‘I know,’ Daisy said, even though she hadn’t until he said. It was nice to know now, though.
‘I don’t suppose Mrs Templeton offered to take him in if she sees him again?’
‘She’s going to call the pound.’ Daisy dropped her head to her hands. ‘I think I might just have made things even worse. And I wasn’t sure that was physically possible.’
‘Oh, things can always be worse,’ Oliver said, unhelpfully, as Lara started to wail, as if on cue.
‘Apparently so,’ Daisy agreed, taking the baby from him. ‘But one thing is certain. We need to get home. As soon as possible.’
Claude would never forgive them if they didn’t. If he was even still there when they made it back.
Her new outdoor lights wouldn’t arrive until the next morning, and Holly didn’t want to put the icicles back up before they came in case Mrs Templeton came over to complain again. Far better to spring the whole display on her at once, Holly had decided. But she did want to decorate something, and with the tree already up, and every room made suitably festive, that only left Perdita.
Perdita was not enjoying the experience, Holly could tell.
Finally, once she’d wrestled the cat into her Christmas jumper, set a tiny Santa hat on her head, and taken a few photos for her blog, Holly gave up.
‘Oh, okay. Go find a nice warm radiator to curl up on, then,’ Holly said, and Perdita took her chance at escape, the Santa hat toppling off as she darted up the stairs.
Holly looked around at her living room. The tree was lit with beautiful bright white lights, and decorated in a perfect red and white colour scheme. A green garland rested on the mantlepiece, and a cinnamon-scented candle burned on the side table. She had a glass of mulled wine, and Christmas music playing through the telly. What else could she possibly need?
She sighed. She needed something to do. Something to make her feel useful, and wanted and part of something. Something to make her feel less alone.
Something to distract her from the fact that she’d spent most of this year expecting to be preparing for her wedding tomorrow.
She couldn’t help but think about it. Even knowing she was well rid of Sebastian, she couldn’t help but visualise her wedding dress hanging on the back of the door: snowy white lace and a beautiful chiffon skirt, adorned with tiny diamond-like jewels that sparkled in the candlelight. She’d have been sipping prosecco with her friends, her mother and Sebastian’s sisters. Her engagement ring would still be heavy on her left hand, and she’d be feeling relaxed from the pampering day that Sebastian would have given her as a treat.
They’d probably have been doing all the last tiny touches tonight – tying ribbons on the handmade menus and the Order of Service handout she’d designed, finishing off the individual favours she’d made. It would all have been personal and crafty and perfect – and what world was she living in, exactly?
Holly took another swig of mulled wine, and forced herself to face reality.
Sebastian would have insisted on ordering all the wedding stationery and favours and stuff from John Lewis, and he’d never have thought to book her a pampering day in a million years. Her mother would be sick with nerves, Sebastian’s sisters would never have spent the evening here, and she didn’t even like prosecco all that much.
Most importantly, she’d have been making a huge mistake.
With Sebastian out of her life, she got to be herself again. To focus on the things she loved – her craft business, Christmas, Perdita.
And she got to do it all alone.
Holly sighed. At least there was the prospect of seeing Jack tomorrow, even if it was only because he wanted to surprise the lady next door with a Christmas treat. She had to keep that in mind when he was there, and not let herself get distracted by his lovely arms, or his nice smile, or those eyes …
No. She was not going to spend the evening fantasising about the postman. That was simply a level of pathetic-ness she was not willing to stoop to.
But she needed to do something to take her mind off the fact that the only guy she’d had the slightest spark with since Sebastian left had told her flat out that he was leaving soon. At least he’d had the decency to give her fair warning, before she got invested. It was more than Sebastian had done.
Restless, Holly got to her feet and moved across the room, switching the song playing to something more upbeat and less slow and smoochy Christmas. She needed excitement. Energy. Action.
