The Little Christmas Kitchen: A wonderfully festive, feel-good read

Going over to the wardrobe she yanked out everything closest to hand – a pair of Jimmy Choo flip-flops, Ralph Lauren shorts bunched up next to the top half of her Missoni bikini and the bottom half of a Stella McCartney one. Record temperatures across southern Europe this winter was all the news could talk about. Violent thunderstorms and above average hours of sunshine were creating flood havoc alongside flocks of holidaymakers jetting off for cheap winter sun. But – as she threw in some white Victoria Beckham jeans that she’d bought just because all ‘the girls’ had them, a kaftan and a huge wooly cardigan that she usually wore to watch TV on her own – she didn’t actually think she’d be wearing any of it. Her subconscious knew it was all for show. The case, the holiday, the fleeing just before Christmas. Because her knight would come home, throw his sword to the ground, scoop her up and carry her off into the rainy London sunset while declaring it was all lies.

She chucked in toiletries, scattered in loose. Half pots of Eve Lom moisturiser and her specially mixed shampoo clattered alongside her hairdryer, straighteners, trainers. The crisp shirts she’d paid a fortune to have pressed at the dry cleaners were stuffed in willy-nilly. She stopped for a second and called a taxi – to the airport? Which one. I don’t know. Heathrow? Yes madam.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she hung up the phone. Hair uncharacteristically skewiff. Eyes that someone who knew her well might say had been crying. The trace of mascara stains on cheeks that she’d scrubbed already with cold water and while telling herself to get a grip.

Adrian hadn’t had to say anything. She’d just watched the expression on his face when he’d asked Anne if Max ‘might be perhaps being unfaithful’. She’d heard the cough he’d done to try and buy himself some time. Then the nod as if he was pretending that Anne was saying something completely different.

‘Shit. What am I going to do?’ Ella had said without thinking when he’d put the phone down.

‘Talk to Max.’ Adrian had said. He’d looked worried, like a boy watching his mother cry. Ella couldn’t break down. Ella didn’t show her emotions. Ella was always the strong, confident one.

‘Yes good idea.’ She’d swallowed, pulled herself together. ‘There’s bound to be a rational explanation.’ Perhaps Anne didn’t know Max that well.

But instead of calling Max she had gone home and rifled through his drawers. Discovered nothing. Wondered if that was because their style was so minimalist or because it wasn’t true.

As Ella was just zipping up the overstuffed bag she heard the click of the front door, the pad of Gucci loafers on the beige carpet, and turned to see Max standing in the doorway, one hand pulling his tie loose.

‘I thought you were going to Claridge’s straight from work?’ he said, his beautiful face innocently perplexed. Arrow straight eyebrows drawing lightly into a frown, blond hair casually dishevelled.

‘Are you having an affair?’ She asked, her lips tight. Infuriatingly her hands were trembling.

Max paused, his eyes narrowed momentarily, then he swept the tie from under his collar and threw it on the bed. ‘Not this again.’ he said, incredulous, ‘Ella, come on!’ He rolled his eyes and then stalked into the en suite as if the question hadn’t been asked. ‘Of course I’m bloody not. Honey, I never have and never will,’ he added after a minute with a laugh that echoed round the bathroom. Then he popped his head back round the door and said with a wink, ‘You’re crazy. It’s our anniversary.’

The first time Ella had met Max’s parents they had been shown onto the veranda by the Portuguese maid and poured iced mint water from a crystal jug. The still air had hummed with heat and the only noise was the sprinklers battering the lush lawn as the ice clinked in their glasses. His mother and father were standing rigidly next to one another, muscles tense, clearly having been interrupted in the middle of a blistering row. Max’s father had patted the golden retriever at his feet and trudged off down the garden without even a nod of hello, his mother had looked Ella up and down with an expression of languid distaste, her lips unnaturally plump as she pouted and said, ‘When the men in this family lie, their cheeks go a very unnatural shade of pink.’ Then she’d taken a sip from her white wine glass that sweated in the humid air and said, ‘It’s a gem his mother passed on to me. Very useful,’ before heading into the house and leaving the two of them alone on the decking watching as the labrador bounded through the jets of water drenching the lawn.

‘Ella.’ Max turned, leant against the sink, paused for a moment then walked towards her, wrapping his arms round her waist and said, as he always did, ‘You literally mean everything to me.’

