Lottie thought of Nana’s Christmas wish. ‘But don’t you think we should all have Christmas at the manor?’ Her voice had taken on a desperate tone.
‘It might be sold by then,’ said her mother. ‘Won’t it, Daniel?’
‘Sadly not that quick,’ said Daniel. He turned back to Nicola. ‘We went to Australia this summer. That was meant to be our big holiday.’
Nicola gave a tinny laugh. ‘It’s not like we can’t afford it, Daniel.’ She slapped him on the arm and laughed, and from the wince he gave, Lottie guessed she had used some force. Nicola pulled Daniel to one side and a hushed but animated discussion continued. Angie was checking her phone. Lottie felt like a kite caught in a tree; no longer anchored, but also not ready to fly freely.
Lottie’s brother sidled over to her, looking his usual laid-back self. Zach had always been far more easy-going than her. He gave her a warm hug. ‘Lovely service,’ he said, his eyes full of sadness.
‘Yes,’ said Lottie, with a nod.
‘Although,’ he smirked, ‘the bagpipe player was a bit of a surprise.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lottie. Uncle Bernard had assured her it was what Nana would have wanted, so she’d gone along with it. She’d had second thoughts when she’d heard what sounded like a hyena having a thistle rammed up its bum echoing through the church. It was certainly something they’d all remember for quite some time – the ringing sensation in their ears would see to that.
‘It’s my first funeral since …’ His voice tailed off, and Lottie gave his arm a squeeze. She thought time was meant to heal, was meant to help you cope with the harshness of the past but in this case, she was pretty sure she felt a tiny bit worse each time she saw Zach. But then that was probably guilt, rather than anything else.
‘You all right?’ Zach asked, doing up his coat.
‘Not really, no. What are you doing for Christmas?’ Lottie pulled her brother to one side.
He pushed his bottom lip out. ‘I guess it’ll be just me and Jessie.’ Lottie’s niece, Jessie, was six years old and the apple of her Daddy’s eye. Lottie thought the world of her too. She’d spent every Christmas with her since she’d been born, thanks to Nana’s three-line whip. Another pang of loss gripped her.
‘And will you be joined by …?’ She left a pause where Zach’s girlfriend’s name should be. It wasn’t that Zach had lots of girlfriends, he was thankfully not like their mother, it was more that he rarely introduced them to the family, so they were just a name. ‘… Emma?’ she ventured.
‘Emily,’ he corrected. ‘She’ll probably spend it with her folks.’
‘Yes, and that’s exactly what we should be doing.’ This is it, thought Lottie, glancing past Zach. This is the very last time all my family will be together until someone else dies or my mother gets remarried again. Unless I do something about it.
What would Nana say? she wondered. The answer came to her almost instantly. Be brave. Stand up for what you believe in.
Lottie reached past Zach and picked up an empty glass and a fork which someone had abandoned next to some pork pie. Lottie held up the glass and tapped it firmly with the fork. The noise ebbed away as everyone turned to stare at her. Her heart beat a little faster and she swallowed hard.
‘I just wanted to say … Um, thank you all for coming.’ The expressions softened and some of the guests smiled at her. Great Uncle Bernard waved his glass, and Lottie was surprised to see he was still awake. ‘I’m sure you’ll agree that we’ve given Nana Rose a good send off, and one she would approve of. She would have been pleased to see all of you here and she would have been especially delighted at having all of her family together.’ There were nods of agreement. ‘So thanks again. Safe journeys home – and could I have all the family join me in the snug, please.’
‘We really need to go,’ said Nicola, looking irritated again, but Lottie ignored her.
‘Well done, darling; you did quite well for someone who’s not really a public speaker,’ her mother chimed in. Lottie ignored the barbed comment and ushered her into the snug.
When everyone was assembled, she clapped her hands and took in a lungful of air. ‘Nana has arranged Christmas at Henbourne Manor this year, like she does every year. Everything is planned, the food is ordered, the decorations are down from the loft, she’s even got the Christmas tree. In a few weeks the home she treasured will likely be sold and that will be it.’ Lottie found she was waving her hands about as she spoke. ‘No more family Christmases to share and remember. I think we should have a big family Christmas at Henbourne Manor, one last time. For Nana – like she would have wanted. What do you all say?’ There was a long pause. Lottie bit her lip while she waited.
