Last Christmas (23 page)

‘It might not be dementia,’ Cat said. ‘The doctor never said you had dementia.’

‘She didn’t have to,’ said Mum. ‘I know something’s wrong. And I don’t think I’m having strokes. It’s like a blank screen comes over me, and I can’t remember where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. It was just the same with my mum. It’s a terrible, terrible disease, but we have to face what’s going to happen to me.’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Cat, the tears now flowing freely.

‘I know,’ said Mum, tears shining bright in her own eyes. ‘And I don’t want you to have to go through this either. But we can’t all have what we want. So come on, chin up. You’ve got a meeting to get to.’

Mum saw Cat to the door, and they hugged fiercely.

‘You promise?’ Mum said, as they said goodbye.

‘I promise,’ said Cat.

Gabriel was still feeling shell-shocked about Benjy when he and Marianne got back to his cottage. They’d had to leave the bodies there for the time being. He needed to go back with the Land Rover and get them at some point, but for now he had to work out what to say to his son. Stephen was going to be devastated.

The opportunity wasn’t going to come straightaway, somewhat to Gabriel’s relief, because he and Marianne walked back into bedlam. The boys were all whooping about like lunatics, and Lucy was sobbing because they’d been teasing her. Even calm Pippa was having trouble keeping control.

‘Where’s Dan?’ Gabriel asked.

‘He went down to inspect the damage at our place. You wouldn’t believe it, but everything was peaceful till about five minutes ago.’

Gabriel quickly had the boys sitting down in front of the TV, made Pippa a much needed cup of tea, and then sat down next to Lucy. He was immensely fond of his godchild, and he could usually raise a smile.

‘What’s my favourite girl doing down in the dumps?’ he said, and then proceeded to pull funny faces at her till she was giggling away happily.

‘That was amazing,’said Marianne.‘You’ve a real gift with children.’

Gabriel shrugged, and gave her a rather sad smile, ‘Looking after people seems to be something of a speciality of mine. Talking of which…I really need to find some time with Stephen to explain about Benjy.’

‘Do you need any help?’ He was touched by Marianne’s concern. When Eve had been around she always left all the difficult stuff to him.

‘I think this is something I need to tackle alone,’ he said. ‘But God knows what I’m going to say.’

The office was buzzing when Noel got there. He noticed to his satisfaction that even Matt’s smooth exterior had been ruffled by events up north.

‘Thank God you’re here,’ he said. ‘I’ve had Luke Nicholas on the blower five times already.
Five
times. What does he think I can do from here? Work a bloody miracle?’

Noel muttered something placatory and then got to work to find out what the damage was on the site. According to the site foreman, half the foundations were now so waterlogged it was going to take weeks—possibly months—before building work could resume. It wasn’t as if they’d been dry to begin with. But the local authorities were pumping water out of Hope Christmas, so there was a possibility that the pumps could be borrowed, ensuring the worst of the water could be got rid of. Quite how they were going to dry everything out to meet the incredibly demanding schedule, Noel wasn’t quite sure.

He went back through the files and dug out his original plans for revitalising the buildings on the Hopesay Manor Estate. He looked through them again. He felt suddenly angry that the building work had gone ahead despite his objections. He couldn’t prove that the flood was a result of the silt being dumped in the river, but given that, according to the reports, Hope Christmas itself hadn’t
flooded for a hundred years, Noel couldn’t help feeling that somehow the work they’d been carrying out was partly responsible. Apart from being morally wrong, it was a flagrant breaking of the stringent government guidelines for the building of eco towns. Matt should really get it in the neck for this.

He printed off the plans, wrote a quick report on the situation in Hope Christmas, promising to visit the site next week for an update, and left both on Gerry Cowley’s desk. You never know, maybe Gerry would have a change of heart now. Surely even he would see that pursuing the eco town option now was throwing good money after bad?