Maybe she could do some preparation for Kathleen’s Christmas surprise. Show Jack that she was involved for the right reasons too – not just because she wanted to flirt with him. That had to be a good start, right? But what? The decorations were already ordered, it was too late to go food shopping, she’d already made enough bunting and napkins and table cloths to host three Christmases and … The cake!
Dashing out of the lounge, Holly yanked open the under stairs cupboard and pulled out the tin she’d hidden away at the bottom of a box two months ago, only pulling it out periodically to top it up with brandy. How could she have forgotten the Christmas cake? She’d made it in a fit of despair after Sebastian had left, and then put it away and not given it another thought. If she hadn’t been desperate for distraction tonight, she might not have remembered to decorate it at all!
Taking the tin through to the kitchen she cleared a space for it on the table and set it out. It smelled heavenly, and she had so many ideas already about decorations. The marzipan and icing were all ready and waiting, too.
Holly frowned. The only thing was, it didn’t look so big, now. Understandably; when she’d made it, she’d assumed she’d be alone for Christmas. Other than the possible friend or two popping by there was no one else to eat it anyway. But now … it looked sort of sad and small. There was probably plenty for her and Jack and Kathleen, though. And Claude, if he came back.
But what if some of the other people on the street stopped by? Or maybe a colleague from school might pop in for coffee, sometime between Christmas and New Year. She’d need extra cake then, right?
It was too late to make another fruit cake. But an extra tier of a plain sponge cake wouldn’t take very long. And maybe a chocolate tier too, just in case. And obviously some extra decorations to go with it …
Suddenly Holly’s mind spun with all the possibilities, and she reached for her apron without even thinking.
Maybe Jack wasn’t staying, and maybe spending Christmas with the postman and the neighbour she’d only exchanged a few words with in almost a year was the official definition of pathetic. It didn’t matter.
This was her Christmas – her first Christmas in her new home, her first Christmas without Sebastian.
And she was going to make it truly epic.
Starting with cake.
On Maple Drive, every house was lit except my own. Inside each of those other houses, behind those closed curtains, I knew there would be Christmas trees and fairy lights and probably gingerbread.
But out here, there was only cold and loneliness.
I stumbled to the end of the street, and stared up at the garden there. In the middle of the lawn was a low wooden table, beside a larger one that looked like a tiny house on a stick. Bird tables, I realised. Humans left food for the birds sometimes, didn’t they? I’d seen Daisy throw out old crusts onto the grass at our house for the sparrows, sometimes.
Cat food hadn’t been all that different from dog food, but I suspected that bird food might be a different matter altogether.
Still, intrepid adventurers had to take food where they could find it, right?
Sniffing, I approached the lower table, hoping there might be some tasty treats there to try. Maybe birds liked gingerbread too. But all I found was some seeds and nuts, and a few small scraps of bread. I snuffled unhappily, then tried them anyway.
Not good. Not good at all.
‘What are you doing, you hideous creature?’ The screeching voice came from the doorstep. I glanced up and saw Mrs Templeton standing
in the open door, waving a fist at me.
This was worse than bird food.
Turning tail, I raced next door, back into my own, familiar garden. At least no one could find me there. It was my home.
‘I’m calling the pound!’ Mrs Templeton cried behind me, and I tried to run faster, desperate to get away, but my little legs could only move so fast.
Fortunately, it was still faster than Mrs Templeton.
I collapsed a few moments later at the foot of the tree holding Jay’s tree house, and let out a long, sad wail.
Why wouldn’t they come home? Where were they? What was so wonderful about France, ferry and chateau that they had to stay away and leave me here alone?
‘You really are a mess, aren’t you?’ Perdita sprang lightly from the treehouse down to the lower branches, then to the ground in front of me.
‘At least I don’t have to wear a Christmas jumper,’ I growled back.
Perdita swung her tail lazily from side to side. ‘At least my owner cares enough to buy me one. Where are yours again? Oh yes, gone away. Without you.’
‘Because I was chasing you!’ I knew they wouldn’t have left me behind otherwise. Would they?
