.’
    He’s lying . I repeated it mentally until it took on a rhythm of its own. He’s lying, he’s lying, he’s lying.
    ‘Anyway, listen to me, getting all maudlin when we’re supposed to be being festive. Let me bring you your third present. I bet you thought I’d forgotten it.’
    He sprang to his feet and crossed to the tree. For the first time, I looked closely at the perfectly arranged decorations. They were beautiful. Round baubles made from coloured glass winking as the flashing fairy lights caught them.
    Dominic selected a package from the pile. I wondered how he knew which was which. There didn’t seem to be any markings on that expensive paper.
    The present was rectangular, around half the size of a shoebox. I took it from him.
    ‘That’s right, Jessica, get it all off.’
    As before, watching me unwrap the layers of ribbon and paper seemed to get him quite excited and I thought he looked almost disappointed when I was left holding just the plain cardboard box that had been