Christmas at Carol's

by Julia Roberts

  Christmas

  at

  Carol’s

  Julia Roberts

  Christmas at Carol's

  Copyright © 2017 Julia Roberts

  The right of Julia Roberts to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published worldwide in E – editions – 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, copied or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher and author. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-911557-02-9

  Copy edited by Justine Taylor

  Book cover illustration Angela Oltmann

  Formatting by Yvonne Betancourt

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Books by Julia Roberts

  Chapter 1

  10th December

  This is it. My heart pounds against my ribcage as I insert the key in the lock and push open the front door of my new home, sweeping aside a small pile of post that has gathered on the doormat. If only it was that easy to sweep aside my nerves. There’s a faint musty smell, but I guess it’s to be expected, the house has been empty for almost a year. I shiver, not sure if it’s the cold or the enormity of what I’ve done finally dawning on me. The door to the lounge is open and I stick my head around it, checking that all the old furniture has been removed as I requested. It’s empty, as is the kitchen, apart from the fitted cupboards, currently painted an insipid pale primrose, and the ancient gas cooker, which I asked them to leave if it passed a safety test. There’s a piece of paper that looks like a certificate lying on top of the rings, so I’m presuming it did.

  Upstairs, the front bedroom now has a dove-grey carpet, fitted yesterday while I was at work, and new curtains which my mum put up once the carpet was down, giving it a homely feel. The same cannot be said of the back bedroom. I’ve had to leave the threadbare carpet in there and there is a dirty smudge on the painted wall where the old bed had been pushed up against it without a headboard. I’m about to close the door on this room, when I notice a tatty cardboard box in the corner. What part of ‘please remove everything except the cooker’ did the estate agent not understand? Irritation starts to bubble in my stomach. Leaving the door ajar so that I will be able to hear when the delivery van arrives with my bed and a few other bits from home, I cross to the box and lift one of the flaps. A riot of sparkly coloured tinsel escapes, spilling out on to the grubby carpet. Someone with a kind heart must have left the box of Christmas decorations thinking I could make use of them rather than buying new. I smile, all trace of annoyance gone. I’m going to have to be quite careful with my spending now that I have a mortgage to pay and besides, sorting through the box will give me something to do later when the delivery men have gone. Right on cue, there is a sharp knock on the front door.

  It took less than two hours to unload the van, underlining how few possessions I have particularly as this includes three suitcases of clothes, a bag full of toiletries and a black bin liner containing boots and shoes, all of which were dumped unceremoniously in the spare bedroom while the removal men organised the furniture in my room. It was only when I went in search of my pyjamas to get changed for bed that I remembered the box of decorations. Shattered, after a day of unpacking carefully wrapped crockery, cutlery and pans, and finding places for them in my compact kitchen – the estate agent’s description, not mine – I’m tempted to leave rummaging through it until tomorrow morning but, as I will be going to the DIY store to buy paint and it is also the ideal place to buy any extra decorations, I decide to have a quick look. Carefully, I pull out the strands of tinsel in all the colours of the rainbow and a strand of silver beads and place them on the floor. Under them, there is a box containing a string of fairy lights which I plug in to make sure they are working. Success; although it may only be temporary. I’ve witnessed my dad doing the exact same thing in the past. When checked in the box, the lights work fine but once on the tree it’s a different story. Beneath the lights is a layer of what looks like baubles, each individually wrapped in kitchen roll for protection lying on a bed of yet more tinsel. My sister, Noella, is very sniffy about decorating her tree with tinsel. She always does a themed tree, choosing just one or two colours for trimming, and, on the first of January, she deposits the whole lot, along with the seven-foot Nordic Pine ‘real’ tree she buys each year, in and next to her wheelie bin. Dreadful waste if you ask me, but she never does. I take a peek at a few of the baubles. They’re a really pretty eclectic mix: some are round, some oval and others have pointy bits at the bottom. Just like the tinsel and the lights, they are multi-coloured and I’m already starting to imagine how beautiful my tree will look once bedecked with these second-hand ornaments. Right at the bottom, there is a clear plastic box with a red backing that houses a silver star. I’ve always preferred a star to an angel sitting on top of the tree.

  I’m just about to pile everything back into the box to keep it safe, happy that there is no need for me to spend any money on extra decorations, when I notice that the red I can see beneath the star has handwriting on it. It isn’t the back of the container holding the star, it’s an envelope which, when I pull it free, releases a Christmas card with a picture of two chubby bears framed by a heart. I know I shouldn’t look inside, this card doesn’t belong to me, but I can’t stop myself. The words are heart-breaking:

  I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. Please answer my calls and let me explain what happened. My life is empty without you in it. Please, I beg of you, let me make things right. I love you, Annie. You are my world. Without you, I have no reason to go on living. Just give me a chance to show you how much I love you.