‘Are you sure that’s the only reason? Then why haven’t they come back?’ She shook her head, her bright green eyes shining in the night. ‘Face it, dog. Your family don’t want you any more. You are officially an abandoned dog.’
No. No, I wouldn’t believe it. ‘Holly fed me. Jack was looking for me. I have people who want me.’
‘But you’re hiding from them out here. Why is that again?’ Perdita asked. ‘Let me guess … they wanted to send you to the pound.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘I heard them talking too.’ She gave me a long steady look. ‘Maybe you should go. At least they might give you a decent last meal there.’
I lunged forward, putting all my weight and force into my muscles to shock her, swiping out with one paw. She darted back out of the way with a yowl, but I got close enough to know she was scared. ‘Get out of my garden,’ I barked. ‘And don’t come back.’
She dashed away, scaling the fence in a moment. Pausing on the top, she turned back and hissed down at me. ‘You mark my words. It won’t be your garden for very long.’
‘You’re wrong,’ I said, but she was already gone, down over the fence and away to her own home, and Holly, and warmth and food.
I huddled down at the base of the tree and tried to get warm. ‘You’re wrong,’ I muttered to myself again. ‘They’re coming back for me.’
I just wished I could believe my own words.
Outside, the world at night was very different to my cosy bed inside number 11 Maple Drive.
As I huddled under the tree in the back garden, my paws around my head, I tried to sleep, to rest, but I couldn’t.
First, it was the noises keeping me awake. Strange, unfamiliar noises that I never heard during the day. Hoots and snaps and whistles and even a strange bark, that didn’t sound like any dog I’d ever met.
Then my stomach started to rumble.
Normally, inside, there’d be a little something in my bowl for me to snack on, just in case this happened. Oliver always made sure of it before he went to bed – even though I’d heard Daisy tell him not to, that I ate plenty during the day. (Surely, if I ate plenty during the day I wouldn’t be hungry during the night, right?) But Oliver wasn’t there. None of them were.
And I was outside.
Even Perdita had disappeared inside for the night. I thought about sneaking back in through her cat flap, but the fear of Holly finding me and calling the pound was too great. So instead, I stayed huddled at the base of Jay’s treehouse, wishing my family would come home.
It was the longest night ever.
Eventually, Jay and the twins were asleep, and even Bella was curled up with her Kindle in her room.
‘It’s kind of cool here, I suppose,’ Bella had said doubtfully when Daisy stopped by to tuck her in, even though she was fourteen and convinced she didn’t need it. ‘Dusty, but cool.’
‘I suppose.’ Daisy had perched on the end of her bed. ‘But you’d rather be home for Christmas, wouldn’t you?’
Bella had given her best ‘how did you survive so long being this dumb’ look and said, ‘Well, yeah.’
Which was pretty much how Daisy felt about the situation too. And that feeling only grew when her father took her on a tour of the chateau.
‘And down here, we have the wine cellar! Mind the steps, though, there’s a few missing.’
‘Of course there are,’ Daisy muttered, as she followed him into the cellar, testing each step before she put any weight on it. ‘Dad, do you really think this chateau is the best place for you? I mean, at your time of life?’
‘Careful, Daisy. That could almost count as being ageist.’ Dad pulled a filthy light pull and a bare bulb lit up above them. ‘Now, where did I put that nice bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape? Seems appropriate, no?’
‘Very. And I’m not being ageist.’ Just realistic. ‘This place would be a huge challenge for anybody. It could take decades to get it into shape.’
‘Are you implying we don’t have decades left?’
Daisy sighed, and bit back on the impulse to remind her dad that he was already sixty-nine and had had two heart attacks in the last five years. ‘I hope you have much, much longer, Dad, you know that. I’m just not sure why you’d want to spend them over here, so far from your family, trying to keep this place from falling down around your ears.’
‘But, darling, don’t you think it’s romantic?’ her mum asked, from halfway down the stairs behind her. Great. One of them she might have been able to reason with. But both of them … impossible. It was like the crazy fed off each other. And where was Oliver? Why wasn’t he helping her with this conversation?
