He just keeps smiling at me while I rattle on, tying myself up in a million nervous knots.
At last, he shrugs. ‘You are a bit ridiculous, I grant you.’
‘Hey!’ I aim a fake punch at him, my fist meeting gloriously solid muscle.
He grabs my hand and holds it there, and all the strength instantly drains from my legs so that I stumble forwards, bridging the gap between us. I look up at him, my lips parting, certain he’s going to kiss me and not even caring that we’re standing in full view of an entire choir and its audience.
‘Great fairy lights,’ he says suddenly, turning away to admire the Christmas tree.
I stare at his profile, the wind taken right out of my sails.
Fairy lights?
Frustration floods through me. How can he think of bloody fairy lights at a time like this? Perhaps I’ve got it all wrong, after all …
Next second, he’s grabbing me and pulling me behind the tree so that we’re almost totally concealed by its huge, aromatic, sparkly branches.
Oh my God!
Fairy lights are bloody brilliant!
And then he kisses me.
Or I kiss him.
Actually, it’s very much a joint effort.
He lifts me off the ground as if I weigh nothing at all and pins me against him. And all those feelings of overwhelming lust – mixed with a longing to really know this man in every sense of the word – come flooding right back so that my mind is spinning and I’m so light-headed with joy, I think I might actually pass out.
The sheer relief to be touching Seb when I thought I’d be spending a whole Christmas not even seeing him is indescribable.
And, judging by the furious way he’s kissing me and moulding his body to mine as if he’s never, ever going to let me go, I’m guessing he’s feeling exactly the same.
At last, we pull apart.
‘I’m glad you didn’t go skiing.’ I smile up at him through my lashes, feeling suddenly shy. ‘What made you change your mind?’
He gently traces my lips with his finger. ‘You, of course. I’ve been pretty much a lost cause from the start.’
My heart soars.
He smiles. ‘Ever since you opened the door that morning and claimed the terrible singing was Simon Cowell’s fault and nothing at all to do with you.’
‘Ah yes, that X Factor has a lot to answer for.’ I smile ruefully, loving the feel of his hands around my waist. ‘I thought you liked Barb, not me.’
He pulls me closer and kisses me. ‘I do like Barb. Very much. In fact, she’s partly the reason I’m here now instead of thousands of miles away. She phoned me to let me know you really liked me, that you’d never been after Jasper, like I’d imagined. She told me I was definitely in with a chance.’
‘She did?’ I beam at him and turn my head to search the crowd for my best friend but I can’t see her.
‘She’s joined the choir,’ says Seb, pointing, and, sure enough, there is Barb, right in the middle of the front row, singing her heart out to ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’.
‘So what did you mean when you said I had to be sure about you? Didn’t you believe me?’
‘I’d got it in my head that it was Jasper you liked and it was a hard image to shake. I suppose I thought maybe I was your second choice because it hadn’t worked out with Jas.’ He smiles sheepishly. ‘And guys don’t like to come second.’
‘So stupid old pride stopped you sweeping me off my feet?’
He laughs. ‘That and a line of gawping kids and parents. I’ve got my Santa reputation to keep up, you know.’
I smile and snuggle closer and he wraps his big arms even more tightly around me.
‘Barb looks happy,’ I murmur, gazing up at him.
‘And what about you? Are you happy?’ There’s an intensity in his eyes that makes the breath catch in my throat.
I nod and a tear spills over. Seb gently wipes it away with his thumb as the choir begin their achingly beautiful rendition of ‘Little Donkey’.
‘This was my brother’s favourite Christmas song,’ I tell him, and he pulls me closer and strokes my hair. He knows about my little brother. I told him all about Jack that day I broke down and sobbed over him in the grotto.
‘Your parents are coming over,’ he says.
Sure enough, Mum and Dad are getting out of Rob’s car.
