Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is a recurring temporal marker in Queenie’s story, first holding the promise of a shared celebration with Tom and later exposing the distance between them. The contrast is carried by particular acts of waiting and giving: presents are packed for an eagerly expected visit in one scene, while in another Queenie has already sent Tom a gift and still cannot get an answer. The same holiday occasion therefore frames a change in their relationship without making the later scene a simple absence of family; Queenie is with her grandmother and relatives, even as the Christmas she had hoped to spend with Tom fails to materialize.

The First Christmas with Tom

On their first Christmas Eve together, Queenie and Tom travel by train to Peterborough. They have been together for about six months, and the arrangements make the visit feel carefully prepared: Tom is squeezed against the window by bags of presents, while Queenie sits opposite with her feet on a suitcase filled with the gifts he has chosen for her. She has also selected presents for his parents, grandmother, and brother. The exchange is not merely a festive errand; it shows how far she has entered the rhythms of his family, knowing them well enough to choose gifts for each of them.

Queenie’s own present list carries a more personal meaning. Because she has often not received what she wanted, and has been asked what she wants, she has given Tom a full list rather than risk having to pretend to like an unwanted gift. The detail makes her anticipation practical as well as romantic: she is trying to make the occasion’s exchange more direct and less disappointing. Her excitement is explicit in her effort to draw Tom’s attention away from his phone. When he puts it away and apologizes, she tells him that he should be excited too, since this is their first Christmas together and her first Christmas with alcohol.

The contrast between their families appears in that small festive detail. Queenie explains that her family does not drink, recalling that her grandfather’s small sherry in 1961 led him to call an ambulance because he thought his heart was failing. Christmas with Tom therefore promises not only a first shared holiday but a different kind of celebration from the one she knows at home. The train, the presents, and the expectation of alcohol gather around that difference: the occasion is a threshold between family traditions, approached with excitement and a carefully stated hope for what she wants.

Waiting on a Later Christmas Eve

By the Christmas Eve described in Chapter Twelve, the direction of the waiting has changed. Queenie has spent the week watching her phone after asking Tom whether they could meet so she could give him his gift. Hearing nothing, she has taken a present to his office; after that, she has sent another message asking whether she might call his mother on Christmas Day. Still, Tom has not replied. Where the earlier journey carried presents toward a shared celebration, these attempts to deliver a gift and preserve a connection meet silence.

The text places that silence beside Queenie’s effort to quiet the questions in her own mind about what she is fighting for. She does not spend this Christmas Eve with Tom’s family: instead, she is back with her grandmother, who is glad to have her home after three years away. The difference is concrete rather than abstract. In the earlier scene Queenie sits opposite Tom among the gifts for his relatives; in the later one, she is preparing to attend midnight Mass with her own family. The holiday remains a family occasion, but the hoped-for contact with Tom has become uncertain and unanswered.

Midnight Mass and Family Presence

The family reaches the church at 11:15 p.m. Queenie arrives with Diana, Maggie, her grandfather, and her grandmother, and they take a bench near the back of a church that is already busy. She tries to sit beside Diana, but the two have been separated. Even in this crowded gathering, the scene keeps Queenie’s attention on where she can sit and whom she can be beside, grounding the larger emotional change in small arrangements of space.

Just before the service begins, her mother, Sylvie, appears at the end of the bench. Queenie’s grandmother tells Sylvie that she is late and instructs her to sit. Queenie huffs and shifts along to make room. Sylvie greets her in a whisper, surprised to see her there; Queenie answers quietly while facing forward. The exchange is brief and restrained, but it places mother and daughter on the same bench at a moment when Queenie is no longer with Tom. Her physical act of making room does not erase the awkwardness, and the whispered greeting does not turn the encounter into a reconciliation. The scene allows family presence and emotional distance to coexist.

The Holiday as a Measure of Change

Across these two Christmas Eves, the occasion measures change through opposing forms of attention. In the earlier scene, Queenie reaches across the train compartment to touch Tom’s cheeks and asks for his attention; he puts away his phone, and they speak about the celebration ahead. In the later scene, she has sent messages and a gift but receives no response. Her place in the holiday has shifted from travelling toward Tom and his relatives to returning to her grandmother’s home and making room for Sylvie at church.

The recurrence does not present Christmas Eve as a guarantee of closeness. The first celebration is full of anticipation, but Queenie’s detailed gift list also registers her wish not to be disappointed; the later one brings her into a crowded church, not into the Christmas with Tom she had tried to arrange. By setting the two scenes against each other, the narrative makes the date a quiet measure of intimacy, expectation, and separation. What changes is not that Queenie has no one around her, but that the shared future suggested by the first journey is no longer the shape of her Christmas.