Christmas Day brunch in Dubai with kids: table for thirteen

September

The calendar

The arrangement had been agreed in the lawyer’s office in June, in a sentence Lena had read many times since. The children would spend Christmas Eve with their father and return to her at ten on Christmas morning. It was fair. It was also, she realised in September, going to leave her with a very empty evening and then three overexcited children, aged eight, five and three, in an apartment, on a day with nothing in it.

She mentioned it in the class WhatsApp group, half as a joke. Within the hour she had three private messages. Dana had two children and the same arrangement. Ruth had three and a former husband in Sydney. Kemi had a boy of eighteen months and a family in Lagos who would be on a video call all day. What if we did it together, Dana wrote. Somewhere with a long table and someone else doing the washing up.

Early October

Christmas lunch reservations, made in October

Lena volunteered to book, on the grounds that she owned a spreadsheet. Hotels were already announcing their Christmas Day brunches, and she called three in one lunch break with the same list of questions. How old do children have to be to pay, and how much less? Is there an early sitting? Is there a children’s area, and is anyone looking after it? How many high chairs, and is there room to park a buggy? Can thirteen people sit at one table rather than three?

The last question decided it. One hotel offered a single long table on a terrace, an early sitting from half past twelve, a supervised craft corner and a children’s buffet at a child’s height. The deposit was refundable until mid-December, which mattered when four custody calendars were involved. She booked it on the tenth of October and sent the group a screenshot. Kemi replied with a single heart.

November

Planning around naps

Nine children between eighteen months and nine years have nine different ideas about lunch. The mothers met for coffee in November and planned like a small expedition. The youngest two would nap in the car on the way. Every child would bring a bag: colouring, stickers, a spare top for anyone under five, and one small wrapped present to open at the table when the wait for pudding became too long.

They agreed rules, too, which turned out to be the best idea of all. Each family paid its own bill, arranged with the hotel in advance. One mother at a time would sit near the craft corner for half an hour, by rotation, so the other three could finish a conversation. Nobody was to apologise for a child, ever, for the whole afternoon.

Lena told her own three about the plan early, and often. Children who share their Christmases between two homes like to know exactly where they will be and when, so she drew it for them: a house for Papa on Christmas Eve, a sun for the morning at home, a long table with thirteen stick figures for the afternoon. The five-year-old added a turkey. The drawing went on the fridge and stayed there until January.

24 December, 4pm

The empty Christmas Eve

She dropped the children at their father’s at four, with three overnight bags and a list of what each of them would and would not eat. The drive home took twenty minutes. The apartment, when she opened the door, was very quiet.

Lena had planned for this, a little. She turned on the tree. She wrapped the last presents, ate cheese on toast standing up, and watched the film she had wanted to see all year without anyone asking what was happening. She cried once, briefly, during the adverts, and then laid out three outfits for the morning on the sofa, smallest to largest, like a set of nesting dolls.

Across the road, a dozen balconies were lit. She wondered how many of them held someone doing exactly the same thing, and found the thought more comforting than sad.

25 December, 10am

Christmas morning, in ninety minutes

The children came back at ten, loud with stories and chocolate. Christmas morning, which in other years had taken until lunch, took an hour and a half: stockings on the bed, presents under the tree, one phone call to their grandmother in Hamburg, and a negotiation with a three-year-old about shoes that the three-year-old won.

They arrived at the hotel at twenty-five to one, the youngest asleep in his buggy and the eldest carrying the craft bag like a briefcase. Dana was already at the long table with a plate of croissants for anyone who could not wait. Nobody could.

25 December, 1pm

A Christmas Day brunch in Dubai, table for thirteen

The children took one end of the table and the mothers the other, which lasted about four minutes. After that it was simply one table. The eight-year-olds discovered the carving station and appointed themselves its regulars. The five-year-olds made paper chains in the craft corner long enough to reach the terrace door. Kemi’s son ate a bread roll, then another, then fell asleep on her shoulder during the video call to Lagos, which her mother said was the best part.

There is exactly one photograph of all thirteen of them, taken by a waiter on Ruth’s phone. Four mothers are mid-blink, two children are looking the wrong way and somebody’s paper crown has slipped over one eye. It is, all four of them agree, the best photograph of the year, and it is on four fridges in four different parts of Dubai.

At two, Lena’s eldest stood up, tapped her juice glass with a spoon, and gave a speech. It thanked the hotel, the turkey and “all the mums”, in that order. The four mothers raised their glasses. Ruth said it was the first toast anyone had made to her in three years.

25 December, 3.40pm

The moment it worked

By twenty to four the brunch was ending. The two three-year-olds were asleep on a banquette under a heap of coats. The older children were running small, careful laps of the terrace garden under the eye of a patient waiter. For the first time all day, the four women sat back and ordered coffee.

Nobody said anything wise. Dana said the stuffing had been better than her mother’s and asked them not to repeat it. Ruth said she had dreaded today since August and now could not remember why. Lena looked down the table, at the crumbs and the paper chains and the sleeping children, and thought that this was not the Christmas she had lost. It was a different one, and it was good.

The following October

Same table, same time

The WhatsApp group is still called Table for thirteen, although by the next Christmas it was fifteen, because Ruth’s sister came to stay and Dana brought a friend from work. Lena booked again on the tenth of October, with the same spreadsheet and the same questions. The empty Christmas Eve is still empty. She has stopped minding it. She buys a good cheese for it now, and a bottle of something cold, and on the second year she rang her own mother in Hamburg and talked for an hour without anyone needing a drink of water.