‘Oh my word.’ Marianne and Pippa gingerly entered her farmhouse to see filthy water still swirling through the house and out of the back door. Dan had gone back to Gabriel’s place to take over with the kids and start making the inevitable phone calls to insurers. The flood waters had receded somewhat, leaving a muddy, gloopy mess on the floor, but carpets were ruined, the wiring was sodden, the plaster was peeling off the walls, and the skirting boards were warped.

‘It’s so much worse than I thought,’ Pippa said bleakly. ‘I know it’s stupid to be so upset, but look at it. That’s our life. In tatters.’

She wandered desolately through to the lounge, where she picked up a broken photo frame and showed it to Marianne.

‘Our wedding day,’ she said simply.

‘Oh, Pippa,’ Marianne hugged her friend hard. Why did the worst things happen to the nicest people? ‘Soonest done, soonest mended. As my granny used to say.’

‘Has your granny got a phrase for every occasion?’ said Pippa with a weak grin.

‘Pretty much,’ said Marianne. ‘Look, why don’t I carry
on here for a bit? It’s mayhem at Gabe’s place and the kids need you.’

‘“Gabe”? I knew it! I knew it!’ Pippa was practically dancing in delight. ‘Now that has really cheered me up. I thought there was something going on between you last night, but I didn’t like to ask.’

‘Yes, well, last night was hardly the moment for confidences,’ said Marianne. ‘And now isn’t the moment either. We’ve just found Benjy’s body in the valley. Gabriel’s devastated and he doesn’t know how Stephen’s going to react.’

‘Oh my God, poor, poor Stephen,’ said Pippa, forgetting her own troubles for an instant. ‘He’s had so much to deal with as it is. He doesn’t need this.’

‘What’s she like?’ Marianne said hesitantly, as she gathered up some soggy bits of carpet, ready to dump outside. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to talk about Eve but she couldn’t contain her curiosity…

‘Who,Eve?’Pippa rolled her eyes.‘She’s pretty,very pretty. And when she’s on form, she’s funny and lively and inventive. I can see why Gabe was attracted to her, but she’s always been flaky as hell. Not at all cut out to be a farmer’s wife. I’ve never met anyone so sensitive.’

‘Gabe said as much,’ Marianne said. ‘I gather she had a lot of problems.’

‘And then some,’ said Pippa. ‘You do have to feel sorry for her. Life hasn’t been kind to Eve at all. Her dad left when she was small and, from what I can gather, her mum had a series of boyfriends and didn’t show her the slightest interest. You could say she has security issues. Gabe’s been amazing, considering all she’s put him through. But in the end, it’s better all round that she’s gone. It wasn’t doing Stephen any good, Eve sometimes at the school gate, sometimes not. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to pick that child up at the last minute because Eve was having
a funny turn and couldn’t come. It broke my heart to see how sad he was. I hope she can sort her head out, but equally I hope she doesn’t come back and mess about with Stephen’s anymore. That kid’s been through enough.’

Marianne felt her original worries about getting involved with Gabriel resurfacing. Was she biting off more than she could chew here? Suppose she just added to Stephen’s problems? To take her mind off things, she picked up a broom Pippa had brought in from the kitchen and started sweeping the remnants of sludge and slimy water towards the patio doors.

As if sensing her thoughts, Pippa said hurriedly, ‘Oh my God, I hope I haven’t put you off.’ She scooped the muddy debris up with a dustpan and brush and started chucking it out into her swamp of a garden. ‘I think the best thing that could possibly happen to Stephen is to have some kind of stability in his life. I’m sure you being around can only help.’

‘If he can cope with it,’ said Marianne, working away with a will. ‘And that’s a very big if. And now’s probably not the time to go there. Anyway. You need to get back to the kids. I’ll carry on here.’

‘Haven’t you got stuff to do?’

‘Not really,’ said Marianne. ‘School’s closed and I’m sure my cottage is fine, I may as well stay and help you out.’

‘I don’t know how I can ever repay you,’ said Pippa, as she put the dustpan and brush down. ‘You’re a star.’

Marianne rolled her eyes.

‘Ever since I came to this village, you’ve looked after me. This is the least I can do.’ She waved the broom at Pippa. ‘Now get away with you, before I sweep you away with this broom.’

