Last Christmas

Any minute now someone in the queue was going to make the connection between the Happy Homemaker and the harassed woman standing behind them, and realise she was a big fat fraud. Catherine didn’t think she could stand it. She glanced over at the serve yourself tills, where the queues looked even more horrendous, and people were indulging in supermarket rage as the computers overloaded and spat out incorrect answers or added up the bills wrong.

Catherine looked in her trolley. She had been in Sainsbury’s for half an hour and all she had to show for it were two packets of mince pies, a bag of sugar, a Christmas pudding, and no brandy butter. At this rate she would be queuing for at least half an hour before she got served, by which time every sod in Sainsbury’s would probably discover her alter ego.

Furtively looking each way up the shop, Catherine pushed her trolley to the side of an aisle and, feeling rather as she had done aged fourteen when she used to bunk off to smoke behind the bike sheds, she abandoned it. They could manage without brandy butter for once. And no one liked Christmas puddings anyway.

As she fled the supermarket, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ was still pumping out. Bah humbug, she thought to herself.

Gabriel sat in the lounge, head in his hands. The fire had long gone out and, as the wintry evening drew in, dark shadows were springing from every corner of the normally cosy room. He should make up the fire again. Warm up the place before he went to pick up Stephen. Never had his family home felt so cold and barren.

Stephen.

Oh God. What was he going to tell Stephen? Thank goodness he’d been at the rehearsal for the Village Nativity all afternoon. Thank goodness he hadn’t witnessed the latest painful scene between his parents. Gabriel had tried to protect Stephen from the truth about his mother for the best part of seven years, but even he would have had difficulty today.

‘You don’t understand. You’ve never understood,’ Eve had said, her eyes hard and brittle with unshed tears, her face contorted with pain. It was true. He didn’t understand. How could he understand the pain she went through every day, the mental anguish of feeling forever out of sorts with the world and unable to deal with the reality of it?

It was her very fragility that had drawn him to her in the first place. Eve had always seemed to Gabriel like a wounded bird, and from the moment he’d met her all he wanted to do was to care and protect her. It had taken him years to see that, whatever he did, he couldn’t protect her from herself. Or from the painful places her mind journeyed to.

‘Please let me try,’ Gabriel had pleaded. ‘If you always shut me out, how can I help you?’

Eve had stood in the house that she had always hated with her bags packed and ready—she’d have been gone without a scene if he hadn’t popped back because he’d forgotten to tell her that he was taking Stephen round to his cousins’ house after the rehearsal for the Village Nativity, to help decorate their tree—and looked at him blankly.

‘You can’t,’ she said simply. She went up to him and lightly stroked his cheek. ‘You’ve never got that, have you? All this,’ she gestured to her home, ‘and you. And Stephen. It isn’t enough for me. And I can’t go on pretending it is. I’m sorry.’

Tears had pricked his own eyes then. He knew she was right, but he wanted her to be wrong. For Stephen’s sake as well as his own. Gabriel had spent so many years trying to reach Eve, it was a default way of being. He hadn’t wanted to face the truth. There were no more excuses. He was never going to be able to give Eve what she needed. She was a world away from him, and always had been.

‘What should I tell Stephen?’

Eve stifled something that sounded like a sob.

‘You’re a good man, Gabe,’ she said. ‘Too good for me. You deserve better.’

She kissed him on the cheek, and fled the house towards the waiting taxi, while Gabriel stood in stunned silence. He’d known this moment had been coming from the minute he took her under his wing. She was a wild bird, and he’d always felt that eventually she would fly away and leave him. But not like this. Not now. Not just before Christmas.

Gabriel had lost track of the time while he sat alone in the gathering gloom. It was only now that he was beginning to notice how cold it had suddenly got. How cold it was always going to be now that Eve had gone. He wondered what he was going to do. Whether he’d ever see her again. And what the hell he was going to say to their son…

Noel Tinsall stood nursing a pint at the bar in the tacky nightclub the firm had booked for this year’s Christmas party, listening to Paul McCartney blasting out what a wonderful Christmas time he was having. Noel was glad someone was. He wondered idly when it would be decent to leave. Probably not wise to go before Gerry Cowley, the CEO, who was strutting his deeply unfunky stuff on the dance floor, leering at all the secretaries. It was only eight o’clock. The party was barely started yet, and already he could see some of the junior staff had drunk more than was good for them. He wouldn’t be surprised to find a variety of embarrassing photos doing the rounds on the Internet in the next few days. What was it about the office Christmas party that made people behave so idiotically? Bacchanalian excess was all very well when you didn’t have to face your demons at the water cooler the next day.