His hands were warm on her back, his eyes seemed to soak deep into her – but his smile wobbled as if he was nervous and, much as she wished she couldn’t, even under his Val d’Isere tan, Ella could see the hint of pink tinging his cheekbones.

‘I’m not having an affair.’ he said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got the idea from but I promise, I’m not.’ He bit his lip, his fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt.

He smelt of Max. Of the shower gel from the gym mixed with his bespoke patchouli aftershave and perhaps a glass or two of wine.

‘Look.’ he said, pulling away from her, taking her hand and drawing her into the hall. ‘Look what I just carried all the way here.’ In the doorway was a Christmas tree, massive, ten or twelve foot, lying wrapped in white netting, a trail of needles behind it. ‘I had to drag it the last bit,’ he laughed. ‘So bloody heavy.’

He was nervous. Ran his hands through his hair as he almost bounded forward and propped up the tree. ‘We’ve never had a real one and I know you really like them so I wanted to surprise you. What do you think?’

‘Max?’ Ella said, nervously, watching as he moved quickly, edgily, holding the tree up then laying it down again and ripping at the netting to set the branches free.

‘I really love you.’ he said without looking up. ‘I really really love you.’

She realised then how many times before she’d asked him if he was cheating on her – usually when she was a bit pissed, unable to squash her insecurity and the carousel in her head that whispered, what does he see in me? – because she knew that he usually sighed and rolled his eyes, told her she meant everything to him, then got a bit cross. He never told her he loved her, or pleaded with her with big watery eyes that reminded her of one of his parents’ labradors. He was almost desperate.

Max was never desperate.

Maybe she could live with it. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she could turn a blind eye. Maybe this was the price you paid for having the perfect man. And then she could have her perfect kids and her perfect life.

As he pulled at the netting on the tree, it wouldn’t tear.

‘Let me just get some scissors.’ he said, and went through to the kitchen where she heard him rifling frantically through some drawers.

For a moment Ella thought about putting her suitcase back in the cupboard, forgetting the whole thing and getting changed ready for dinner, as she stood looking at him from the doorway. At the triathlete’s body and the skier’s tan. At the hands that sat in the small of her back when they walked into a room full of all his terrifying friends. At the boyish smile and the dimples as he jogged back with the scissors and started slicing through the mesh, needles flying off the branches. She thought how their cleaner would have a terrible time getting them out the carpet. She’d talked in the past about wanting a real tree because that was what they had had when she was little, but in this apartment it was completely impractical.

At the thought of her childhood Christmases an image suddenly popped into her head. Completely unexpectedly and entirely unwanted. Of sitting at the top of the stairs with her sister, both in their matching red dressing gowns and hearing her dad say, in a whisper so they wouldn’t hear, ‘I can’t do it. Not any longer. Not even just for the kids.’ She’d thought he meant dressing up as Santa. She’d realised how wrong she was the next day when he left and the world fell down.

She remembered her mum saying to the neighbour in a daze, ‘I’m not ready to be alone.’ Her phone vibrated with a message to tell her the taxi was outside at the same time as a horn beeped. God this was all happening without her really thinking about it. It was all suddenly real. ‘That’s my taxi. I er– I’m going to Greece.’

Max paused in his shaking out of the Christmas tree branches. ‘What do you mean, you’re going to Greece? You can’t. You hate Greece. And it’s Christmas. What will I tell everyone?’ He was holding his hair back from his face with his hand, looking like a teenager, his eyebrows pulled into a frown. Max who wasn’t used to not getting his own way.

She rolled her lips together, swallowed, then said quietly, ‘You can tell them you went to Prague with another man’s wife.’

She could tell it hit him by the expression on his face.

Oh god, it was all suddenly real.

She turned away to go back to the bedroom and get her case, presuming that he would follow her, but Max was struggling to prop the tree up against the bookshelf. So instead she dragged her suitcase from the bedroom and into the hall but the wheels caught in the thick carpet and made her stumble. This wasn’t going at all as she’d hoped. She had wanted some weeping melodrama but then a huge hug, reassurance and a swanky anniversary dinner. Not some farcical double act – her tripping in her heels, him balancing a ten foot tree on his shoulder. And certainly not her going to Greece.