Cat logged onto the blog. The post about bullying had evidently hit home. There was a flood of sympathetic
messages offering advice and helpful comments. On the increasingly frequent occasions she considered giving up the blog on the grounds that, as well as hating the persona she’d created, it took too much of her time and energy, Cat would often have a response like this to a post and it made it all worthwhile. Sure there were some nutters out there (one or two frequently left annoying messages in her comments section, but she usually ignored them), but in the main she’d found the blogosphere a friendly place. Sometimes it felt like being part of a warm and cosy family, far removed from the messy domestic situation in her real life. There were times, in fact, when she felt that a virtual life might be more satisfying than an actual one. Certainly at the moment she could do with living the fantasy.

She scrolled down through the comments. ‘Talk to your daughter, let her know she has nothing to fear from confiding in you,’ opined
MommyintheUSA
, while
TwoKidsNoHusband
advised, ‘Get in touch with the school. The sooner they know, the sooner they can nip it in the bud.’ All good, sound, helpful advice. The only trouble was it was hard to get Mel to talk—she clammed up at the slightest hint of a question about school. Cat was about to sign off, when a new message popped up.
Anonymous.
Hmm. That didn’t always mean trouble, but people who wanted to cause trouble in the blogging world weren’t usually too keen to leave their names.

‘Your daughter is a lying bitch and so are you.’ Nice. Where did these people get off on such nastiness? Cat deleted the comment and closed down the blog. She concentrated on writing her recipe for Granny Dreamboat’s Winter Warmer, a beef stew replete with winter vegetables and pearl barley. Even in summer, writing this gave her a warm and tingly feeling. Not that it felt like summer, the storm from up north having made its way southwards. It had rained
so much today, it was a wonder there was any more rain left in the sky.

Cat looked at her watch. Nearly school pickup time. She started tidying things away when an instant message pinged up on the screen.

One of Mel’s friends no doubt. Perhaps on a day off sick and bored trying to instant message her friends.

She opened the message, to a stream of abuse. ‘I saw what you wrote on my Bebo page. You are a lying bitch and so is your mum.’

There was a picture of a rather tarty-looking twelve-year-old whose MSN legend bore
Inyourfacebitch.
How very very unpleasant.

With a sinking heart, Cat typed back: ‘This is Melanie’s mother, who are you?’

‘Go away bitch,’ was the charming response.

‘Does your mother know what you are doing?’ Cat typed back.

Her erstwhile correspondent beat a hasty retreat out of cyberspace.

What the hell had that been all about? Cat went into Mel’s Bebo account. She had been most reluctant to allow Mel to set one up and had only done so on the condition she had full access to it at all times. She was horrified by what she saw. Her daughter apparently considered a girl at school called Juliette (nicknamed by Mel as ‘Screwliette’) a lying bitch, and everyone should apparently know what a slag she was. Reeling with shock at the language her eleven-year-old was using, Cat sat back absolutely stunned. There she’d been assuming that Mel was being bullied, but it now looked very much as if her daughter was the one doing the bullying.

Marianne walked down the High Street a week after the flood on her way to the dentist’s. People were slowly trying to get back to normal, but it was going to take weeks, if not months, for the cottages on the High Street to dry out again. She walked past Miss Woods’ house to see the ex-head of Hope Christmas primary berating the workmen who’d come to clear out her ground floor. In front of the house was a pile of what looked like junk, an ancient fridge-freezer, an old sofa, an aged TV set, but, Marianne thought sadly, it probably wasn’t junk to Miss Woods. That detritus was her life. It was shocking to realise just how destructive nature could be.

‘I’m sorry about your house, Miss Woods,’ Marianne said, narrowly avoiding the stick that was waving at a poor workman who hadn’t put a bit of old carpet properly in the skip.

‘Don’t be,’ said Miss Woods. ‘It’s all old junk anyway. Now I can get myself a new plasma screen on the insurance. And a better computer for surfboarding the interweb. My dial up connection was just so slow. I fancy going Hi Fi.’ She paused to tell the workmen off. ‘Just what do you think you are doing with that sideboard? It’s not to go in the skip, it belonged to my grandmother.’

