by Annie Dyer
It was early, not yet eight o’clock, but the hugs and jokes were being given freely. A cheer went up as Payton came in, looking a little pale but very happy. Cries from down the corridor told us that Teddy was on his way in.
Nick and Katie had taken residence in the cottage that sat a few hundred metres away from our big house. We’d asked if they wanted to join us for the morning, but as their twins were likely to be up extremely early, they thought they’d save everyone else the pain and just come over later for food.
“Enjoy the peace of it this year,” I whispered the words as I walked past Grant who did look a little shellshocked at the number of people around. “Next year there will be far more babies.”
“Is it time to plan that Christmas Caribbean cruise?”
I saw him eyeing the whisky already and shook my head. “No to both. Have a coffee. Watch Eliza opening her presents.”
“And Teddy eating the wrapping paper.” He nodded to where Jackson’s son was sitting, pretty much under the tree, the paper torn off something already.
“I think that’s a sign we need to start.”
Eliza’s eyes were fixed on the pile of presents she knew was for her. I nodded at Claire; Eliza wasn’t going to last much longer before a meltdown ensued.
“Okay, everyone, let’s start.” I clapped my hands and managed to get most people’s attention.
“Little girls first – let’s see what Santa bought you.”
Killian sat on the floor next to his daughter, mainly because if Claire had, we’d have needed a crane to get her back up again.
Then the mountain of wrapping paper erupted.
It took almost two hours and six pots of coffee to get through the opening of everyone’s presents. Once Eliza had gone through all hers – and we discovered that unlike most children she liked to properly look at each after opening it and then say a big thank you to whoever gave it her – the adults’ presents were unwrapped simultaneously, much in the same way they’d done as children.
Max stopped to watch when Seph opened one from him, a coffee cup that was apparently impossible to knock over.
“You’ll need to get your money back when he proves it’s possible,” Eli said. “And you know he’ll prove it’s possible while he’s having a coffee at your desk.”
Max’s eyes went dark. “Seph shouldn’t be at my desk.”
There was a laugh which everyone joined in with, apart from Max, who did his usual growly glare thing.
Seph smiled and held the mug up to Max. “Cheers, bro. I’ll try it out near the photocopier. Probably wait until you’ve got a file going through it.”
“Stay away from the photocopier. Stay away from my desk.” Max’s eyes went from dark to light. He looked at Victoria. “Time to tell them?”
Victoria nodded and beamed, nodding at Payton. “Go ahead.”
“It’s early days but Vic’s pregnant.” He glanced at her and my heart swelled at the look he gave her. He was never a difficult child, but he did think he was undeserving of love.
There was a cacophony of congratulations, a couple of digs from Jackson about having finally learned what to do with it and hugs for Victoria.
“Jesus, three pregnant women in the same room.” Seph settled down with more of his presents. “I think we need body armour.” He peeled the wrapping off another and looked at Payton. It was a polaroid camera, complete with about a dozen cases of film. “This is amazing. Thank you.”
More presents were opened. The biggest shock was that Seph had managed to get everyone a present, which was probably a first. He basked in the thanks and praise and looked completely smug.
“Breakfast.” I looked at Grant. ‘Who’s cooking?”
He grinned. “We had children for a reason. Jackson and Ava volunteered.”
“I love it when you’re conniving.”
It was going to be an excellent Christmas day.
20
An axe throwing experience – From Max to Eli
Ava
“I have another present for you.” Eli murmured the words into my ear sometime after the third bacon sandwich. I loved Christmas. I loved us all being together. I loved presents. But most of all, I love that I could eat anything and didn’t need an excuse. Christmas dinner was planned for four, but we all knew it would be closer to six before we started eating. Everyone had been assigned bits to do that hadn’t been prepped already, and in theory, it should run like a well-lubricated machine.
In practice – we’d see.
“Is it a naked present?” We’d spent as much time as we could get away with remembering what it was like to just be together. We’d talked, discussed where our heads had been over the last couple of months. He’d told me more about his sister and his worries; the responsibility he felt given that his parents lived in France and I’d told him about us and how I no longer wanted to keep the brakes on what we were doing.
He didn’t either.
We were on the same page, possibly even the same line.
“It might be a naked present after. When do you think we can grab some time away?”
His hand slipped to the small of my back then edged lower. We were outside, building snowmen and it looked like a snow fight was about to start with Seph and Shay on opposite teams.
“Now. I don’t fancy having snow stuck down my back and Seph keeps giving me evils. We could make a quick escape for it.” I looked at him hopefully.
“Your wish is my command.” I grabbed hold of my hand and we ran inside, hearing Callum and Seph shouting insults after us.
We lost coats and boots quickly, hearing the roar of laughter from outside and Maven yelling at Shay.
“Meet you in the library in five.” He raised an eyebrow at me, his smile full of devious intentions.
And I knew the library – formally my father’s office – had a lock on the door.
I took two mugs of mulled wine with me, my toes throbbing now I was back in the warmth. Mum was outside, probably trying to drown one of her sons in the snow and Claire had just finished prepping whatever food task she’d been given.