  Your Jake xxx

  My eyes fill with tears. I’m sad for Annie and Jake and whatever happened to cause their break-up and his outpouring of love. I close the card, slip it into the envelope and slide it back to its hiding place under the Christmas star. I feel guilty for intruding on something so personal but worse as I realise only some of the tears rolling down my cheeks are for them. The rest are for myself; no man has ever felt about me the way Jake clearly felt about Annie.

  Chapter 2

  11th December

  My bed has never felt so comfortable, but maybe that’s because it’s never been in my own house before. Back in the summer when I made the decision to start looking for somewhere to buy, I never dreamed I’d be moved in by Christmas. It just goes to show what I can do when I put my mind to things. I suppose I was lucky that I fell totally and utterly in love with the first house I viewed. Wisteria Cottage is only a two-up two-down, former farm labourer’s cottage but it’s perfect for me. Poor Mum, she was so worried that I had paid too much for it by offering the asking price while I was still viewing the house with Matthew, the handsome estate agent, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of someone else beating me to it. When my offer was accept
ed and the vendor took it off the market immediately, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was right. My phone rings. It’s Mum’s mobile. Her ears must have been burning.

  ‘Hello, darling. How was the first night in your new home?’

  She sounds anxious, but I guess that’s only to be expected. I’ve bought a house over an hour’s drive from them, in a village where I don’t know a soul, that needs quite a bit of work doing to it. I’m pretty sure they expected me to get cold feet at some point and pull out of the purchase but this is the new, more decisive me.

  ‘It was amazing. I slept like a baby. Thanks for being here for the carpet fitters on Friday, it’s made such a difference to the room.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t exactly take the last day of term off, could you? You need your job more than ever now that you’ve got a mortgage to pay.’

  I wish Mum had just said, ‘that’s all right, darling’, rather than reminding me that I have committed to buying a house on my own and will be indebted to the mortgage company for years, but I’m sure she didn’t mean it to sound like that.

  ‘And the curtains are so pretty. Good choice. I’m lying here looking at them now.’

  ‘You’re still in bed? It’s nearly ten. I thought you were going to the DIY store before coming to us for lunch?’

  ‘I can go after. They’re open until four on Sundays. I didn’t realise how knackering this moving house lark is.’

  ‘Did you manage to fit the sofa and chair in your lounge?’

  ‘Yes, no problem. It’s bigger than you think. There’s even room for a Christmas tree in the corner between the window and the fireplace. Thanks for lending them to me until the new sofas are ready. At least we’ll have something comfortable to sit on when you come over next week.’

  I haven’t dared tell Mum how much I’ve spent on the new sofas. Moving house is not only tiring, it’s expensive. The interest-free credit deal I got from the furniture superstore is spreading the cost over four years but I’ll probably be fed up with them by the time I’ve paid for them.

  ‘Speaking of which, is there anything in particular you’d like for your birthday?’

  A boyfriend? Only joking. That’s the last thing on my mind. For now, I’m concentrating my energy on my new home and trying to get a promotion at work to help pay for it, although reading the message in Annie’s Christmas card last night really touched a raw nerve.

  ‘Maybe something for the house? Could you stretch to a microwave? The old gas cooker passed a safety check but I’m not sure I’ll dare use it. I could get one today while I’m out shopping and you know I’ll make good use of it.’

  ‘That’s probably a good idea now that you won’t have me around to make your dinners. I do worry about you, Carol. Are you going to be all right living on your own?’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mum,’ I say, trying to sound more positive than I feel. I think we had all hoped that I would meet a nice chap to settle down with but it just hasn’t happened. ‘I can’t live with you and Dad for ever. You’ve been stuck with me for almost thirty-three years; you deserve a bit of time to yourselves.’

  ‘It’s going to be quite different for all of us for a while. I’ll do lunch early, around half past twelve, and that’ll give you plenty of time to go shopping this afternoon.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum. See you in a bit.’

  I shiver as I climb out of bed. Obviously, my attempt at setting the timer on the central heating hasn’t worked. Goodness knows why they have to make things so complicated. I’ll get some logs while I’m out and have a go at lighting a fire later.

  Chapter 3

  15th December

  My stomach rumbles noisily. Surely it must be almost lunchtime. I glance at my watch. It’s only half past ten; precisely eight minutes have passed since I last looked at it. The smell of gloss paint always has this effect on me. In the couple of seconds it has taken me to check the time, a drip of grey gloss has started to form in the corner of one of the stained-glass panels of the Victorian door I’m painting, which I quickly catch with the bristles of my brush held between fingers that are slowly turning blue from the cold, despite the fingerless gloves I’m wearing. It’s not ideal weather to be painting the exterior of my front door but I have no choice if I’m going to have the downstairs of my new home finished before Christmas. At this time of year there are no guarantees that the temperature won’t fall further, or worse still it may turn wet or even snowy.