‘Hey, Noel, you sexy beast, come on and dance.’ It was his secretary, Julie. Or rather, not his secretary anymore. Not since that jumped-up toerag Matt Duncan had got his promotion. Now Noel had to share a secretary. A further subtle means of making him feel his previous high standing in the office was being eroded. Time was, when people jumped to his beat. Now they jumped to Matt’s. Perhaps it was time to get a new job.

Noel hated dancing, but also found it nearly impossible to be rude to people, so before long he found himself in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by sweaty, writhing bodies, and unable to escape the feeling that everyone was laughing at him.

‘You’re dead sexy, you know,’ Julie was shimmying up to him, and grabbing his tie. ‘Much more than that silly tosser Matt.’

No, no, no! They had always had such a professional relationship, but she was clearly pissed and coming on to him. Not that she wasn’t incredibly attractive or anything. And not that Noel wasn’t sorely tempted for a moment. Would Cat even know or care if he were unfaithful? Sometimes he didn’t think so. Julie was lovely, uncomplicated and she was available. It would be so easy…

What on earth was he thinking? Noel shook his head. Definitely time to go.

‘Sorry, Julie, I’ve got to get back,’ Noel said. ‘Catherine needs me. Kids. You know how it is.’ Catherine probably wouldn’t care if he were there or not, judging by the notice she took of him these days, but Julie didn’t need to know that.

Ducking her alcohol-fumed kiss, Noel made his way out of the club, and into the welcome crisp air of a London December evening. It was still early enough for the third cab he hailed to be miraculously free, and before long he was speeding his way towards Clapton, secure in the knowledge that, despite the amount he’d imbibed, he’d got away without making an idiot of himself.

The cab drew up outside his house, an imposing Edwardian semi down a surprisingly leafy street. The Christmas lights he’d put up with the kids the previous evening flickered maniacally. One of them had no doubt changed the settings again. He bounded up the steps and let himself in to a scene of chaos.

‘I hate you.’ Melanie, his eldest daughter, came blasting past him and flung herself up the stairs in floods of tears, followed swiftly by his son, James, who shouted, ‘I so hate you too!’

‘Nobody hates anyone round here, I hope,’ he said, but he was ignored and the house rang to the sound of two slamming doors.

‘Don’t want to go to bed. Don’t WANT to!’ his youngest daughter Ruby was wailing as Magda, their latest inefficient au pair, tried to cajole her off the floor of the playroom where she lay kicking and screaming. Noel noted with a sigh that the bookshelf had fallen down again. He wasn’t quite sure he was up to dealing with that, so he poked his head in the lounge and found Paige, his middle daughter, surreptitiously scoffing chocolate decorations from the tree.

‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked.

‘She’s on the bloody blog,’ said Paige calmly, trying to hide the evidence of her crime.

‘Don’t say bloody,’ said Noel automatically.

‘That’s what Mummy calls it,’ said Paige.

‘And don’t steal chocolate from the tree,’ added Noel.

‘I’m not,’ said Paige, ‘Magda said I could.’

‘Did she now?’ Catherine came down the stairs looking frazzled. ‘Come on, it’s your bedtime.’

She kissed Noel absent-mindedly on the cheek before going into the playroom to calm down not only the howling Ruby, but also a semi-hysterical Magda, who was wailing that these children were like ‘devils from hell’.

Noel stomped downstairs to the kitchen, got himself a beer, and sat disconsolately in front of the TV. Sometimes he felt like a ghost in his own home.

‘Angels! I need angels!’ Diana Carew, formidable representative of the Parish Council, flapped about like a giant beached whale. It was hard to see how someone so large could actually squeeze through the tiny door of the room allocated for the children to sit in while they awaited their turn to go on stage, but somehow she managed it.