There was a rota with times on it, so the kitchen area didn’t get too crammed with people and we weren’t tripping over each other. Already, even though it was only just past midday, there were good smells. The most recent one was mince pies and cookies, because Payton had decided we had to have more. Why, I wasn’t sure, as we had enough food to feed Shay and Seph for the next eleven months, but I wasn’t arguing with Payton, not now she was pregnant and on the verge of tears every two minutes.
Plus, let’s face it: they would be eaten, even if it was Seph having a midnight feast, which we all knew he did.
Eli was dressed down by the time I got to him in the library, black sweatpants and a comfy sweater that I might’ve worn myself. A prettily wrapped gift sat on the table.
“I reckon we’ve got about twenty minutes until someone comes looking for one of us to do something.” I ignored the gift and went straight to him, putting my hands on his chest and feeling his warmth. The lingering scent of his body wash mingled with his cologne almost bowled me over. I had missed him so much.
“Let’s make the most of those twenty minutes then.” His hands went to my hips. He looked nervous. “I managed to find this back in November. It’s been living in Seph’s office since then. If I got the wrong one, I’m sorry.”
He let go of me with one hand and reached for the gift. “I wanted to see you open it so I thought I’d save it. I have something else too. But this first.”
I took hold of the present. It had definitely been wrapped by him, no bows or fancy bits, just very tidy with striped wrapping paper. Instinct told me it was delicate, so I used the table to steady it while I unwrapped.
The box underneath the paper wasn’t new, but then again, it couldn’t be. It contained an ornament, delicately made, of a girl wearing a bonnet and holding a goose, a cat at her feet.
Months ago, maybe even longer, I’d pointed
out the ornament to Eli when we’d seen it in an antique shop in Stratford-Upon-Avon. My great-great aunt who lived in New York had the same ornament and as a little girl I’d been fascinated with it, making up fairy stories about the goose and the cat which I’d recounted to Eli when I saw it. I’d promised myself that when I was grown up, I’d buy the same ornament, although the one we saw that day wasn’t for sale for some reason.
It wasn’t that easy though. The china company that made it had already closed and the ornament was rare. I’d reconciled myself to never having it, but somehow Eli had tracked one down.
“I can’t believe you remembered this.” I’d only mentioned it once and I’d forgotten about it since. The china was cool and smooth, delicate just as I’d remembered and the girl had a dreamy look on her face. I’d often wondered what she was thinking about.
Eli was grinning hard, looking pleased with himself, as he should. “There’s never much you want, so anytime you see something like that, I take a photo. I had to get an antiques dealer to track it down, but she came through. It’s the right one?”
I placed the goose girl down carefully, out of the way of where she could be knocked over, then threw my arms around his shoulders, lifting myself up and igniting a kiss between us that made me start to throb between my legs almost immediately.
“Okay,” he said, when the kiss paused. “I’m convinced you like it.”
“And you got it last month?”
He nodded, looking serious. “I knew we hadn’t been spending much time together and I wanted you to know I was still thinking about you. I have something else too.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card, passing it to me. “Nothing’s booked yet because I know you’ll want to organise it, but my diary’s clear.”
It was a save the date card with our names on, a date in September pencilled in.
“Is that enough time? If you’re set on a particular venue we can change it or wait until it’s available.”
I stared at the card.
“Ava, is this okay?”
I realised I hadn’t spoken.
“It’s perfect.” My eyes filled up with tears and I didn’t try to stop them from falling. “A beach wedding if we can, even if it’s Cornwall because of all the pregnant people.”
He laughed and held me in closer. “We can have whatever you want. Let’s just make sure we’re talking about it. I don’t want that distance to happen again.”
I pushed my hands under his sweater, feeling his body through the T-shirt underneath. It wasn’t enough and I didn’t know if it could be enough.
“You think we can stretch that twenty minutes out some more?” His next kiss was searing, warming up every fibre.
“I think after those gifts you’ve managed to up it to at least forty.” My hands played with the top of his sweatpants, but we were in the room that used to be my father’s study and there was no way karma would let us get any further than this without someone desperately needing some previously forgotten book that no one had even thought about for sixty years.
“Back to our room?”
I nodded. “As quickly as we can so no one can stop us. If anyone shouts at us, just pretend we didn’t hear.”
He pulled me in closer to him. “It’s like we’re on a secret mission.”
“Your forty minutes are counting down.”
He let me go and picked up the ornament. “I’ll carry this back. If anyone asks what we’re doing, we’re just taking it back to the room for safe-keeping.”
“We just might need a while to find somewhere safe.”
“Definitely. You’ll have to do the talking.”
He glanced down and my eyes followed. Exactly what we would be doing for those forty minutes was not being hidden well by Eli’s sweats.
“Let’s go. Right now.”
Seph’s voice rang down the hall, mentioning something about sprouts and stuffing, which was what I was pretty sure he was meant to be doing.
I laughed and made Eli walk quicker. We were having our next forty minutes, sprouts be damned.