‘At least let’s talk about this,’ he pleaded as he fumbled with the giant fir. ‘It’s not what it seems.’

‘Really?’ She raised her brows, disbelieving but inside her mind was still chanting quietly, He’s going to have a good reason. I’m going to be wrong. It’s going to be ok.

But then the tree slipped and crashed to the ground, the trunk smashing up against his precious smoked glass coffee table and shattering the right-hand corner. Max swore at the sound, then walked over and ran his hand along the crack. ‘Shit look was it’s done. Bollocks!’

Ever since he’d bought it at auction for a huge sum of money without consulting with her, Ella had hated that table and he knew it. It was a monstrosity that wasn’t at all in keeping with their interior designer’s scheme. Now, the way he sat down on the arm of the grey velvet sofa it was as if it was the table and him against the world. As if she had started this in order to ruin the table. As if suddenly Max was the wronged party.

She heard him sigh, saw his shoulders slump, the tree lay sprawled across the carpet like a whale. Max kicked the trunk with his foot and it flopped off the smoked glass to the floor with a thump. ‘You’ve never trusted me.’

No. She didn’t want to hear this.

‘I suppose I just…’

She wanted to quickly rewind to him cutting the netting and trying to impress her.

‘It was only once.’

Why had she even asked him? Why had she started this?

It was too late to realise she could have turned a blind eye.

What was she with no Max?

‘I don’t know, maybe I just did what was expected of me.’

No. No. No.

The taxi beeped again.

‘That’s your cab.’ he said, looking up at her through thick, blond lashes. The ball was suddenly back in her court without her realising quite how.

Walking out the front door seemed the only possible option. Like she had to trust that in this game they were playing he was going to come after her.

Outside it was still raining – tipping it down, and the grey sky almost melted into the grey pavements. She paused on the step, waiting for him to come running outside to stop her. To grab her arm again and pull her inside, drop to his knees and tell her that he’d made a mistake and she was the only one for him.

But as the seconds ticked by and the heavy door to the apartment block slammed shut behind her there was no sign of him.

Her hair was getting wet in the rain. Come on Max. Come on. We’re Maxella. We’re us.

‘Can I take that for you?’ A man in a suit had got out of the taxi and was holding an umbrella over her and leaning forward to take her bag.

‘Yep, just one minute.’ She held up a hand, he looked a little confused but waited next to her with the umbrella.

The door still didn’t open.

‘Shall we er–’ The taxi driver nodded his head towards the car hesitantly.

Ella turned back to look into the communal hallway of the block. And for a moment her heart raced when she thought she saw someone but then realised it was just the Christmas tree that the caretaker had put up that morning.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Ok. Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes. Let’s go.’

The driver held the door for her and she sank into the plush leather of the Mercedes. This was the company her work used, executive cars, no shabby old taxi with a tree air-freshener and a string of tinsel. The airport madam? Shit, yes, hang on, let me ring them. Shall I go? Yes, yes go. Googling Dial a Flight while hoping Max might be texting – I’d like to book a flight. For now. Greece please. From Heathrow, I’m on my way there.

Switching it to silent she threw her Blackberry into her bag and with her arms outstretched across the back of the seats she let her head sink back into the plush cream leather and felt the beat of her heart pound in her head.

God this was actually real.

CHAPTER 4

MADDY

The repairs to the yacht were going to cost all her savings.

‘I just don’t understand why you’d take someone else’s boat out into a storm?’ Maddy’s mum, Sophie, was rolling out filo into wafer thin sheets, refusing to look up at her and taking her frustration out on the pastry. ‘What would possess you to do such a thing. With little kids on board. Jesus Maddy. It’s Christmas. Imagine… imagine if one of them had gone overboard.’

‘But they didn’t.’ Maddy said, unable to hold back the sulky tone to her voice. She leaned against the table top and traced the pattern of the old wood with her fingertip.

‘But they could have.’ Sophie said, exasperated, slamming the rolling pin down on the stainless steel surface of the island unit in the middle of the room where she worked. ‘They could have, Maddy.’

‘But they didn’t.’ she said again. ‘You can’t live with “could haves” all the time.’

Her mum didn’t reply and after a pause said, ‘Can you get me the bowl of feta from the fridge?’

