The year I turned nine, my mother decided to bake ten Christmas cakes. It was the eighties, and she’d found a pullout in Women’s Weekly magazine: “Festive Fruitcakes of the World”.
My father, home after twelve-hour shifts, stinking of diesel and beer, didn’t notice the cakes appearing, one a day. My favourite was the English plum cake with a reindeer family standing ankle-deep in the snowy white fondant. I loved how quiet they were.
He also didn’t notice my mother packing up suitcases and pushing them under my bed. When we left at dawn on Boxing Day I pulled the reindeers out from the icing and pushed them into my Barbie handbag, but I left behind the smallest one.
Athena Law is an award-winning short fiction author & poet. She lives on a hill in the idyllic Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland, Australia, where she collects pencils and has all her best ideas at midnight. She’s avoiding editing her first novel and is merrily bashing out her second.
www.athenalawauthor.com.au
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