‘Hartnell?’ exclaimed Pamela in a very Lady Bracknell way, leaning forward to look at her new daughter-in-law. ‘I admit, I did think that dress looked of quite good quality, but … no, it’ll be something she’s picked up from a charity shop.’
‘Smile, please,’ called the photographer, and Mrs Kenyon’s face obediently snapped into the faint rictus of feigned pleasure that was all her recent top-up injections of Botox would allow.
After the pictures had been taken, Matthew and I walked hand in hand across to the village hall, which was less than fifty yards away, followed by all our guests … except my new mother-in-law, who loudly insisted she couldn’t possibly sully her Louboutins and instead made Gerry fetch the car and drive her.
The hall was pleasantly warm and scented with pine from the large, sparkling Christmas tree on the stage at the further end, and several pots of fragrant early narcissi that had been dotted around the room. The holly-sprigged bunting and silvery paper chains swayed above our heads and borrowed white linen cloths lay like undisturbed snow across the trestle tables.
As the guests entered they were handed a glass of Babs’ best sparkling elderflower wine and then, while the buffet was brought out, everyone gathered round to watch us cut the first slice from the cake.
It was a two-tier wintry extravaganza, topped with icing sugar figures of me, Matt and Minnie, dressed like Eskimos and sitting in Santa’s sleigh. It gave me a whole new idea for another seasonal Dog-Coature outfit on the spot!
Pamela Kenyon, who had rejected her glass of sparkling elderflower with every sign of disgust, was staring through narrowed eyes at that dress – ivory silk-satin, cut on the bias and embroidered and crystal-jewelled …
‘Norman Hartnell, my foot!’ she muttered. ‘It’s just a cheap eBay rip-off!’
Matthew’s best man and Tonya, the chief bridesmaid, both said a few words after the cake was cut, though there were to be no long speeches. Instead, everyone was urged to help themselves from the buffet.
‘And Santa’s arriving on the stage in a few minutes, so do go up and collect your presents – if you’ve been good boys and girls,’ Matthew announced, to loud cheers.
‘Santa?’ said Pamela, blankly, as the strains of Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’ drifted over the chattering throng and a scarlet-clad, white-bearded figure took his place in an armchair on the stage. ‘Really, what kind of cheap wedding do you call this?’
‘Now, Pammie, you don’t want to ruin Matthew and Lucy’s big day, do you? I think it’s all great fun,’ Gerry said, full of newly discovered bravado.
Over the years he’d been increasingly intimidated by Pammie’s rages whenever she was thwarted, so it had been easier just to let her have her own way. But now that he’d finally come to the liberating realisation that she couldn’t actually kill him, because being imprisoned for murder would totally nip her social pretensions in the bud, he was becoming positively reckless!
‘Big day, indeed,’ she began, eyeing her husband in a baffled but furious way.
Then, disconcertingly, she suddenly seemed to see, superimposed on her husband’s pleasant, middle-aged face, the quiet but determined young man she’d married and to whose advice she’d once been happy to listen.
But she quickly shrugged off the momentary pang of recollection, for she was older and wiser now. ‘I never realised you had such a common streak, Gerry—’ she said scathingly, preparing to cut him down to size again, then broke off.
Her jaw dropped and her eyes started from her head, which was not a pretty sight, and then she dug her husband in the ribs.
‘Oof! I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that, Pammie,’ he grunted, crossly. ‘I’m going to be black and blue! And what’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Over there – look!’ she hissed, gripping his arm with scarlet-painted talons, her eyes still popping. ‘And don’t call me Pammie,’ she added automatically.
As Matthew and I circulated, talking to all our guests, I suddenly spotted my mother-in-law through a gap in the throng and her face looked so fixed and strange that I hoped she wasn’t having a seizure … it was so not the entertainment I’d planned for the day!
But it lasted only a moment and then, towing poor Gerry behind her, she began pushing her way through the throng towards the stage.
Perhaps, I thought, she had a sudden, uncontrollable urge to see Santa?
