A Proper Family Christmas (3 page)

‘We are going to be on display!’ her mother had shrieked when she opened the bedroom door that morning to bring Izzy her wake-up tea.

‘Not my room,’ said Izzy. ‘You never said anyone would be coming into
my
room.’

‘What are you talking about, Isabella?’

She was always ‘Isabella’ when she’d done something wrong.

‘I’ve told you a hundred times. Your window …’ said Annabel, pointing to the casement. ‘People will want to see it. That’s the only reason some of these people will have come.’

Ah yes. The window. While her mother bustled around the room collecting up dirty laundry, Izzy ran her fingers over the ancient stone ledge. This was what all the fuss was about. Izzy defied anyone who hadn’t been told the story to know that there was anything special about her bedroom window at all, but apparently there was. There on the sill was a small group of scratch marks. They were very faint. All but invisible. But they were part of
history
. For Izzy’s bedroom had once belonged to a couple of far more notable teenagers. During the civil war, the Great House, then a royalist stronghold, had played host to the young princes, the future Charles II and his brother James. They had left behind their initials scored in the stone.

‘Your room holds an important part of British heritage,’ Izzy’s mother reminded her. ‘There will be people here who have travelled to Little Bissingden specifically for the chance to see that windowsill. The least you can do is make sure that it’s not strewn with nail varnish bottles.’

Strewn?
There was
one
nail-varnish bottle on the windowsill. Just one. But Izzy knew her mother was not one to let the facts stand in the way of a good piece of hyperbole.

Having gathered up an armful of socks, T-shirts and the jeans that Izzy had been intending to wear that morning, Annabel left and closed the door loudly behind her.

Sitting up to drink her tea and prepare for the inevitable cleaning session ahead, Izzy was sorely tempted to cover the princes’ scratches with some graffiti of her own, rendered in her favourite nail varnish. That would teach her mother a lesson about showing off to total randoms.

But, of course, after another lecture, delivered with a plate of toast and Marmite half an hour later, Izzy bent to her mother’s will and tidied up her bedroom. She swept her loose make-up into a drawer and found a place for those discarded clothes her mother hadn’t already picked up in the wardrobe (as opposed to the ‘floor-drobe’). She put books back on to the shelves and straightened her prized pile of
Elle
magazines. Last of all, she locked her secret diary into the real safe beneath her bed, along with her small collection of genuine Tiffany jewellery (mostly charms and earrings. Birthday gifts from her parents, grandparents and godparents over the years) and her real Cartier watch (her sixteenth birthday present).

‘Nothing will go missing,’ her mother had promised her. But Izzy did not like the look of the people her mother was intending to let walk all over their house. The fete always attracted a dodgy crowd. That was the problem with not charging an entry fee. Later that day, Izzy peeped out from behind her curtains to watch them gathering by the back door. Far from coming to the Great House to see the princely graffiti, they had probably come to case the joint to plan for a later burglary.

Izzy focused her disdain on one girl in the queue in particular. The girl was about Izzy’s age but could not have been more different from the privileged daughters of the rich and famous who attended Izzy’s private day school. She was dressed in the emo style that the least popular girls in Izzy’s class seemed to favour, as they tried to turn the fact that they were oddballs into something to be proud of. Like it was a style choice rather than a total lack of fashion sense.

Anyway, the girl in the queue for the house tour was doing the very worst kind of emo. Emo on the cheap. She’d probably picked it all up on a market stall. Despite frequently lecturing her mother on her snobby class politics, Izzy was not immune to making the same kind of social judgements herself. The girl glanced up in the direction of Izzy’s window, as though she sensed that someone was watching her. Izzy stepped back into the room so that she couldn’t be seen.

‘Chav,’ she muttered.

Izzy checked the combination on the safe one more time, then she slipped out of her bedroom and down the back stairs into the utility room, which was the one room that her mother had promised no one would see. Her father was already in there. He’d arranged a couple of deckchairs in front of the washing machine as though he were intending to watch a delicates’ cycle.

‘All right, Izzy-Wizzy,’ said Richard.