Marianne suppressed the thought as being bitchy, but it was hard to take her eyes from Diana’s enormous bosoms. Marianne had never seen anything so large. And it gave her something to smile about while she sat freezing her arse off in this godforsaken tiny village hall watching the Hope Christmas Nativity taking shape, knowing damned well that any input from her was not actually required. In the weeks leading up to the nativity, Marianne had become grimly aware that she was only on the team because every other sane member of the village, including her colleagues at the village school, had already opted out.

Everyone, that was, apart from the very lovely and immensely supportive Philippa (or Pippa to her friends). Marianne had only got to know Pippa in recent weeks, since she’d been co-opted into helping on the Nativity, but she was fast becoming Marianne’s closest friend in Hope Christmas and one of the many reasons she was loving living here. Pippa was bearing down on her now with a welcome cup of tea and a barely suppressed grin. Together they watched Diana practically shove three reluctant angels on the stage, where they joined a donkey, two shepherds, some lambs, Father Christmas and some elves, who were busy singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ as they placed gifts at Mary and Joseph’s feet.

‘I have to confess,’ Marianne murmured, ‘this is a rather, erm, unusual retelling of the Nativity. I can’t recall elves from the Bible.’

Pippa snorted into her tea.

‘I’m afraid the elves are here to stay,’ said Pippa. ‘Diana does a slightly altered version every year, but the elves always feature. It dates back to when she ran the preschool in the village. And it’s kind of stuck. Everyone’s too frightened of her to tell her to do it differently.’

‘Are there actually any carols involved in this?’ Marianne asked. So far, on the previous rehearsals she’d been roped into, the only thing remotely carol-like had been ‘Little Donkey’.

‘Probably not. At least this year she’s dropped “Frosty the Snowman”,’ said Pippa. ‘Mind you, it took the Parish Council about three years to persuade her that really, it didn’t actually snow in Bethlehem on Christmas Day. She loved that snow machine.’

Marianne hooted with laughter, then quietened down when Diana hushed her, before continuing to marshal the children into order and berate them when they’d got it wrong. She was quite formidable. And her version of the Nativity was sweet in its way. It was just…so long. And had so little to do with the actual Nativity. Marianne liked her festive season—well, festive. There was a purity about the Christmas story that seemed to be lacking in everyday life. It was a shame Diana couldn’t be persuaded to capture some of that.

The natives were getting incredibly restive and parents were beginning to arrive to pick their offspring up. Diana looked as if she might go on all night, till Pippa gently persuaded her that they still had the dress rehearsal to have another run-through of everything.

Marianne quickly helped sort the children out of costumes and into coats and scarves. The wind had turned chill and there was the promise of snow in the air. Perhaps she might get a white Christmas. Her first in Hope Christmas, with which she was falling rapidly in love. Her first as an engaged woman. This time next year she would be married…

Nearly all the children had been picked up, but there was one small boy sitting looking lonely in a corner. Stephen, she thought his name was, and she had a feeling he was related to Pippa somehow. Marianne hadn’t been in the village long enough to work out all the various interconnections between the different families, many of whom had been here for generations. Marianne didn’t teach him, but the village school was small enough that she’d got to know most of the children by sight at least.

‘Is your mummy coming for you?’ she asked.

The little boy looked up and gave her a look that pierced her heart.

‘My mummy never comes,’ he said. ‘But my daddy does. He should be here.’

Poor little mite, thought Marianne. Presumably his parents had split up. He couldn’t have been more than six or seven. Perhaps she should go and let Pippa know he was still here.

Just then she heard a voice outside the door. A tall man entered, wearing a long trenchcoat over jeans and a white cable-knit jumper. A thick stripy scarf was wound round his neck. This must be Stephen’s dad.

‘Daddy!’ Stephen leapt into his dad’s arms.

‘Woah,’ said the man. He turned to Marianne and looked at her with deep brown eyes. Soulful eyes. She shivered suddenly. There was such pain in those eyes. She felt she’d had a sudden glimpse of his soul. She looked away, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

‘Sorry I’m so late,’ he said. ‘Something came up.’

There was something about the way he said it that made Marianne feel desperately sorry for him. He looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘Is everything all right?’ Marianne nodded at Stephen who was clinging to his dad’s side for dear life.

Stephen’s dad stared at her, with that same piercingly sad look his son had.

‘Not really,’he said.‘But it’s nothing I can’t handle.Come on, Steve, I’ll race you to your cousins’. I think it’s going to snow tonight.’