‘That’s all very lovely, but I think we’ve had quite enough Christmases to remember, thank you,’ said Nicola. ‘We’ll likely be in the Caribbean enjoying five-star all-inclusive,’ she added, to nobody in particular.
‘It’s all paid for, and I’ll cook,’ said Lottie, trying hard not to sound as desperate as she felt. She searched their faces for an ally.
Uncle Daniel’s head jolted up. ‘Actually, I think Lottie has a good point. Mum was expecting us all to come, so I doubt any of us have made alternative arrangements. And who doesn’t like a free Christmas?’ Lottie had appealed to his thrifty side. Nicola was looking like she might be about to peck him to pieces as he turned his attention to her. ‘All the best five-star resorts will already be booked up.’ Nicola appeared to contemplate this information.
‘I think that’s a lovely idea,’ said Zach. He’d always been supportive of his little sister. ‘I’m in.’ He turned to Angie. ‘Mum, you’ll join us and spend Christmas with your granddaughter?’
Angie’s cheek twitched. ‘As long as you both guarantee that I don’t have to cook. And that nobody refers to me as a grandmother.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Lottie. She knew she was guilty of teasing her mother about being a grandparent. She could probably manage not to mention it for a few days if she really had to.
‘I didn’t think we’d be doing anything else, Button,’ said Great Uncle Bernard, wheeling himself over, leaving a trail of people hopping in his wake.
‘Thanks, Uncle Bernie,’ said Lottie, giving him a wink. ‘We’re all agreed then?’ Lottie asked, wanting to seal the deal. ‘One last family Christmas at Henbourne Manor.’
Chapter Two
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve dawned and Lottie pulled on her tatty old dressing gown and slid her feet into her battered Star Wars slippers, silently hoping Santa might bring her some replacements. She padded down to the kitchen, yawning as she went. She scanned the room for any signs of the Duchess, but all was quiet. The Duchess was Nana’s aptly named cat. She was a seal-point Persian from a long pedigree line and seemed well aware of her heritage. She had been out of sorts since Nana died, which Lottie could relate to.
Lottie unbolted the back door. ‘Duchess!’ she yelled into the gardens, and quickly shut the door again as an icy draught whipped around her. The Duchess had her own door, as was befitting her status, but it was a cat flap via the garages and the utility room. This, it appeared, was not as the cat would have liked, so she was frequently to be heard pawing at the back door demanding a member of her staff promptly open it.
Lottie wrapped the dressing gown more tightly around her, rubbed at a chocolate smudge on the front and flicked the switch on the kettle. She slumped onto one of the many kitchen chairs and felt the cool wood touch her calves. The kitchen was vast, draughty and old, like the rest of the manor house, but it was home to Lottie.
It was the house her mother had returned to, with her and Zach in tow, every time she’d had another relationship slide spectacularly down the drain (as they so often did). Angie would pack up, often in the dead of night, throwing clothes into much-used suitcases and drag the children back to Henbourne on the Hill to seek solace and a place to lick her wounds. Nana always welcomed the children, but Lottie had slowly become aware of h
ow Nana appeared to admonish her mother a little more strongly each time she returned.
When Zach went off to university at eighteen, and Angie was set on following her latest beau to France, Nana had suggested that Lottie move in with her to give her some stability while she studied for her exams. The next few years had firmly cemented Henbourne Manor as Lottie’s home.
She hated the comparison, but like her mother she, too, had returned there each time a relationship had failed, the latest being a real low point in her life. Her relationship with Anthony had been crumbling for a while, but it had spectacularly imploded when she’d called into his office to surprise him with fish and chips and Prosecco when he was, yet again, working late. But it was Lottie who got the surprise when she found him in flagrante with some woman in full lawyer wig and gown. She had momentarily thought it was a strippagram before the harsh realisation had struck her and she’d dropped her chips.