‘Dad, don’t call me that,’ said Izzy, as she plopped down into the deckchair beside him.

Richard offered her a biscuit. ‘How long do you think this is going to take?’

‘Knowing Mum, she’ll waffle on for days.’

‘Good job I’ve got the weekend FT then.’

Izzy tapped on the screen of her iPad and brought up the e-book app.

‘Reading a book?’ her father asked. ‘Not more vampires, I hope.’

‘French existentialism,’ said Izzy, flatly.

‘Really?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Shame. Thought I might be getting my money’s worth out of that school of yours at last.’

Though she’d been a little disconcerted to see the number and type of people who had massed at her door, Annabel was very much enjoying giving her visitors the grand tour. She had spent a great deal of time working on the content of the visit. The research she had done into the history of the house was worthy of a dissertation. So much had happened within the imposing walls of the place she liked to call home. Fortunes had been made and lost. Great men had been born and died in the blackened oak four-poster bed that still occupied the second bedroom. Great women had strolled in the Italianate garden.

‘So, these are, like, your ancestors?’ asked a mousy little woman from Birmingham as Annabel swept her arm to take in the portraits that lined the main staircase. There were faces from all centuries, right back to the Jacobean family who had commissioned the place to mark their new-found wealth. Annabel had bought some of them from the house’s previous owner, who had kept them in the barn. Others she had tracked down at auction.

‘No,’ said Annabel. ‘They’re not my ancestors, exactly, but I suppose you could say I’ve adopted them since I became the chatelaine of the house.’

‘Oh. I’m surprised,’ said Brummie Mouse. ‘Because you look a lot like that one.’

Brummie Mouse pointed at the portrait of Mary Cavanagh, who had been mistress of the Great House in the sixteenth century. It wasn’t an entirely flattering comparison. Mary Cavanagh had a pinched and weary look to her patrician face. When the Buchanan family first moved into the house, Izzy had proclaimed that she was frightened by all the portraits, but especially Mary’s. She nicknamed her ‘The Witch’.

Annabel’s smile wavered just a little but she soon recovered and carried on. ‘Even though we’ve changed the house in a great many ways, I can still feel the echoes of the people who went before. They’re in the walls. They’re in the furniture. In many ways, I feel a greater kinship with them than I feel with my real family.’

‘That’s a strange thing to say,’ said a largish woman, who sounded like she was from Coventry, loud enough for Annabel to hear.

‘Not everyone is as close as we are,’ whispered the woman’s companion, who was probably her mother. They had a similar build.

‘If you think I look like Mary Cavanagh, then I’m very pleased,’ Annabel continued. ‘She was an unusually well-educated woman for her time. She wrote a book regarding the emancipation of the poor; a rare achievement for a woman in those days. I like to think that if she were around today, we would have a lot in common.’

‘They do share a nose,’ the Coventry woman muttered.

Annabel gritted her teeth. ‘OK, everybody. We’re going upstairs. Do be careful not to knock into the paintings as you come up.’

The little boy who hadn’t wiped his feet took the stairs two at a time. The portraits obviously didn’t interest him but he seemed keen to get a closer look at the suit of armour on the landing.

As the rest of the visitors streamed by him – they were going up another flight – the boy lingered in awe. It was quite charming, the look on his face. His hand hovered in front of the armoured mannequin’s breastplate.

‘Jack! Don’t touch,’ the child’s mother – the woman from Coventry – screeched and yanked his hand away. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’

Annabel gave the boy a consoling smile.

The tour group followed her up another two staircases and squeezed on to the narrow galleried landing at the very top of the house. Fortunately, there was no armour to be monkeyed with here.

‘And now,’ said Annabel, ‘the most important room in the house.’ She turned to indicate a closed door.

Unlike the rest of the house, the door to this room hinted that something other than
Architectural Digest
-style perfection lay behind. A brightly coloured nameplate announced that this was ‘Izzy’s room’.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse the mess.’

