The cheery voice on the radio off with a sigh. "Hello?"
"John? Has Sharon called you?"
"I got off the phone with her five minutes ago."
"So she told you?"
"That you said it would be alright if she skips dinner tonight? Yes?"
There was a pause, and John's hand passed wearily over his face as he waited.
"You aren't happy about that."
"Family dinner, dear. It's Christmas."
"I know. Look, I told her she had to check with you anyway. Did she tell you that?"
"No, her exact words were, Mum said I could."
"So she lied. John, if you want her at dinner tonight, call her back and tell her you do."
"You get to be nice guy, and I'm the tyrant."
"John, just try talking to her."
"We'll see, dear. Don't we always have dinner together as a family on Christmas?"
"Yes, we do. Probably years of tradition guilted her into at least giving us a heads up. Are you on your way home?"
"Yeah"
"okay. I'll see you then."
John greeted his teeth now as he dialed a familiar number.
"Hi Dad," ventured the voice on the other end.
"Sharon, you're coming home for dinner tonight?"
"No!"
"Sharon, we hardly ever see you. Is Christmas dinner too much to ask?"
"Dad, I told you I want to spend Christmas Eve with Mrs Lee."
"Christmas is a time for family Sharon!"
Sharon's cry was outraged. "Mrs Lee is family!"
John listened to Sharon's harsh breathing and imagines his daughter gripping the phone, knuckles white and jaw stubborn," and tonight she has no one."
"You have to do this?
"I promised her the last time I went to see her."
What could John say? He bit his tongue to stop the words that gought against his teeth. "But it doesn't matter; surely it makes no difference to him?"
John exhaled noisily then, while Sharon waited for his response.
"Okay," said John clenching his hands and told himself to be reasonable. You should actually be happy, he chided his own disappointment.
Sharon had grown up half at home, half of her parents' office, where Mrs Lee the cleaner had played with the little girl and entertained her when no one else would.
Sharon followed Mrs Lee often to the burger shop on the corner of the street for lunch, tagged along up and down the three floors of the cozy office, and learnt the basics of cleaning through experiments with the office mop, babbling away grinning through her formative years to the old lady's delight.
Mrs Lee had left the office when Sharon was 12, around the time the girl had started to become busier and busier, and her visit to the office less and less frequent. The old cleaner had left her a packet of Kit Kat chocolate and no goodbye.
Neither John nor his wife ever quite realised how much Sharon loved Mrs Lee, until six years had passed and Sharon came home one night having run into her childhood friend that day, and then six month passed and here was Sharon declining obstinately to have Christmas dinner with her parents in favour of spending Christmas Eve with Mrs Lee.
The hospital was white and clean and familiar as Sharon stepped out of the lift. She walked along the corridor and stopped at a door whose number she no longer needed to check as she entered.
The room was dark, the faint lonely breathing part of the silence.
"Hi, Mrs Lee. I'm back, like I said I would be."
The girl settled into the chair by the ward bed.
"So, everyone's having a lot of fun this Christmas. For me tonight, I had to decide between It's A Wonderful Life and you. But it wasn't too hard."
With her elbows on leaning on her knees and Mrs Lee's brittle hand in her own, Sharon watched the old lady's eyes, gently closed in her protracted coma, as she began to talk softly about her week.
