Last Christmas (2 page)

‘Jeez, it’s dark in here,’ said Luke, and opened some shutters to let in the evening light. Motes danced in the beams cast by the setting sun, dazzling Marianne as she stood, silently drinking it in.

‘Well, what do you think?’ said Luke.

‘It’s fantastic,’ murmured Marianne.

He drew her to him, and her heart thumped erratically as he kissed her on the lips. Marianne felt a familiar flutter in her stomach. She had never desired someone as strongly as she desired Luke. It terrified her how much she wanted him. Suppose he didn’t want her as much?

‘There’s a four-poster in the master bedroom,’ he said mischievously.

‘We can’t,’ she protested. ‘Not here.’

‘There’s no one here but us,’ said Luke. ‘Who’s to know?’

‘Er—your butler?’ She went out with a man who had a butler? This felt so surreal. Any minute she was going to wake up.

‘He won’t say anything. Besides, he’s as deaf as a post so you can be as noisy as you like,’ said Luke, with a grin on his face that was impossible to resist.

He dragged her giggling by the hand up the stairs, pointing out various ancestors en route: ‘The original Ralph Nicholas, went with Richard I to the Holy Land; Gabriel Nicholas, hid in the priest hole under Edward VI and lived to tell the tale; Ralph II saved Charles II at the battle of Worcester, nada, nada, nada…’

‘How can you be so dismissive?’ said Marianne. ‘I mean, in my family the height of historical interest is the time when Great Aunt Maud stood next to George VI at Windsor Park. I come from a noble line of labourers and serfs. This is…just…incredible. I’d love to have this kind of ancestry.’

‘You wouldn’t if you knew my family,’ said Luke, with a grimace.‘With power comes responsibility,manners maketh the man. We have a duty of care. We even have a Latin family motto,
Servimus liberi liberi quia diligimus
, which translates as: “Freely we serve, because we freely love”. Having that shoved down your throat from birth is pretty stifling.’

‘Oh,’ exclaimed Marianne. They had come to the landing, and Luke flung open the window shutters to reveal a landscaped lawn complete with fountains, walled gardens and, in the background, a deer park. ‘This is amazing. You’re so lucky.’

‘I
am
lucky—to have found you,’ he said, and her heart skipped a sudden beat.
This
was why she was with him. For the way he looked at her as if she was the only woman in the world. For the way he made her feel so incredibly special. All her doubts and anxieties disappeared as Luke took her hand and knelt down. ‘I wasn’t going to do this now, but seeing you here looking so incredibly sexy, I can’t resist.’

Oh my God, Marianne thought, was he going to…?

‘Hang on, I’ve forgotten something…’ Luke ran over to a set of curtains which was lying in a corner and unhooked a curtain ring. He came running back, fell back down on his knee, and said, ‘Now, where were we?’

Marianne stood motionless as he kissed her hand, slipped the curtain ring onto her engagement finger, and said, ‘Marianne Moore, will you marry me?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. She didn’t have to think for a second; this was what she’d wanted her whole life, to be with a man she loved and live in a wonderful place like this. ‘Yes, of course I will.’ And suddenly she was in his arms, and they were running through the house shrieking with delight.

A sudden slam of the door brought them both to their senses.

‘What was that?’ said Marianne.

A bell rang impatiently from the hall, and they ran to the banisters to look down.

A smallish, elderly, dapper man stood in the hallway looking rather cross.

‘Grandfather?’ Luke’s face was a picture of shock and dismay.

‘Luke, my boy, is that you?’ the man said. ‘I can see I haven’t come home a moment too soon.’

Sainsbury’s was heaving. Catherine, already feeling hypocritical that she was here at all, felt her heart sink as she saw the hordes of people ravaging through the supermarket, frantically grabbing things from the shelves as if they were in the last-chance saloon and they might never have the chance to shop again. For God’s sake, she felt like saying, as she saw people staggering past with trolleys full to the brim with hams and turkeys, mince pies and brandy butter, and the inevitable bottles of booze, it’s not like we’re all going to starve, is it? Then she berated herself. After all,
she
was here too, wasn’t she?