Sophie Benson-Edwards’ bedroom back in Coventry was the smallest room in the house. Somehow her brother Jack had ended up with a bigger room. Their mother Ronnie had made the decision. She said that Jack had more crap: toys and train sets and the like, which she was not going to have downstairs in the lounge. The only way to contain Jack’s junk was to make sure that his bedroom was big enough to play in.

Most of the time, Sophie was fine with that. Her bedroom was tiny but it overlooked the street in front of the house, which was useful now she was going out with Harrison Collerick. Whenever Sophie was grounded, which was often, Harrison would stand in the bus shelter across the road so that she could see him in real life while they BBMd each other frantically. It was real Romeo and Juliet stuff.

But this girl’s bedroom was something else. While Annabel Buchanan explained the historical significance of a few dull scratches on the windowsill, Sophie made an inventory of everything Annabel’s daughter had that Sophie could only dream of. The room was huge, for a start. It contained an actual four-poster bed. A modern one, though. Not like the freaky old beds with all the carving in the rooms on the floor below. No way would Sophie sleep in one of those. The woman giving the tour said people had been born and died in them, like that was a good thing.

As well as the amazing bed, there was an armchair by the window. On the big oak desk in the corner were an iPod and a laptop. Sophie was ready to vomit with envy when she saw the fantastic music system. Above the fireplace – yes, the room was big enough to have a fireplace – was a flat-screen television almost as big as the one in the lounge back at the Bensons’ house.

Annabel Buchanan’s tale of the two princes and the civil war went right over Sophie’s head as the teenager let her eyes wander over the photographic montage on the wall over the desk. Sophie wondered which of the girls in those photos was the owner of this room. She decided it must be the brunette who appeared in at least seventy per cent of the snaps. Boy, did she seem to have the ideal life. She was pictured on tropical beaches of the kind that Sophie had only ever seen in adverts, at the top of the Empire State Building, riding a pony. She was pictured skiing, sailing, snorkelling and sipping a brightly coloured drink with an umbrella in it at some swanky beach club. At fifteen and a half years old, Sophie had never been abroad. Her parents couldn’t even afford for her to go on the school trip to Germany. Sophie was suddenly embarrassed that she’d never set foot on a plane while this girl had obviously seen the world.

‘Any questions?’ Annabel asked.

Like a group of shy schoolchildren, the people on the tour just smiled and shook their heads. Except for Jack. Sophie cringed when she saw that her little brother had put his hand up. What would he come out with this time?

‘Yes, young man?’

‘I was told we would see a dungeon. I haven’t seen one yet.’

‘Well,’ said Annabel. ‘We’ll have to put that right. I think there might be something to interest you as we make our way back to the boot room and out into the fresh air. Everybody ready? Follow me.’

Annabel Buchanan started to usher her guests back out into the corridor. As the other visitors wandered off, Sophie lingered in the bedroom for as long as she could, imagining how different her life could have been if
her
parents owned the Great House. She let her fingers drift over a dress that hung from the wardrobe door, forgotten in Izzy’s last-minute tidying spree. It was made by All Saints. Sophie could only dream of owning anything from All Saints. It must have cost two hundred quid. The label was still hanging on it. Sophie was about to pull it out of the neckline so that she could take a look at the price when she heard someone behind her. She turned round. It was the girl in the photographs.

‘Ahem,’ said the girl. ‘If you wouldn’t mind stepping out of my room. This part of the house is now closed to the general public.’

Izzy Buchanan smiled but never in a million years could anyone have mistaken the smile for a friendly one. Sophie certainly didn’t.

‘Sorry.’ Sophie stepped out past her. ‘I was just looking at …’

Sophie gestured back towards the windowsill and the scratches that she hadn’t bothered to examine at all.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Izzy, physically barging Sophie as she took repossession of her room. ‘Chav,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘Excuse me?’ said Sophie.

‘Nothing,’ said Izzy.

‘I thought I heard you say something.’

‘I didn’t say anything. I was just clearing my throat.’

‘Good,’ said Sophie, setting her face in a scowl.

The rich girl blushed. Rude cow. She wasn’t quite so tough as she seemed. She slammed the door shut in Sophie’s face. Sophie heard the sound of a bolt being thrown to make sure she stayed out.