‘What do you think will happen about the village hall?’ asked Marianne. Now that the floods had subsided, the
true extent of the damage was revealed. The doors were smashed in, one half of a wall had collapsed, and at least two of the windows had been swept away in the flood.

‘I expect we’ll have to have Parish Council meetings at Diana Carew’s place, God help us,’ said Miss Woods. ‘But at least it might mean the Nativity will get cancelled.’

Marianne grinned. Last year’s Nativity still gave her nightmares, and Diana had already begun dropping big hints about how invaluable her help had been, and would she possibly like to get involved in this year’s.

‘Do you think Diana will ever let that happen?’ said Marianne. ‘It seems like the Nativity is her baby.’

Miss Woods sniffed. ‘Well, high time someone else took it over, I say. I don’t think I can stand another year of hearing those bloody elves singing “Wonderful Christmas Time”.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ laughed Marianne. ‘You should have tried getting them to rehearse it.’

‘Perhaps you could take over?’ suggested Miss Woods. ‘In the old days we used to have a Nativity based on an old Shropshire mystery play, but sadly Diana is too much of a philistine to know what a mystery play is.’

‘I don’t dare even think about suggesting it,’ was Marianne’s firm response. No way was she getting embroiled in a feud between the two women. She made her excuses and left, marvelling at the small ways the community of Hope Christmas was pulling together in the crisis. At the butcher’s, three burly farmers who supplied him with their meat were helping gut the shop floor, which had been ruined; at the small Parish Centre next to the church, a notice declared free hot meals for anyone affected by the floods till their kitchens were back in order; and, passing the post office, Marianne noticed Mr Edwards helping load Vera Campion’s worldly belongings into his van.

‘Mr Edwards has very kindly offered me lodgings,’ Vera explained pinkly. ‘With the post office closing anyway, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And at least this way the insurance is going to give me a bit of a breather while I decide what to do next.’

‘It’s the least I can do, Vera,’ said Mr Edwards. ‘I can’t have my favourite girl struggling alone now, can I?’

‘Oh, Albert.’ Vera blushed bright crimson. Feeling like she was spying on them, Marianne went on her way.

By the time she’d reached the dentist’s, conveniently placed at the top end of the village so it had escaped the flood, Marianne felt as though she’d said hello to half the inhabitants of Hope Christmas. As she went to sit down in the waiting area, she spotted Ralph Nicholas.

‘Ah, my dear, how are you?’ he said warmly. ‘Didn’t lose too much in the flood?’

‘No, I was incredibly lucky,’ said Marianne. ‘I feel so sorry for everyone who’s been affected.’

‘It’s going to take a long time for the village to recover, it’s true,’ said Ralph, ‘but every cloud has a silver lining, I generally find.’

‘Oh?’

The receptionist called Ralph’s name. Tapping his nose, he smiled at Marianne and said, ‘I’d take a look at page 43 in this month’s
Happy Homes
if I were you.’ And with that he was gone.

Marianne saw the magazine on the table. Idly she picked it up and it fell conveniently open at page 43.

Fed up with the commercialisation of Christmas? Longing for a return to simpler days? Then enter our competition to find the Nation’s best Nativity. A prize of £10,000 to the community or school that puts in the best suggestion.

Marianne laughed out loud. Perhaps she should suggest it to Diana Carew. She could only imagine how well
that
would go down.

‘Can you explain to me what all this is about?’ Cat hadn’t confronted Melanie with the evidence of her misdoings straightaway. She’d been so shocked by what she’d found and had needed time to mull it over. Besides, the last thing she wanted to do was accuse her daughter unnecessarily. Maybe, as Noel had pointed out to her, there might be some rational explanation. It could just be a schoolgirl prank that had got out of hand. Perhaps. After a long chat over a coffee with Regina, she’d decided to tackle the problem head on. So, with the rest of her offspring in bed and Noel away in Hope Christmas, trying to sort out the disaster that was the eco town, now seemed as good a time as any.