Probably because his parents were perfectly ordinary pensioners, and very happy with their semi in the suburbs. He never had known how to deal with her parents. Of course, neither had she, really. If she had, maybe she could have stopped this crazy plan before it got as far as needing passports to visit. And possibly hard hats.
‘Romantic?’ Daisy asked, thinking about the four poster bed upstairs. ‘I suppose it has its charms, but really …’
‘Not the building! The adventure!’ Mum skipped down the steps like a woman half Daisy’s age, avoiding the missing step without a problem. ‘That’s what we wanted! A big project for me and your dad to take on together. To bring us closer, now we’re both retired.’
Ah. Suddenly this was all starting to make more sense. ‘To bring you closer together?’ she asked, sceptically. ‘Or was it more because you didn’t know what to do with yourselves once you were both rattling around at home together?’
Her parents exchanged a look, and Daisy knew she’d hit the nail on the proverbial head. ‘You were bored, weren’t you?’ she guessed. ‘You were bored, and tetchy, and bickering, and you couldn’t just take up ballroom dancing like everyone else’s parents.’
‘Your father has two left feet,’ Mum pointed out. ‘Besides, this is much more exciting.’
Daisy leant against the wall of the wine cellar and tried to figure out how her life had come to this. As if wrangling four children wasn’t enough, now she had to do it for her parents as well.
‘Although, I have to admit, there is rather more work involved than the advertisement led us to believe,’ Dad said.
‘Let me guess. You found an advert for a real, French chateau in the back of one of the Sunday papers, right? What did it say? In need of some refurbishment?’
Mum sniffed. ‘It said – perfectly accurately, you have to admit – that it was ripe and ready for some dedicated couple to put their stamp on it.’
‘That it is,’ Daisy conceded. ‘So they didn’t mention the crumbling plaster or the fact that the ceiling is missing in the second sitting room?’
‘Not exactly,’ Dad said. ‘No. It didn’t mention the
collared doves that keep flying down through the chimney in the kitchen, either.’
‘Or the bats.’ Daisy shuddered.
‘But it was a bargain,’ Mum argued. ‘Really, Daisy, they were practically giving it away.’
‘I can’t imagine why.’ Probably the previous owners just wanted to get out before the whole place collapsed around their ears.
Time to try reason and logic. Admittedly, they’d never worked with her parents before, but there was a first time for everything. ‘Look, we’re going to have to go back for Claude tomorrow, as long as we can get space on the ferry. Why don’t you come with us? We can all have Christmas together at Maple Drive. Where we’re less likely to be brained by falling battlements.’
‘Daisy,’ Dad said sternly.
‘Did I say that last part out loud? Sorry. It’s been a very long day.’ She tried to smile encouragingly. ‘All I’m saying is, if things aren’t quite ready here for guests, that’s fine. We need to head home anyway. And you’re very welcome to join us.’
There was silence as her parents had one of those silent conversations involving hand gestures and facial movements that they’d always done whenever they were pretending not to argue in front of her when she was a child. God, she did that with Oliver now, didn’t she? She really was turning into her mother. Except her mother had only had one child to deal with. That was practically cheating.
‘Well, maybe,’ Mum said, eventually. ‘We’ll think about it.’
‘And see if the oven blows again next time we try to use it,’ Dad added.
‘That might be the deciding factor,’ Mum admitted.
‘That or one of those blasted doves pooing on my head again,’ Dad grumbled.
‘Great,’ Daisy said, wishing she felt brighter about it than she did. ‘I’ll call the ferry company.’
All she needed now was six places – and two baby spaces – for the only ferry home on Christmas Eve. The fully booked only ferry home.
How hard could that be?
‘Season of miracles,’ she muttered under her breath, as she climbed back out of the cellar, almost falling through the gap in the stairs. ‘And, Dad? Bring the wine.’
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