‘Can we build a snowman?’

‘Of course,’ said his dad. He turned back to Marianne. ‘Thanks again for looking after him.’

‘No problem,’ said Marianne, and watched them go. She wondered what was troubling them so deeply, then dismissed it from her mind. Whatever their problem was, it was no business of hers.

This YearChapter One

Marianne stood in the kitchen fiddling with her drink, looking around at the shiny happy people spilling into Pippa’s cosy farmhouse, an old redbrick building with a slate roof, oozing tradition and country charm. Marianne had fallen in love with this kitchen and its wooden beams, battered old oak table and quarry-tiled floor. It was all so different from the pristine newness of her family home, and exactly the sort of house she’d hoped she and Luke would live in when they were married. When they were married. What a distant dream that now seemed.

If it wasn’t for Pippa, who had been like a rock to her this last week, she’d never have come. She wondered how soon she’d be able to leave. It was strange how numb she felt, as if she was detached somehow from those around her. There was ice running through her veins. The life she had hoped for and looked forward to had fizzled away to nothing. She had no right to be here, no right to join with these happy relaxed people. Her new year wasn’t a new start but a reminder of everything she’d lost. How could her life have altered so abruptly—so brutally—in just a week? She should be in Antigua with Luke right now, just like they’d planned. Instead…

Don’t. Go. There. Marianne had been determined not to cry tonight. She knew she was the subject of a great deal of gossip. How could she not be in such a small place? It was the downside to country living of course, and one she didn’t relish now. But Pippa had persuaded her to hold her head up high and come out tonight to her and Dan’s annual New Year’s bash. So come she had. She wouldn’t have done it for anyone but Pippa, but the way she was feeling right now, Pippa was the only good thing left about living in Hope Christmas. Not that she was going to stay here much longer. Not after what had happened. As soon as school started next week, she’d look for a new job and go back to London where she belonged.

Marianne watched the crowds surging in and out of the comfortable farmhouse, which seemed Tardis-like. Pippa and Dan had the enviable knack of making everyone feel welcome—Dan was on hand pouring bubbly for all the guests while Pippa worked the room, making sure that the grumpy and irascible (Miss Woods, the formidable ex-head teacher of Hope Christmas primary, who had stomped in with her wooden stick, declaring her antipathy towards New Year: ‘Never liked it, never will,’) were mollified with mulled wine; the shy and retiring (Miss Campion, who ran the post office, and Mr Edwards, who played the organ in church) were encouraged to fraternise; and the party animals (including Diana Carew, those enormous bosoms taking on a life of their own on the dance floor) had room and space to throw some shapes in Pippa and Dan’s new conservatory.

‘More fizz?’ Dan was suddenly at her side refilling her glass. Was that her third? Or fourth? She probably should eat something. She hadn’t eaten properly all week, and the bubbles were going straight to her head. She was starting to get a slightly surreal floating feeling. Perhaps she was going to be all right after all. No one had paid her any attention yet, so perhaps she wasn’t the hot topic of discussion she imagined.

Or maybe not. Marianne wandered into the hall, where three people in animated conversation suddenly went silent as she approached. Feeling uncomfortable, she left, only to hear one of them cattily hissing, ‘Well, to be honest, it was never going to work was it, the lord of the manor and the teacher?’

Blinking back tears, Marianne knocked back her champagne and grabbed a bottle from Dan, who looked rather taken aback. Marching up to Pippa, she said, ‘Fancy getting absolutely bladdered?’

‘Are you sure that’s such a good idea?’ said Pippa cautiously.

‘Never been surer,’ said Marianne as the strains of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ filled the room. ‘My mum always says hold your head up high and sod the consequences. Come on, let’s dance.’

An hour later, all danced out, and having moved on from champagne to vodka and orange, Marianne’s emotions had lurched from deep misery to a wild ecstasy that bordered on the unhinged. So what if her engagement was over? She was young, free and single again, it was time she took control of things. There must be some decent men at this party.

Having worked her way around the entire confines of Pippa’s house and discovering that, no, there really weren’t any decent men there, Marianne’s cunning plan to start the New Year was beginning to look a little shaky. Perhaps it was time for plan A—an early night. Marianne was heading for the hall when the doorbell rang. No one appeared to be taking any notice, so she went to answer it. Standing there was a dark-haired man who looked vaguely familiar. He had the most amazing brown eyes.