Finding out that Anthony was a rat had hurt her, but her trusting heart had been damaged far worse a long time ago and she really didn’t have time for moping. It was Christmas Eve and she had too many other things to think about. She made herself a pot of tea using a scoop of loose tea – as Nana had always done – and settled herself down with the back of an old envelope to make a list. She felt like she’d been getting ready for Christmas for days, but there was still so much to do. Her hasty invitation at the wake was coming back to sink its teeth into her backside.
When the list covered both sides of the old envelope, she started to panic. There was just her, and she had – she checked the clock – five hours until they started arriving. A creak upstairs reminded her that she wasn’t completely on her own; there was Great Uncle Bernard, her late grandfather’s brother, but he relied on his wheelchair more often than not these days so she didn’t hold out much hope of any assistance there. She wandered through to the utility room, feeling the temperature drop, and opened the washing machine. She’d hang this lot out, have a shower and then tackle the biggest task on the list – making up all the beds for the umpteen family members who would be descending.
Lottie slid her feet into Nana’s old wellies. It wasn’t the most fashionable of looks, but there weren’t any neighbours for a mile so it was fine. She braved the bitterly cold weather, juggling the full laundry basket with the door whilst the wind whipped up the old dressing gown. It had been chucking it down with rain all night and the ground was soggy underfoot. It was a bit of a march round to the side garden where the washing line and prop were. She noticed the old gate at the bottom was swinging open and made a mental note to add it to her growing to-do list. She hung up the washing as fast as she could; she wanted to spend as little time as possible with Great Uncle Bernard’s smalls. A muffled yowl was carried on the wind and she paused to listen, a very large pair of Bernard’s greying pants in her hands.
‘Duchess?’ she called, and was surprised to hear a bark in reply. The old gate banged back against the wall. She turned to see the Duchess come charging into the garden, closely followed by a small scruffy dog. Lottie had to think quickly. Either run and open the back door for the cat and risk falling over on the wet ground, or scoop her up in Great Uncle Bernard’s pants – they were certainly big enough for the job. Lottie opened the pants wide and stepped into the cat’s path. Duchess was taken unawares and was quickly wrapped in the pants as the small brown dog charged towards them. Lottie was expecting it to come to a halt, but it didn’t. It took a leap and tried to join the Duchess in Lottie’s arms.
‘Whoa!’ she yelled, as the dog effectively drop kicked her in the stomach, sending her toppling backwards to land with an audible squelch. She hung on to the cat, keen to protect her from the monstrous canine who was now jumping up and down on Lottie like she was a trampoline. ‘Shoo!’ she said as she writhed about in the mud. The Duchess began to yowl her protest at an ear-bleeding pitch.
‘Are you all right?’ asked a man’s voice above her. For a second it reminded her of someone.
‘Fine. Thanks,’ she said automatically, although she blatantly wasn’t – lying there covered in mud, with her Grumpy Cat pyjamas on display and an even grumpier cat hissing in her arms. She scrabbled onto an elbow to get a look at the intruder, but he had his hood up and was already racing after the muddy little dog as it darted back down the garden.
‘Sorry!’ yelled the man, as he and the dog disappeared.
‘Well really,’ said Lottie, quite put out. The Duchess emitted a low growl of agreement.
After a hot shower, things looked a little better. She had even managed to bath the Duchess, who was used to the procedure – and unlike most cats, tolerated it – and who was now enjoying a light blow-dry on Lottie’s bed. Lottie switched off the hair dryer and gave the fluffy cat a stroke. ‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘And that’s another thing I can tick off my list.’ The cat glared at Lottie with her bright blue eyes. ‘No, pamper time is over. I have work to do.’ The Duchess swished her tail in reply. ‘If you could avoid being chased by dirty little dogs that would be a help.’
Lottie went on to her next task. She popped a little blue cleaning block in the toilet and gave the bathroom a once-over. It looked fine; no sign of muddy cat anywhere.
Lottie spent the next hour making beds up as fast as was humanly possible. There was a shortage of duvets, but they had plenty of blankets – you had to in a draughty house like Henbourne Manor. It would be first come, first served on the bedroom front. Lottie had left Nana’s room untouched – she couldn’t bear to think of someone else sleeping in there just yet – but with five other bedrooms and a box room that wasn’t an issue.