They walk across to join the others. And it strikes me that, for once, it’s Mum who’s leading Dad by the hand, not the other way round. I know the song makes her very emotional. But the big smile on her face as she joins in with the singing, and links arms with Rosie and Justine, tells me that nothing short of a minor miracle has occurred for our family this Christmas time.
Seb and I wander over, hand in hand, to join them, and Mum turns to me with happy tears in her eyes. Dad winks at me over her shoulder – and that’s when I know for certain that everything is going to be all right.
Scanning the choir, I catch Trudy’s eye. She gives me a huge grin and a big, lascivious wink.
I shake my head at her and we both dissolve into silent giggles.
From the delicious warmth of Seb’s arms, I look around at the happy, smiling faces of my family.
After a long time apart, we’re together at last.
And, as the snow drifts gently down around us, I have a feeling that this Christmas is going to be the most magical ever …
Epilogue
It’s Christmas Eve and I’m battling up the M6 in my little Citroën. Destination: Rob and Justine’s ‘festive soirée’.
After the emotional roller coaster that was last Christmas, I was hoping for a rather less eventful twelve months, but it didn’t quite turn out like that.
So much has happened in the past year.
The hardest part was back in March when Seb left Scarsby and went to live in the Scottish Borders. I pretended I was fine. I didn’t want his last vision of me to be an ugly, streaky blubber-face. But I cried buckets after he’d gone.
Luckily, my new job as Jasper’s assistant and the group’s manager kept me so busy, I barely had time to mope at all. In theory.
Thanks to my dogged (and admittedly often fruitless) persistence, Continental Drift’s debut album is starting to get noticed. We’ve even had the odd mention in some fairly heavyweight music magazines and the boys finally gave up their day jobs last month to dedicate themselves to the music business full-time. Exciting times!
Jasper, bless him, still loses his keys on an almost daily basis and tells everyone he meets that he doesn’t know how he functioned before Barb and I arrived on the scene. He and Barb are madly in love and getting married in June. I’ve agreed to be their nuptials planner on one condition: that Barb ditches her idea of a Sound of Music-themed wedding, involving the entire wedding party careening over a hilltop in heels and fascinators in full vocalisation. (She claimed she was joking but I don’t think she was.)
Barb has invited Mum and Dad to her wedding, which is so sweet of her. And we’re optimistic that Mum will actually make it on the day. Dad leaving last Christmas was a real wake-up call for her and the memory of how devastated she was has left her with a real determination to get better. When they got home, she made an appointment with a doctor then promptly faked a headache to get out of going. But Dad’s not the pushover he once was. He’s finally realised that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. I’m not suggesting that getting his motorbike serviced and leaving some route maps of Europe lying around was a subtle threat, but – well, Mum is finally getting the medical help she needs. It’s a slow process and we’re not expecting overnight miracles, but she managed a week in Brighton with Dad over the summer – their first holiday in years – and she’s already planning their next trip.
Also, Rosie and Josh are coming home for good!
Rosie broke the news to me over Skype. Her boyfriend, Alejandro, was offered a big promotion, setting up a UK base for the haulage company where he works – and, at the same time, Ro
sie made the decision to return to England so that Josh could be schooled here. When I said how marvellous it was that she’d be following Alejandro, she looked at me like I was nuts and snapped, ‘I’m not following him. It was just a coincidence.’ To which I replied, ‘Hm. And I’m a monkey’s uncle.’
Nathan and Crystal have split up.
I bumped into Crystal a few months ago in a restaurant with a friend. She was tucking into a massive burger with cheese and bacon, which gave me the impression she was still in the ‘Ha! Fuck you, Nathan and your nasty rabbit food’ stage. (I remember it well.) She was surprisingly friendly, although I think it was probably because she wanted the chance to off-load on someone who understood her ex’s – erm – peculiarities. Apparently it was the bog snorkelling that finally did for their relationship.
‘Didn’t you enjoy it, then?’ I asked, all wide-eyed innocence.