‘You’ll do,’ said Marianne, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him into the conservatory.

‘Er, I’d better just tell Pippa and Dan I’m here,’ he said, before she could get him onto the dance floor.

A wave of sobriety suddenly hit Marianne. What was she doing? She never ever behaved like this. What must this stranger have thought of her? But a more reckless side of her said, so what? It was New Year and her life was in tatters. She quickly brushed her embarrassment to one side, grabbed herself another vodka and orange and started dancing wildly to ‘I Will Survive’.

Someone shouted, ‘It’s nearly midnight.’ Suddenly, without warning, her sense of joyous abandon deserted her. Midnight. The countdown to New Year. Everyone singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Suddenly Marianne couldn’t bear it. She stumbled out into the garden, barely noticing that the temperature was below freezing. The alcohol coursing through her veins was keeping her warm. She sat down on a bench, and stared up at an unforgiving moon. The Shropshire hills loured out of the darkness at her, appearing gloomy and oppressive for the first time since she’d been here. She looked back into Pippa’s warm, friendly house, full of bright lights and cheerful people. Everyone was having such a good time and she was out here in the cold on her own, sobbing her heart out.

The back door opened and a shadowy figure came towards her.

‘Anything I can do?’ it said.

‘10, 9, 8…’

‘Nothing,’ sobbed Marianne. ‘My life is a disaster, that’s all.’

‘7, 6, 5…’

‘Well, if you’re sure. Only…you seemed…sorry, forgive me. None of my business. I’d better go in. You know.’

‘4, 3, 2, 1…HAPPY NEW YEAR!’ Screams and shouts came from inside. Marianne suddenly felt hatred for all these people she didn’t know who were having such a good time, and suddenly she couldn’t bear this stranger’s kindness. She didn’t want kindness. She just wanted Luke.

‘Yes, you’d better,’ she spat out.

‘Oh.’ The man looked slightly put out.

‘I hate everything,’ said Marianne, attempting to stand up, before falling back in the rose bushes. Her unlikely hero came to help her up. She sat up, looked into his deeply attractive brown eyes, and promptly threw up on his feet.

Noel sat at his desk wading through emails, most of which were completely irrelevant to him. Did he really need to be on the Health and Safety Committee’s minutes list? There were emails about three leaving parties at the end of January, he noted, people yet again leaving for ‘personal reasons’. The credit crunch was hitting his industry hard; building was always the first thing to go. And without anyone buying all those shiny flats in city centres, there wouldn’t be any need for new eco-friendly heating systems designed by the likes of him either. Gerry Cowley had been muttering under his collar for weeks before Christmas about the business needing to be leaner and trimmer. In the past, Noel felt he could have relied on his reputation as the brightest engineer GRB had ever employed, but then Matt had joined the firm. Matt, with his lack of dependants, bright-eyed young-man’s energy, and brown-nosing abilities. There was someone heading for the top if ever anyone was. And Noel had a nasty feeling that it would be at his expense.

No point thinking about what might never happen. Noel could almost hear his mother’s voice. It had been her favourite phrase when he was growing up. Way back when they’d had some kind of relationship, before she’d turned into the mother-in-law from hell and, according to the kids, Granny Nightmare. Not that he’d ever had an easy relationship with his mother. Noel had spent most of his childhood feeling that somehow he’d disappointed her. Particularly after his younger sister was born, who apparently could do no wrong. He envied Cat her relaxed relationship with her mother, Louise, who was Granny Dreamboat in every way possible.

Cat. Something was happening to them. He felt like the sands were shifting beneath him, and the world was changing without him. Ever since Cat had started the blog, and the Happy Homemaker thing had taken off, Noel felt Cat had had less and less time for him. All she seemed to focus on was her work and the children. The money it brought in was undoubtedly welcome, particularly when his own job was looking increasingly dodgy. But when a whole week had gone by and he’d barely seen Cat, let alone spoken to her, he wondered if it was all worth it. Sometimes Noel wondered if there was any place in Cat’s heart left for him anymore. And, after the way he’d behaved on Christmas Day, he wasn’t sure he blamed her.