21
A spa day – from Claire to Maven and Lainey
Seph
“You did well with your present choices.” Payton almost sounded proud.
I sat back on the sofa and basked in the praise from my twin. I was also far too full to consider moving for the next three days at least, so someone was going to have to hoist me to Max’s wedding tomorrow and grow me a second stomach for the wedding breakfast.
“Everyone’s a doubter.” I eyed the mince pie that sat on a plate just out of reach. “Could you pass me that, Payts?”
“Absolutely not. If I move, I’ll disrupt the baby and be sick again. Get off your arse and get it yourself.” She put a hand on her stomach.
I felt mildly guilty as she had just chundered up the best part of what had been an epic Christmas pudding. It seemed that knowing you were pregnant could start morning (and also evening) sickness and Payton had started to suffer.
It wasn’t nice to see anyone feel poorly, especially your twin, but Owen’s face had been amusing. He’d gone as pale as Payton, and then the panic had slowly set in across his usual calm and smiling face. Nothing ruffled Owen normally. Except Payton being sick and it being his fault.
Jackson, Killian and Nick – who’d ventured over with the twins and his toddler – had shared knowing smiles, but the best was Max, who’d sat there and looked completely and utterly confounded.
“You’ve got all this to come,” Jackson had said, and gave him a huge smile that ate shit. “Months of demands, sickness, huge credit card bills, antenatal classes, being forced to read books, listening to lectures on forceps and stitches. It’s all coming your way, brother.”
Owen then joined in with looking more green than pale, before fleeing from the room, possibly to vomit himself.
I’d just sniggered semi-politely in a corner and hoped that the jibes stayed away from me for once, especially because I was nowhere near this situation coming to me.
Now, a few hours later, Payton had recovered and was picking at a plate containing a plethora of weird things.
“Are you craving stuff? Like gherkins or pickles or whatever it’s meant to be?”
She shook her head and grinned. “Pregnancy is just going to give me an awesome excuse to eat weird crap and no one will question it.”
“I eat weird crap and no one ever questions it anyway. Why does being pregnant make any difference?” I eyed the mince pie. Payton had gotten to be somewhat of a decent baker, as long as you didn’t let her near a Sunday dinner or something like that, when she’d be more likely to have a firefighter at her dining table than her guests.
“Probably because when you’re female, you’re expected to look a certain way and if you eat weird shit, someone always raises an eyebrow because you should be thinking of how you look. When you’re male, there’s less judgement because the assumption is that you’ll burn it off.” The pissed off tone she could have was there with bells on.
“Which is a load of crap. As long as you’re healthy, it doesn’t matter if you don’t look like a coat hanger. I’ve been out with a couple of girls who modelled and with one of them I felt like I might break her when we were having sex. I don’t find rib cages attractive. A decent pair of boobs – totally different thoughts about.”
It had been only me and Payton in the room until Max walked in, stopping in the doorway and looking rather red in the face.
“Are you talking about Victoria?”
He may as well have added an addendum onto that, which was I will rearrange your nose if you’re talking about my bride to be.
“No. We were talking about how women can’t eat what they want without being judged and I mentioned about a model I went out with was a bit worryingly thin, then compared it to decent boobs. No reference to whose.” Max had never gotten over the fact that I’d seen a tit pic she’d sent him way back when. He’d instructed me to forget it, but that hadn�
��t been that easy.
His colour settled a bit and I breathed easier, knowing that he wasn’t about to alter my image. Not right now, anyway. I didn’t want him to have a black eye on his wedding photos.
“The media has a lot to answer for.” He sat down. “Imogen’s going to move into Amelie’s, given that Amelie’s moving out. They were talking about it before.”
Amelie had come over for Christmas dinner, splitting the day between us and her brothers and mother. She was just getting back to being on okay terms with her family after spending so many years being ignored by them.
“That just leaves Catrin. If Maven’s here, Lainey’s in Severton and Imogen and Shay are in London, we nearly have the whole compliment of Green cousins.” I was finding this very satisfying, because unlike my siblings, they were all single and more than happy to go out for drinks and dinner. I didn’t feel as much of whatever-the-male-version-of-an-old-maid was, or that I’d been left on the shelf.
“Cat’s rented somewhere in Southwark,” Payton said, with her mouth pretty much full of a combination of melon and cheese. “It’s one bed, so don’t think you’ll be shifting in with her anytime soon.”
I shrugged. “I’m looking to buy a house in the next few months.”
Payton swallowed. “You already have a house.”
“Yeah, but I rent it out. In fact, the new tenant is whoever Max appointed as a junior partner. He’s moving in.”
“She.” Max looked up at me, holding the mince pie I’d been coveting. “It’s a she. We’ve been through this.”
I shrugged. “She, he, whoever. I’ll just be glad of the help.” My department had become overrun with work in the last few months and we’d – or Max and Jackson – had decided that we didn’t just need another solicitor, but a partner to help manage too. I’d disagreed with that, but when I ended up on a ten-day trial, I was overruled, mainly because one of the newly qualifieds made a cock up of epic proportions as they’d needed more supervision.