Maddy sloped out into the storeroom at the back of the kitchen that was piled high with vegetables, tins of beans and jars packed with lentils, flours, rices and rows and rows of herbs and spices. Along the back wall were three fridges, glowing fluorescent with see-through doors. Maddy loved the fridges, she loved that you could see inside and stare at the bowls of cucumber flecked tzatziki, pale pink taramasalata, tubs of tiny anchovies and plates of garlic covered prawns. See all the new creations her mum had made and the great trays of moussaka and pastitsio that they would have a wedge out of for dinner. As she opened the door and pulled out the big glass bowl of feta, she saw on the bottom shelf the rows of tiny mince pies that her mum had started to make for Christmas and closed her eyes for a second. Annoyingly she could picture herself eating them, standing with everyone on Christmas morning and popping a couple into her mouth – no longer London bound for the holiday season. No longer the possibility of her family toasting a picture of her with their champagne and wishing she was with them. Who knew that mince pies could depress her so completely?

‘Maddy – the feta!’ her mum called.

Back in the kitchen she slid the bowl over to her mum and looked up to see that Dimitri had sauntered in along with her grandparents and her mum’s friend Agatha who waited tables when they were packed but was so moody with the customers her mum always tried to play down their busyness.

‘So how much is it going to cost you, Maddy?’ Dimitri asked as he picked a handful of carrot sticks off the countertop and popped them one by one into his mouth.

‘I just chopped those.’ Maddy’s mum leant over and slapped his hand when he went for some more.

‘Sorry Sophie.’ He winked.

‘I’ll bet you are.’ She shook her head, attempted unsuccessfully to hold back a smile, and then pushing her hair behind her ear with the back of her flour-covered hand, said, ‘So yes, Maddy, how much is it going to cost? I can’t pay for it, you know that don’t you?’

They may have been seeing a massive spike in business at the taverna because of the unseasonably high temperatures, but the flip side was the wild thunderstorms that had swept part of the back roof off and flooded the outhouses – costing her mum pretty much the entire summer’s profit.

Dimitri leant up against the island unit, twisting the top off the beer he’d obviously grabbed from the fridge outside on his way into the kitchen, and said, ‘Is it as much as, say, a plane ticket to London?’ His expression dancing with mischief.

Maddy narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Yes Dimitri, yes it is that much, perhaps a little bit more.’

He sucked in his breath.

‘Who’s going to London?’ her granddad asked as he lowered himself into the ratty old armchair in the corner of the room.

After the divorce, when her mum had moved permanently to the island that they’d holidayed on every year, buying the taverna that sprawled out into the bay, gradually Maddy’s grandparents stopped going back to England. If anyone ever commented on how odd it was that they’d changed allegiance, relocating to move near their ex-daughter-in-law, they always said it was because they couldn’t bear to be so far away from her cooking. But really it was just because they loved her, and at the time, not so much now, she struggled to manage without them. They downsized to a pied-a-terre in Nettleton, the village both her mum and dad had grown up in, and shipped all their furniture from their big country house over to Greece where the majority of it didn’t fit in the little villa they’d bought. Now it was dotted about in various places – Maddy, for example, had their Chippendale writing desk and Dimitri had inherited a glass 1950s cocktail cabinet that sat next to the fruit machine in his bar. Her granddad’s armchair sat in the taverna kitchen, an incongruous addition to the rustic industrial chic look that her mum had going on.

‘No one’s going to London, Granddad.’ Maddy went over to the kettle and flicked it on to make him a cup of tea before he could say that no one took care of him properly.

She could feel her mum watching her. ‘Why are you talking about London?’ she asked.

‘I’m not. Dimitri was.’ Maddy said, too quickly, as she reached up to get the tea bags from the shelf.

‘You don’t want to go to London, do you Maddy?’ her mum said, slight panic in her voice as she went on, ‘Why would you want to go to London? It’s Christmas. You can’t go to London.’

‘Are you going to London, Madeline?’ Her grandmother looked up from where she was helping her mum spoon feta into the cheese pies. ‘If you are could you pick me up some chocolate digestives?’

Maddy had to exhale slowly to calm herself down as she made the cup of Earl Grey. ‘For god’s sake. No one is going to London.’ she said through gritted teeth as she walked over to her granddad and slammed the tea down on the doily that covered his little side table.