‘Where did you get this?’ Mel blushed a furious red and snatched the offending bits of paper out of her mother’s hands.

‘Your charming friend Juliette left an offensive message on my blog, and sent you some nasty comments on your MSN account,’ said Cat. ‘She told me you’d written some stuff about her on your Bebo page. I couldn’t believe it when I found this. What on earth are you playing at? I didn’t even know you knew language like that. After all the things I’ve told you about being careful about what you say online.’

‘She deserved it.’ Melanie looked mutinous.

‘What did she do?’ said Cat. ‘It must have been pretty bad for you to have written all this stuff. Come on, Mel, this isn’t like you. What’s going on?’

Mel said nothing for a moment and then she burst out: ‘It’s all your fault!’

‘My fault? Why on earth is it my fault?’ Honestly, the logic of children.

‘Why did you have to write on the bloody blog about my training bra?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Months ago, Cat had written a jolly little piece about the traumas of dealing with preteens and, in this specific instance, the sheer embarrassment for Mel engendered by buying her first training bra. The Happy Homemaker blog was peppered with such stories of domestic life, it was one of the reasons people seemed to like it. But Cat had always been very careful not to mention her children by name—Mel’s moniker on the blog was the Mean Teen (James was the Token Boy, Paige the Drama Queen and Ruby the Wild Child).

‘Juliette’s mum reads your blog all the time,’ said Mel. ‘All my friends’ mums do. And then Juliette read it too, and printed it off and showed everyone in the class. It was so humiliating.’

Cat felt a cold bucket of water wash over her. Never in a million years had it occurred to her that one of Mel’s friends might read the Happy Homemaker and make the connection with her. ‘I am so, so sorry, Mel. Really, truly I am. I never ever meant for this to happen. But you should have said.’

‘I didn’t know what to say,’ said Mel. ‘I was too angry.’

‘You do know that this,’ Cat pointed to the paperwork in Mel’s hand, ‘isn’t the way to deal with it though, don’t you?’

‘I suppose,’ said Mel sulkily.

‘So, what we’re going to do is ring Juliette’s mum up and you are going to go round there and apologise.’

‘Do I have to?’ Mel looked horrified.

‘Yes,sweetheart,I’m afraid you do,’said Cat.‘It was wrong of me to mention the training bra on the blog, and I am very very sorry. But I will not tolerate a child of mine behaving like this. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ mumbled Mel.

‘Now give us a hug, and we’ll say no more about it,’ said Cat. She kissed her daughter on the top of her head. ‘And can you forgive your old mum? Sometimes grown-ups get it wrong too.’

‘I suppose,’ said Mel and slunk off up to her room to do whatever it was she did there when she was having an emotional crisis.

Cat went down to the kitchen and poured herself a large glass of red. Bloody hell. How could she have been so stupid? Cat had tossed off that little blog piece in a moment of light frivolity, never thinking for one moment about the repercussions for Mel. It was a lesson to her to be a bit more careful on the blog from now on. If indeed she should even carry it on. Somehow Cat felt she’d reached a turning point. The Happy Homemaker was starting to ruin her home life. She had a feeling that the days of her alter ego were numbered.

Noel was attending a bad-tempered meeting at Hopesay Manor. He’d come up to Hope Christmas the night before, but thanks to the flooding hadn’t been able to stay in the cheerful pub he favoured. Instead he and Matt had been holed up in a faceless Travelodge on the outskirts of Ludlow where, remarkably, there was no evidence of flooding at all.

They’d gone to visit the building site first thing, and even Matt had been shocked by the devastation. The pumps had been utilised and the worst of the water had gone but the grey-brown sludge that had been left behind needed to be cleaned out, and the stench was foul. A couple of dead sheep had been swept down the valley, their corpses left in the mud. Noel, having taken numerous photographs and measurements, couldn’t imagine how anyone could conceive that this was still a viable concern.

Luke Nicholas apparently could.