  Actually, I’ve fantasised on several occasions that my first Christmas here will be white, with snow so deep that we all have to stay indoors. When I say all, I mean my family. I’ve pictured us gathered around a roaring fire, with me handing out homemade mince pies and topping up glasses of sherry after a game of Monopoly where no-one got moody because they were losing, before settling down to watch Home Alone or Miracle on 34th Street.

  Who am I kidding? Firstly, I’ve never made a mince pie in my life. What’s the point when you can buy a pack of six from the supermarket with crumbly, buttery pastry for less than it would cost to make them? My stomach grumbles even louder.

  Secondly, we always go to my sister’s for Christmas Day. Noella has the perfect family: a husband who worships the ground she walks on, two stunningly beautiful children – a boy and a girl, of course – and a house big enough for us all to have our own room on Christmas Eve. No-one will have to sleep on the floor on cushions from the sofa, zipped into sleeping bags that have seen their fair share of music festivals over the years and have a faint whiff of mud to prove it. At Noella’s house, the bed linen is pristine white and smells like fresh air, and there will be no queue for the bathroom on Christmas morning as every room has an en-suite.

  Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister and her husband, and my nephew and niece, but I sometimes feel that their perfection is yet another reminder, as if one were needed, of just how imperfect my life is. I’m not unattractive, I have a good job teaching English in a private school and a wicked sense of humour but, for some reason, the sort of men I’m attracted to aren’t the settling-down type, at least not with me. The funny thing is, my last three boyfriends have all got married to the girl they dated immediately after me, making me officially ‘The One Before The One!’

  The rhythmic brushstrokes are gradually turning the sludgy coloured undercoat that I applied yesterday, to cover the purple paint I had sanded down the day before that, a beautiful, sophisticated elephant grey. I ask you, who in their right mind would paint the front door of their red-brick Victorian cottage Royal Purple? Well, me, actually. It hadn’t looked that bright on the label of the tin in the DIY store and I kept hoping that it would dry a little more muted, but I had to admit it was a horrible mistake when I overheard the men delivering my new washing machine muttering about needing sunglasses.

  Today, they would have needed their sunglasses for an entirely different reason. Normally I love days like this – bright blue skies, fluffy white clouds and the pale winter sun catching an occasional touch of frost causing it to sparkle like diamonds – but that’s when I’m viewing it from inside somewhere warm and toasty. Right now, my feet are like blocks of ice and I can feel my nose starting to drip. Instead of downing my paintbrush to retrieve my crumpled paper hanky from its position stuffed up the sleeve of my ancient fleece, I lazily run my sleeve across my dripping nose as the postman, who I’ve already decided would be just my type if I wasn’t on a dating break, pushes through my front gate, his arms full of brightly coloured envelopes. Great. My cheeks heat up with embarrassment so they are now the warmest part of my entire being. Maybe he didn’t notice.

  ‘Nice colour,’ he says.

  For a moment, I think he means my cheeks before I realise he means the door.

  ‘By that I guess you mean, better than the hideous purple?’

  ‘I’m no expert, but it was a bit full-on. Where do you want these?’ he asks, wafting several letters in my direction. ‘On the step, seeing as you’ve got your hands full?’

  �
��Would you mind squeezing past me and popping them on the shelf in the hall? It’d be just my luck for a gust of wind to blow them on to the wet paint and I can’t face painting this door for a fourth time.’

  ‘No problem.’ He eases behind me, causing just a slight fluttering in my heart.

  Off limits, at least for the time being, I remind myself as he heads back down the path.

  ‘And by the way, you’ve got a smudge of paint on your face from when you wiped your nose on your sleeve.’

  Or make that for ever, I think, unless he has very low standards when it comes to personal habits, in which case I’m not interested anyway.

  ‘Thanks for pointing it out,’ I say to his retreating back.

  He raises his hand in acknowledgement and I realise the irony is lost on him. That’s another reason I wouldn’t be interested in dating him. I need a man with a sense of humour similar to mine. It’s a shame; he really is quite a hottie.

  ‘Don’t go there,’ says a female voice, startling me so much that I drop the paintbrush from my frozen fingers and watch in horror as it breaks the surface of the paint with the velocity of an archer’s arrow hitting the bullseye, the handle disappearing beneath the surface before I can stop it.

  ‘Oops, sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I say, turning to face a petite blonde woman, who looks to be about the same age as me, standing on the other side of the fence dividing the pathways of our two properties.

  ‘I just thought you should know that Rick, the postman, is the village lothario. Well, I say village; I think he has dated just about every single woman under the age of forty within a twenty-mile radius over the past couple of years, and one or two married ones, if the rumours are to be believed. Do you need some help fishing it out? I’m Sally, by the way. I’ve been meaning to pop round and welcome you to the village but it’s always so manic just before Christmas.’