‘What am I looking at?’ Gerry asked plaintively, following in her wake as Pammie shot across the room like a heat-seeking missile.
She ignored him, heading straight towards a tall, rake-thin, elderly lady dressed in a dark blue fifties suit with a long, full skirt and peplum jacket. Her silver hair was pinned up into a crown and she had angular cheekbones and distinctive, almond-shaped green eyes.
Pamela came to an abrupt and slightly ungraceful halt right in front of her, partly caused by getting one heel of her nude Louboutins caught in the matting, and held out her hand. A smile writhed briefly into life on her thin lips as it tried to escape the Botox.
‘We haven’t been introduced, but aren’t you Lady Barbara Cartringham? I saw that article about you in the Sunday Times colour supplement the other week!’ she gushed breathlessly.
‘That’s me, though I’ve never been ladylike in the least, so I don’t use the title,’ Babs said, shaking her hand with bone-crushing briskness and then tossing it away in her usual manner. ‘I only agreed to the article because it was good publicity for my business.’
‘Oh, yes – Stately Solutions, supplying specialist cleaning materials to historic homes. Such a super idea,’ Pamela enthused affectedly.
‘We’re Gerry and Pamela Kenyon, Matthew’s parents,’ Gerry broke in.
‘I guessed as much,’ Babs said, straight-faced. ‘Were you on your way to see Santa? Look what he gave me.’ She displayed a small knitted snowman with every sign of pleasure. ‘Fits over a loo roll,’ she added.
‘Er … no,’ Pamela said uncertainly. Then she rallied and added, ‘I must say, I didn’t expect to see someone like you at this kind of affair. Though, of course, it’s not the sort of wedding I usually attend either, and really—’
Luckily Matt and I arrived in the nick of time to prevent his mother inserting her whole foot into her mouth, because goodness knew what she was going to say next!
‘You’ve met Lucy’s godmother?’ Matt asked his parents.
‘Just introducing ourselves,’ Babs said cheerfully.
‘You’re Lucy’s godmother?’ Pamela repeated blankly, and then added, as several pennies dropped in quick succession, ‘Lucy, that dress you’re wearing …?’
‘Norman Hartnell – it was Babs’ own wedding dress and she kindly loaned it to me, along with the matching cloak. I’m so lucky!’ I explained.
‘And Matthew’s a very lucky young man, marrying you,’ Babs said.
‘You can say that again,’ he replied with a grin, putting his arm around me and I smiled up at him.
‘Lucy looks beautiful in that dress and she’s a wonderful girl,’ agreed Gerry, though I noticed that sheer habit made him glance nervously at his wife as he said it.
It was clear by now that Pamela, with all her preconceptions thrown into disarray, was struggling to arrange her face into a suitable expression. Her lips moved silently for a few moments, as if unsure how to form words.
‘Sweet wedding, darling!’ she managed to utter at last in strangled tones and then leaned forward and kissed the air about an inch from my cheek. Then she cast a glazed and uncertain look at the trestle tables with their homely white cloths, plates of sandwiches, tea and coffee urns and simple pots of narcissi, to where the guests were laughingly queuing to take their turn with Santa.
‘I … think I could do with a drink!’ she added faintly.
A loud popping noise came from the table where some of Matt’s friends were filling glasses.
‘It sounds like you’re about to get one,’ Mum said, having joined us
in time to watch with enjoyment as her employer turned her new son-in-law’s mother into a puddle of fawning froth. ‘That elderflower wine must be very fizzy!’
‘Oh, having my elderflower champagne for the toasts was just my little joke,’ Babs explained. ‘Lucy said she wanted a completely vintage wedding – so from now on, we’re having vintage champagne.’
‘Aunt Babs, you’re wicked – and I love you,’ I said, hugging her.
‘Me, too,’ Matthew said, following suit.
Behind us, I heard my new mother-in-law exclaim, ‘Gerry, look – vintage Bolly! This has to be the smartest country wedding ever!’
A Recipe for Victorian Seed Cake
The caraway seeds give a delicious hint of aniseed to this light sponge cake, a favourite of the Victorians.
