Where You Are

Boxing Day

Jesse

Birgitta and I were up early on Boxing Day. We were usually early risers, but I'd taken it upon myself to ensure that her parents and sister got a bit of payback for what they'd done to my wife, whether they realized it was deserved or not. I suppose the bottom line was that it was incredibly rude to drop in unannounced, demanding food and lodging on Christmas Day, no matter which country you were from and who you were dropping in on. But that was just my opinion. I had a feeling Mrs Petersen might have skived off that particular lesson on manners. Or any lesson on manners at all.

Birgitta had made it abundantly clear last night that she would not be having sex with me while her family was in the same building. I supposed the honeymoon was indeed over. That, and even I had to admit that her family's presence was definitely a mood-killer. So I was making it my personal mission to get them out of this flat. I didn't care where they went, but they couldn't stay here. I'd already looked up some local hotels and had found plenty of options for them, which made me wonder if it was even true that they couldn't find other accommodations themselves. I wasn't about to go back to England after spending Christmas with my wife without even sleeping with her properly.

We stepped around the air bed set up on the floor and didn't even attempt to be quiet while we clattered pots and pans around to make breakfast.
Birgitta's prediction had been correct. We found the grim remains of her Quality Street tin on the kitchen table. The tin was empty and the sweet wrappers all in the bin. Not a single one remained.

I snorted to myself. They may be loud, demanding and obnoxious, but at least they were tidy.

'Can you keep it down?' Svetlana groaned from her spot on the sofa. 'Some of us are trying to sleep, here.'

'Oh, don't mind us,' I told her cheerfully. 'We're usually up earlier than this.'

Birgitta giggled and I wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to me so I could kiss her cheek.

There truly wasn't much food in the fridge. Birgitta had warned me that everything from grocery stores to shopping centres shut down in New Brunswick over Christmas. She'd only been planning on feeding the two of us, so it was no surprise that there was hardly anything left to eat that morning.

'What's for breakfast?' Mrs Petersen called from the living room.

'Hmm...' Birgitta mused. 'There's some frozen spinach, that might be nice with a couple of eggs, don't you think, Jesse?'

'Sounds delicious,' I winked at her. I wasn't particularly fond of spinach, but being around her mother and sister made me want to eat healthier just to spite them.

'The only problem is there's no eggs,' she mused. 'There's lots of green beans, carrots, all kinds of vegetables leftover from supper... oh!'

'What is it?' I asked her, lowering my voice, so her family wouldn't hear. She'd stiffened up rather abruptly in my arms.

'My tea,' she gestured to the open, and very empty, tin of Windsor Castle Scottish Breakfast tea that she loved so much and I brought for her whenever I came to visit.

She looked around and spotted her teapot on the counter. She opened the lid and cried out again. There were no less than five tea bags in the mostly full, yet cold, pot.

'Oh, we felt like having tea and that's all we could find,' Mrs Peterson appeared in the kitchen with that overly sweet smile, like she was cooing at a baby. 'It must have been old, it wasn't very nice.'

Bloody hell, hadn't she ever made a pot of tea before?

'Jesse brings me this tea from England,' Birgitta told her softly, not even looking at her. Her gaze was still fixed on the empty tea tin, her fists clenched on the countertop and knuckles white. She was angry. 'It's my favourite kind.'