When she was happy with the upstairs, she headed to the kitchen. She pulled out Nana’s cookbook and turned the pages reverently. This was the book that Nana always referred to. It was filled with handwritten notes and passed-down recipes, including one that Nana swore blind had been smuggled out of occupied France during the First World War. Lottie ran her fingers over her grandmother’s words and felt a tear trickle down her cheek. Nana was gone, and she was finding it hard; the silliest things could set her off. She straightened her shoulders and tried to pull herself together, thumbing through until she found Nana’s trusted tomato soup recipe. It was one she’d made with Nana before, so it wasn’t entirely new to her. And most importantly, Lottie knew it was easy to make.
Today’s menu was soup, spaghetti Bolognese and cheese and biscuits. She was keen to keep it simple, given that everyone would be expecting the works tomorrow. Lottie tried hard not to think too much about it. She wasn’t known for her domesticity and had never cooked on this scale before. She was up for the challenge and she wanted this to be as much like one of Nana’s Christmases as it possibly could be, but that was going to be no mean feat.
She followed the soup recipe and was pleasantly surprised at the results. She put the large saucepan to one side. It would be easy to reheat later.
‘Hello, Lottie?’ came the accented voice of Great Uncle Bernard’s carer. Dayea was a lovely Filipina lady who did far more for the old man than she was paid for. Lottie got the feeling she was quite fond of him.
‘In the kitchen!’ called back Lottie.
‘I brought you lumpia,’ she said, greeting Lottie with a warm hug and a large Tupperware box.
Lumpia sounded to Lottie like something you might catch abroad, but the spring-roll-like objects Dayea was pointing to in the box smelled divine.
‘Thank you, Dayea, that is kind of you.’ Lottie decided she might try a couple soon, as thanks to the falling-in-the-mud incident she’d skipped breakfast. Her stomach had been rumbling for a while.
They heard the stairlift start up and Dayea dashed off to help Bernard. Lottie finished mopping the kitchen floor and was hanging up the squeegee when she heard the Duchess scrabbling at the back door. She glanced up at the window: it was raining again; the cat would be soaked, as would the washing. Lottie eyed her just-washed floor. She tiptoed across it and opened the back door. In shot
the Duchess, and she wasn’t alone – the scruffy little brown dog was hot on her heels.
‘Nooooo!’ yelled Lottie as the cat dived from surface to surface like a Ninja Warrior contestant. The dog skidded on muddy paws, careering around the kitchen like a let-go balloon. She hung on to the door as the wind and rain buffeted it about. If she shut it, the dog had no escape route but, while she kept it open, she was getting soaked. ‘Sod it,’ she said, shutting the door and skidding after the dog. There followed a game of high-speed chase where Lottie shooed the dog from room to room, mentally calculating how much cleaning would be needed, until she finally had the thing cornered back in the kitchen.
She took a moment to get her breath back. ‘Right, now don’t bite me. Okay?’
The dog was panting after all the chasing about, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He watched her with big brown eyes. As Lottie got closer, she could see he was literally covered in mud, apart from a white patch on his neck, which was splattered but not completely coated like the rest of him. ‘Now, listen,’ she said, in what she hoped was a calming voice. ‘I’m going to pick you up. You’re not going to bite me because I’m only going to put you outside. Got it?’ She nodded and the dog tilted its head on one side. Lottie reached out a hand for the dog to sniff and he began to lick her fingers. She smiled at the gesture. As she went to pick him up, the back door swung open and the howling gale brought in a man in a dark hooded coat.
‘Argh!’ yelled Lottie in fright, terrifying the dog, who clattered past her into the utility room. Lottie stood up straight. ‘You can’t just go letting yourself in,’ she said as forcefully as she could, scanning the room for a makeshift weapon. ‘You can take your filthy mutt and …’
The man pulled off his hood and shook his damp hair. Lottie would have fallen backwards if the kitchen table hadn’t been there for her to slump against. ‘Joe?’ She gasped his name. She could barely believe her eyes. Here was the man she truly thought she would never see again. It was a sucker punch to her stomach.
One Family Christmas: The perfect, cosy, heart-warming read to curl up with this winter Page 2