Ingredients
4oz/110g softened butter
4oz/110g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
2oz/50g ground almonds
2 heaped teaspoons caraway seeds
5oz/150g self-raising flour
Three tablespoons milk
Method
Preheat the oven to 170C°/325F°/gas mark 3.
Grease and line with greaseproof paper a 2lb loaf tin, though any similar capacity cake tin will do just as well.
In a large mixing bowl beat the butter till creamy and then sieve in the sugar. Beat it well – you want to get lots of air into the mixture.
Add the eggs gradually, stirring well with each addition, then the ground almonds and the caraway seeds.
When these are well mixed in, sieve in the flour and gently fold it in. At this point you may need to add some milk, a tablespoon at a time, until the mixture just drops off a spoon.
Put the cake batter into the loaf tin and smooth the top.
Bake for about an hour: you will hear the caraway seeds crackling and when they stop, it’s done!
Let the seed cake cool in the tin for about fifteen minutes and then turn it out onto a wire rack. When cold, wrap in greaseproof and store in an airtight container.
Turn the page for an exclusive extract of A Christmas Cracker.
Chapter 1: Bottled
‘You mean you’ve known for ages that your boss at Champers&Chocs was passing off bottles of cheap fizz as vintage champagne, and you haven’t done a single thing about it?’ Kate exclaimed incredulously, her pale blue eyes wide and a cup of herbal tea the exact colour of cat pee suspended halfway to her rose-tinted lips.
Kate was my opposite in looks, being small, fair and cute, though she wasn’t as cute as she thought she was, unless you were really fond of rabbits. And speaking of rabbits, she should long since have put her penchant for pale pink fluffy jumpers behind her, even if the angora had been ethically sourced, which I doubted.
I sighed and stirred my Americano, starting to wish I hadn’t said anything about it because, after all, she and her husband were Jeremy’s old friends, not mine, and she’d been less than welcoming when we’d first got engaged. But sometimes Kate and I would meet up for coffee and, that day being one of those occasions, my worries had spilled out of me the moment we’d sat down.
It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been able to tell my best friend, Emma, but since she’d remarried she’d increasingly been having problems of her own with her husband, Desmond, so I hadn’t wanted to burden her with mine.
Still, at least she wouldn’t have gazed at me in the sad, accusing way Kate was, when I looked up.
‘The idea that anything fraudulent was going on never crossed my mind until I found out by accident,’ I explained. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’d even seen a real bottle of champagne, other than on the TV, until I got engaged to Jeremy.’
‘No, I don’t suppose there are champagne bars on every corner of council estates,’ she said snidely. ‘Just cheap booze shops.’
For the last years of her life, Mum and I had shared a specially adapted council bungalow on a very nice estate, but Kate always talked as if I was dragged up in a slum and had made some giant social leap by getting engaged to a member of the teaching profession.
‘Oh, forget it,’ I snapped.
‘No, you can’t just leave it there without telling me how you found out and why you didn’t report it to the police,’ she insisted.
‘Because I thought it had stopped. It was before last Christmas, when I was packing special orders one evening and my boss and I were the only people there. There was a phone call and I walked into his office to tell him—’
‘I have wondered about those late nights, just the two of you…’ she said suggestively.
I stared at her in astonishment. ‘You don’t mean you thought I was having a fling with Harry Briggs? I mean, apart from his being twenty years older than me and not my type, I’m in love with Jeremy and wouldn’t dream of cheating on him.’
‘Well, you have to admit it looked a bit odd.’
‘I don’t see why. Harry said I had the nicest handwriting for the personal messages that went in the box with the champagne and chocolates, and I was the most careful packer for the expensive orders.’
It was a pity, I thought, that those had turned out to be the fraudulent ones.
‘Jeremy said you started doing casual evening packing work there while your mother was still alive,’ she said. ‘Harry paid you cash in hand.’
‘Yes, because luckily our lovely neighbour was always happy to sit with Mum in the evenings for a couple of hours and the money was useful. A carer’s allowance doesn’t go very far.’