‘I’m sure this is a problem we can resolve,’ he was saying smoothly, several shareholders having expressed concern about the company’s liabilities.‘Our investors are really keen to carry on with the project, and accept that this is a little local problem that can easily be sorted out.’

‘You’ve built on a flood plain!’ Noel said in exasperation. ‘Your little local problem will be repeated if you don’t do something to sort it out.’

‘I think we have a solution to that,’ Luke turned to Matt, ‘don’t we?’

‘There is a way, if we divert the river away from the eco town, that, should the situation arise again—which let’s face it is extremely unlikely, there hasn’t been a flood this severe in over a hundred years—the village will be safe. I don’t see why we can’t proceed as normal.’

‘Apart from being contrary to government guidelines, which clearly state you shouldn’t do anything to create flooding elsewhere, which diverting the river is highly likely to do. This is mad,’ said Noel. Several shareholders seemed to agree, but they were overruled by Luke’s suave assurances that everything would be done to meet government requirements, and that in the end all would be well. Noel left the meeting feeling more disgruntled than ever. How could he carry on working like this? It was sapping all his strength and integrity.

He left the meeting in an angry mood and walked out of the office buildings on the edge of the estate where the Nicholas family organised their day-to-day business, passing as he did so the small tumbledown cottages that he had hoped to persuade GRB to invest in.

‘Now
they’d
make proper sustainable housing, don’t you think?’ Ralph Nicholas was striding towards him with his grey wolfhound following on behind.

‘I said as much the first time I came here,’ said Noel gloomily, ‘but no one wants to listen to me.’

‘I’ll listen,’ said Ralph. ‘Here, take my card. Show me some decent plans, and who knows? Maybe I can persuade my daft grandson and his cronies to change their minds.’

‘Maybe,’ said Noel, ‘but I doubt you’ll get anyone at GRB to see sense.’

‘You know,’ said Ralph Nicholas, ‘it’s a big wide world out there. I could use a decent engineer if you ever thought about decamping to the country.’

Noel looked at him incredulously. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Never been more serious,’ said Ralph. ‘This isn’t my only property in the area. And I’d like to invest in decent homes for the people who live round here. Particularly after the flood. Would you be interested?’

‘I’d come like a shot, but I doubt I could get my wife to move,’ said Noel. ‘She’s a real townie.’

‘Pity,’ said Ralph. ‘But if you ever change your mind…’

‘You’ll be the first to know,’ said Noel. It was so tempting. He’d love to come up here, buy that fantasy farmhouse and start again. It would be a much better life for the kids too. Noel wasn’t keen on the thought of James in particular going to the local comp, where stabbings seemed to be the norm. But how could he ever persuade Cat to leave the bright lights and big city? It was never going to happen and he knew it.

Gabriel poured the last bit of earth onto Benjy’s grave, and placed the small wooden cross Stephen had made on top of the mound of earth. Stephen had insisted they bury Benjy in the garden, so ‘he would feel at home’.

Stephen stepped forward, looking a little self-conscious in front of his cousins and aunt, whom he’d insisted on coming. Gabriel had thought about asking Marianne too,
but as he still hadn’t divulged the nature of his relationship with her to his son, he decided in the end that it might spell trouble.

‘To Benjy,’ read Stephen. ‘You always came when I threw you sticks. You were always up to tricks. You were my friend and we had fun. Now it seems your days are run. I’ll always miss you.’

He wiped a tear away from his eye, and Nathan giggled. Pippa punched him in the ribs and he shut up. Then, one by one, the children solemnly put a handful of earth on Benjy’s grave.

‘Do you think dogs go to heaven?’ Stephen asked.

‘Of course they do,’ said Pippa, giving him a hug. ‘There’s a special doggie heaven where they get to chase sticks, and hide bones, and munch on treats every day. Isn’t that right, Daddy?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Gabriel. He was relieved to see that, for the moment, Stephen was happy enough with that explanation. But later, when he was tucking his son up in bed, Stephen said to him sadly, ‘Why do so many sad things happen? First Mummy left and now Benjy’s died. Do you think it’s my fault? Maybe I’m too naughty.’