A Gift to You Read Online Free Page A

and flamed in the window, and the house was filled with love and joy as they celebrated their first Christmas together in their own home.
    It brings a lump to my throat when I remember Lillian and Matthew. They were a couple whose love remained steadfast through thick and thin, and a couple who would have been horrified had they
lived to see what had become of their lovely home, and the way their granddaughter, Sandra aka Saundra had turned out.
    A demanding young madam from the minute she was born to Rebecca, Matthew and Lillian’s only child, Sandra grew up to have notions about herself and became what Lillian would have described
as ‘a right little consequence’.
    Rebecca left Riverside to study architecture in UCD where she met Hugh Sullivan, a part-time lecturer. They married, built up a successful architectural practice and, after two miscarriages,
were ecstatic when their baby girl was born. She was a much loved child and wanted for nothing. As Sandra grew into her teens, visiting her grandparents in Riverside was not high on her list of
priorities; she was far too interested in ‘chilling’ with her posh D4 friends. Spending Christmas in the country was ‘boring’ and ‘like totally uncool’, I heard
her rant to Rebecca one Christmas day as they had a spat in the sitting room while Lillian and Matthew, now elderly and afflicted by the ailments of cruel ageing, served up the dinner in the
kitchen.
    That was the last Christmas my beloveds were together. And it was my last Christmas on top of the tree. Matthew had a heart attack the following March as he lifted a bag of feed off the tractor,
and Lillian, heartbroken, went to her husband, and our glorious Creator five months later.
    For the next few years, I languished in my box under the stairs. Every so often, Rebecca and Hugh would come to visit and heat the house and do a spot of painting but they never spent Christmas
there. Sandra became ‘Saundra’ and married a hotshot financial whizz kid, Theo Carr, in Italy, in a wedding that cost an arm and a leg. It wouldn’t have been Lillian and
Matthew’s cup of tea. It was all designer dresses, a wedding-gift list in BT’s and wedding planners. I could just imagine Lillian saying, ‘It was far from wedding planners and
gift lists she was reared.’
    Then, one sunny spring day, I heard the sound of tyres crunching on gravel and minutes later Saundra’s D4 accent broke the silence, and a waft of Poison filled the air. I heard her say,
‘We could knock the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and make it open plan, and we could knock the wall down that faces south and have it totally glass . . .’ and my heart
sank.
    All that summer, builders hammered and banged and Lillian and Matthew’s snug home was turned into a designer show house, with wine-barrel chandeliers, Louis Vuitton steamer trunks for
tables, Argentinean leather chesterfield sofas that looked hideously uncomfortable, and mirrors, and picture frames that had cost an arm and a leg for their ‘distressed’ appearance.
Lillian would have been mighty ‘distressed’ to pay such ridiculous money for such nonsense.
    All their posh friends came for barbecues on the newly built deck and that first Christmas, Saundra decided that gold and silver would be her decorating ‘theme’. Only two of
Lillian’s precious Christmas baubles made the grade. I was ignored. She chose a silver diamante bow to decorate the top of her tree that year.
    They were all so superficial, those so-called sophisticates, as they boasted about their affluence, their investments, their villas on golf courses on the Algarve, their Jags and Mercs and
four-by-fours. They tried to outdo each other in every aspect of their lives and could not hide their envy if one of their crowd stepped further up the ladder of avarice and one-upmanship.
Mendacity, envy, selfishness and insincerity seeped into the walls of Sunnymede when those people gathered and it made