‘I suppose not,’ she said disinterestedly. ‘But go on, you walked into Harry’s office and then…?’
‘He was sticking labels onto bottles, which seemed odd, but he explained that sometimes they got damaged and then he had to replace them.’
‘And you believed that?’ she asked pityingly. ‘You think it’s that easy to get hold of extra labels?’
‘Not when I’d thought about it a bit, especially since it was the most expensive champagne we stocked. Most of what we sell isn’t actually champagne, it’s Prosecco, but that’s made clear on the website.’
‘So, did you say anything to him at the time?’
I nodded. ‘When I was going home and he came out to lock up after me, I told him I’d realised he was fraudulently passing off cheap booze as expensive stuff. He said his supplier had forgotten to label one batch and he’d had to do it himself, but he was very sorry I’d seen it—’
‘I bet he was!’ she interrupted.
‘And he’d only started the scam when the firm was going through a rocky patch,’ I finished.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Well, call me naïve, but when he swore he was going to stop that very night, I believed him,’ I said defensively. ‘He was very contrite so in the end I said I wouldn’t tell anyone if he really did mean it.’
‘That was so wrong of you,’ Kate said censoriously. ‘I would have got my coat and gone straight to the police the moment I realised what was happening. Not that I’d have been doing a packing job at a factory anyway,’ she added, unable to refrain from another dig.
‘There’s nothing to sneer at in doing any honest job,’ I said.
‘It didn’t exactly turn out to be an honest job, though, did it? And I assume he didn’t keep his word about stopping the fraud, either. You were very credulous to think he would.’
‘I wanted to believe him. In the last couple of years when Mum was so ill, he was really good to me, letting me work as and when I could, then offering me a permanent job on the afternoon shift after she died. It wasn’t like I was qualified for anything else.’
As Mum fell further and further into the grip of aggressive multiple sclerosis I’d missed a lot of school and though I’d started a graphic design degree course, I’d had to drop out of it after only a year. Of course, I didn’t begrudge a moment of the time I spent with Mum, but after she’d gone I was left with no money, qualifications or even a home, since the specially adapted council bungal
ow was urgently needed for someone else.
So I’d gratefully accepted Harry’s offer and found a tiny but cheap flat over the garage attached to Jeremy’s house, which was how we’d met.
At first he hadn’t been that keen on Pyewacket, my cat, but after a while he became very keen on me, so they learned to tolerate each other…just as I learned to accept Jeremy’s long-standing close friendship with Kate and her husband, Luke, who not only seemed joined at the hip, but all taught at the same huge, sprawling comprehensive school. Well, I say friendship, but it was more a trio of two adorers and Kate, who they think is wonderful, though I have no idea why…
‘When did you realise he hadn’t stopped the fraud?’ asked Kate, jerking me out of my reverie.
‘Only recently. He’d made sure I’d seen him carrying crates of what looked like the real thing into the storeroom, but one day when I was in a smart wine merchant’s shop with Jeremy they had a bottle of it – and it looked nothing at all like the ones I’d been packing. Last night I told Harry I knew.’
I shivered slightly because I’d seen a side to jovial, easygoing Harry that I hadn’t even suspected existed.
‘He threatened me and said if I went to the police he’d tell them it had all been my idea – and since I was the one who worked the extra shifts packing the special orders, I was implicated anyway.’
‘It certainly wouldn’t look good,’ Kate agreed helpfully.
‘But it’s his company and I’m just a warehouse packer, doing a bit of overtime. I told him they wouldn’t believe him but he said they would when he explained that we’d been having an affair and I’d reported the fraud out of spite because he’d ended it.’
‘Gosh, it’s like some low-life soap series! But it serves you right for not having gone to the police as soon as you found out,’ she said righteously. ‘That’s what I would have done.’
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ I said. ‘In the end I told him I wouldn’t shop him, but gave him a month’s notice and said I wasn’t doing any more overtime. He said he didn’t care, so long as I kept my mouth shut.’
A Vintage Christmas Page 3