‘You’re a little angel.’ Her granddad smiled, then looked at the cup and added, ‘One of your mum’s lemon biscuits would really go down a treat.’

Maddy rolled her eyes and went back to the shelf to grab the biscuit tin. When her granddad reached in and took a couple he said, ‘Are you singing this week Maddy?’

‘Friday, at the bar.’

‘I hate the bar.’ He scowled

Dimitri shouted over, ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘You make it so I hate it, Dimitri. It’s not for people like me.’

‘Rubbish.’ Maddy laughed, the atmosphere lightening, ‘You could come to the bar. You’re not that old.’

Her granddad scoffed. ‘Maybe. Maybe just to hear you sing, then I’ll leave.’

‘Maybe I won’t let you in, Mr Davenport.’ Dimitri said with one brow raised.

Her granddad laughed. ‘I was in the war, kiddo, I could fight my way in.’

‘You weren’t in the war,’ her grandmother scoffed. ‘You were behind a desk filing papers.’

‘That was still the war.’ he said crossly and sat back in a sulk with his cup of tea. ‘Madeline…’ he added, ‘if you went to London you could see your father.’ His bruised ego deliberately trying to stir up trouble.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Michael.’ Maddy’s grandmother slapped him on the arm.

Her mum sucked in a breath. Maddy closed her eyes for a second and then scowled at Dimitri who made a face of laughing apology and sloped out the door with his beer.

‘That’s it.’ she said, ‘I’m going to work.’

Maddy grabbed her bag from the hat stand in the corner of the room – another of her grandparents’ antiques – and her mum wiped her hands on her apron and came over to where she was pulling on her trainers by the back door. ‘You’ll be back to help with the evening shift?’ she said, reaching forward to tuck Maddy’s long fringe behind her ear where it had slipped in her hurry to get her shoes on and go.

‘Yes,’ she snapped, but then paused when she saw her mum smile and said more softly, ‘Yes, I’ll be back. I need the money,’ she added with a laugh.

‘I’m sorry you lost your savings, Maddy,’ her mum added, taking her glasses off her head and putting them on so she could look at Maddy properly – straighten out her jumper so it didn’t hang off her shoulder and fix one of the pulls in the wool. ‘You’re so pretty, and you look so scruffy.’

‘Who’s gonna see me, Mum?’

Her mum paused, smoothing the fabric of Maddy’s jumper back into place, then she took her glasses off and said with a sigh, ‘London’s not that great you know. I know it seems so. And I know your sister makes it look like it is, but it’s just a place, Maddy.’

Maddy looked down at her dirty trainers. ‘I know.’ she said, rolling her lips together and thinking about all the money she’d had to hand over for the giant dent she’d put in the yacht. ‘But it’s just a place I wanted to go.’

‘Well if it’s any consolation, I’m glad you’re staying. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without you.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ Maddy lied, and then dashed out the back door to work.

If it was summer, going to work was no hardship. Maddy worked on the boats, jumping from one to the other in a bikini top and frayed shorts, feet roughened from running on pebbles and over hot tarmac, face golden, hair thick with salt and bleached at the tips, laughing and shouting, oil streaking her arms, smelling of sun cream and swimming in the sea till sundown. But in the winter she worked in Spiros’ garage – a shabby white building with green doors that were cracked and broken at the bottom – sanding, re-painting, fixing engines that tourists had given a beating during the holiday season. She had to listen to Greek folk music as it blasted out of a paint splattered radio and every day shake her head when Spiros asked her why she wasn’t married yet and had no babies.

Spiros was on the mainland today though, delivering an engine, so Maddy was on her own. She put her own music on and flung open the windows that Spiros kept closed because the sun made the place too hot. But Maddy could cope with the heat if it meant having the view – probably one of the best on the island, out over the Mediterranean, a sheer drop down on the cliff edge and, at this time of year, accompanied by the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.

As she leant on the window sill, looking down at the navy water, she pulled a letter out of her pocket. The headed paper said Manhattans, the double t shaped like the Empire State building. The job offer made it clear that the backing work was only for Christmas and that while there might be occasions where she was required to perform solo there was no guarantee of this, they reserved the right to replace her at any point. The address was in Soho. 15 Greek Street. She’d thought it was fate when she’d written back to accept.