But only for the necessary items, things she’d forgotten, like brandy butter and Christmas pud. Mum had promised to make both, but uncharacteristically for her had forgotten, so Catherine was grumpily facing the seething hordes, all of whom looked as miserable as she felt. She wondered if she should give up and try and make them herself. It’s what the bloody Happy Homemaker was always telling people to do.

No, Cat, she admonished herself. There were still presents to wrap, a turkey to defrost, vegetables to prepare, a house to make ready for the guests (and one which would unscramble itself as fast as she tidied)—she
really
didn’t have time to make a Christmas pudding. Not even that
one from her Marguerite Patten cookbook, which could actually be made the day before. The Happy Homemaker could go stuff herself.

‘That sounds like an eminently sensible idea to me.’ A little old man in his seventies, wearing a smart gabardine coat, doffed his hat to her as he walked past with a basket under his arm.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Cat looked at the man in astonishment. She must have been wittering on to herself again. She had a bad habit of doing that in supermarkets.

‘I was just observing that you could for once let yourself off the hook,’ said the man. ‘Christmas isn’t all about perfection, you know.’

‘Oh, but it is,’ said Catherine, ‘and this is going to be the most
perfect
Christmas ever.’

‘Well, I certainly hope so,’ said the man. ‘I wish you a very happy and peaceful Christmas.’ And with that he was gone, disappearing into the crowd while Catherine was left pondering how on earth a complete stranger seemed to know so much about her. How very, very odd.

Catherine took a deep breath and ploughed her trolley into the fray. Christmas muzak was pumping out, presumably to get her into the spirit of the thing. Not much chance of that, when she had felt all Christmassed out for months. Bugger off, she felt like shouting as a particularly cheesy version of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ blared out. Look at all these people. Do any of them look bloody merry?

Christmas seemed to start earlier and earlier every year, and, now she had children in three different schools, Catherine had been obliged to sit through as many Christmas performances (one year she really was going to get Noel to come to one of these things if it killed her), which varied from the sweet but haphazard (her four-year-old’s star turn
as a donkey), through the completely incomprehensible (the seven and nine-year-olds’ inclusive Nativity, which had somehow managed to encompass Diwali, Eid and Hanukkah—an impressive feat, she had to admit), to the minimalist and experimental concert put on at the secondary school her eleven-year-old had just started. One of the reasons Catherine had wanted a large family was so she could have the big family Christmas she’d always missed out on by being an only child. Catherine had always imagined that she’d love attending her children’s carol concerts, not find them a huge chore. And no one told her how much work it would be preparing Christmas for a family of six, let alone all the hangers-on who always seemed to migrate her way, like so many homing pigeons, on Christmas Day.

‘Next year, remind me to emigrate,’ Catherine murmured to herself, as she propelled herself through the mince pie section. Bloody hell. Once upon a time people had bought (or most likely made) mince pies. Now Sainsbury’s had a whole section devoted to them: luxury mince pies, mince pies with brandy, mince pies with sherry, deep-filled, fat-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, probably mince-free for all she knew. The world had gone mad.

‘Me too.’ The woman browsing the shelves next to her gave a wry laugh in sympathy. She looked at Catherine curiously. Oh God, no…

‘Aren’t you—?’

‘Yes,’ sighed Catherine, ‘I’m afraid I am.’

‘I’m such a huge fan,’ said the woman. ‘I keep
all
your recipes. I don’t know what I’d do without your lemon tart.’

‘Thanks so much,’ said Catherine, guiltily hoping the woman wouldn’t notice what she had in her shopping trolley, otherwise her cover as the provider of all things home-made was going to be well and truly blown. ‘I’d love
to stop, really I would, but unfortunately I’m in a tearing hurry. Places to go, people to see. I’m sure you’ll understand. Have a wonderful Christmas.’

Catherine felt terrible for rushing off. The poor woman had seemed nice and it was churlish of her to react like that. But couldn’t she have five minutes’ peace just to be herself and not the bloody awful persona who seemed to be taking over her life? She went to join one of the many huge queues that had built up as she’d wandered round the store, and caught sight of the latest version of
Happy Homes
by the tills. There she was resplendent in a Santa costume and hat (why, oh why, had she let herself be persuaded to do that shoot?), next to a headline that bore the legend, ‘The Happy Homemaker’s Guide to the Perfect 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.