Crystal’s face darkened. ‘I’d rather strip naked and parachute into a junkyard guarded by starving Rottweilers,’ was her reply. She had a point.
But the biggest news of all is that Justine is pregnant.
After everything came to a head last Christmas, she and Rob agreed they’d go for one more round of IVF and then, if it failed, they would look into adopting. But then a miracle happened and Justine found she’d got pregnant naturally.
They made the announcement over dinner during a weekend at Mum and Dad’s.
The baby is due in February and they’re both absolutely over the moon.
Justine’s resigned as chairman of various committees and is currently obsessing over nursery colour charts. Forget blue for a boy and pink for a girl. Apparently, celery green is the colour this season for any self-respecting trendsetter parent. Rob remarked that perhaps filled-nappy green might be a more appropriate shade. Or even baby-puke cream. Everyone laughed, including Justine, which supports my theory that she’s become a lot nicer since being with child.
And now I have an announcement of my own to make.
Butterflies flit around inside me at the very thought of arriving at Rob and Justine’s (Mum and Dad are already there) and telling everyone the news.
They’ll all be pleased. I’m sure of it. Even Justine …
‘Penny for them.’
I turn with a mischievous smile and waggle the gorgeous square-cut diamond that’s sitting on my fourth finger at Seb. ‘Worth more than a penny.’
Seb’s mouth curves in response, his eyes crinkling sexily. ‘Don’t I know it.’
Even after a whole year together, that smile still has the power to turn my legs to jelly and make me think of stopping the car in the next lay-by to further the ‘getting-to-know-you’ process.
I give him a haughty look. ‘But I’m worth it?’
He squeezes my thigh. ‘Every penny.’
I look at the mountains with their covering of snow and a bolt of pure joy zips through me. Even Justine’s cocktail party will be fun as long as Seb is next to me.
‘Time for some festive music,’ I say happily, scrabbling about in the CDs. ‘To get us in the mood.’
‘Not “Driving Home for Christmas” again?’ groans Seb.
‘Please?’
‘Oh, go on, then. Just one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Please don’t sing …’
Two ex-friends. One Christmas to remember…
A tale about love and friendships, complete with a sprinkling of Christmas magic. Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan and Lucy Diamond.
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You can bury a lot of troubles, digging in the garden…
As fresh and bubbly as homemade lemonade on a hot day! The perfect summer read for fans of Jenny Colgan and Lucy Diamond.
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MISTLETOE AND MAYHEM
Catherine Ferguson burst onto the writing scene at the age of nine, anonymously penning a weekly magazine for her five-year-old brother (mysteriously titled the ‘Willy’ comic) and fooling him completely by posting it through the letterbox every Thursday.
Catherine’s continuing love of writing saw her study English at Dundee University and spend her twenties writing for various teenage magazines including Jackie and Blue Jeans and meeting pop stars. She worked as Fiction Editor at Patches magazine (little sister to Jackie) before getting serious and becoming a sub-editor on the Dundee Courier & Advertiser. Moving south in her thirties, she set up Surrey Organics, delivering fresh organic produce to people’s homes - and this experience provided the inspiration for her first attempt at writing a full-length novel.
Catherine’s first novel Humbugs and Heartstrings is very loosely based on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and is a clever, modern tale about the price of friendship, the cost of enmity, and the value of love. Mistletoe and Mayhem is her second novel. She lives with her son in Northumberland.
By the same author:
Humbugs and Heartstrings
Green Beans and Summer Dreams
Acknowledgements
I’ve longed to be a published writer for as long as I can remember but it always seemed like a rather impossible dream. To me, at any rate.
Thankfully, lots of people in my life did believe I could do it and I want to say thank you to all my lovely family and friends for their huge encouragement and for remaining determinedly optimistic during the ‘character-building’ rejection phase!
Massive thanks also to those in the publishing industry who saw something in my writing and were prepared to take a chance on me.
Without you all, my dream would never have come true.
So thank you!
Catherine xx
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