Christmas at Strand House

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Thank you,’ Janey said. It felt good, what Suzy was saying. ‘I know you didn’t.’

  ‘So where are you? I’m guessing the seaside if there are gulls?’

  ‘You guess right,’ Janey said.

  As if it understood its name a gull came and landed on the step just yards from her. Looking for scraps probably. It began pecking at shells, turning some over, flicking its head from side to side with one in its beak. How magnificent they were up close, gulls. How sleek. Saffron-coloured eyes. Janey had exactly the shade in the box of watercolours Bobbie had bought her. She’d try a bird study later.

  ‘So where? Do you want Gary to come and fetch you? He said last night that he will. You can come here …’

  ‘No. No need for that. I think I’ve probably already spoiled your Christmas Day. I wouldn’t want the children to have their dad disappear when they’re opening their presents or something. And I can’t say where I am. Not yet.’

  Janey heard her sister sigh loudly on the end of the phone. Then she heard a long intake of breath.

  ‘Janey? I need to say something.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘We should be having this conversation face-to-face not over the phone with me sitting in my dressing gown on the back doorstep so no one can hear me, but I’m really sorry I’ve not been a better support to you. Over Stuart. I suppose it was that not-wanting-to-get-involved thing most of us do, and then also wanting you to sort it for yourself rather than have someone sort it for you which is always the best way. You’ve always been so good to me helping out and everything.’

  ‘Because I wanted to,’ Janey told her. With her phone to one ear she was doing quick sketches, with her free hand, of the gull in all its different stances as it pecked away. ‘Not because I felt I had to.’

  Janey heard a little sob on the other end of the phone. And then Suzy gulped.

  ‘It’s just,’ Suzy said, ‘I never realised how awful it must have been for you with Stuart until we started getting his terrible phone calls when you went missing. If he’s been saying half the things to you he’s been saying to Gary and me, then it makes me shudder to think of you standing there listening to it. And … he’s hit you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Many times,’ Janey said.

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘Abuse victims rarely do,’ Janey said.

  ‘And often it’s too late for them,’ Suzy said. ‘Oh, God, Janey, I’m so glad you’ve got out.’

  ‘Me too,’ Janey said.

  ‘Does Mum know?’

  ‘I haven’t told her. Stuart might have found her number and called her, but let’s just say she’s not been in touch.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he hasn’t though, does it?’ Suzy said.

  ‘No.’ Janey couldn’t remember the last time her mother had been in touch. The last she’d heard she’d been holed up in some Spanish resort with yet another rich man funding her. ‘I’m still not expecting her to call any time soon.’

  ‘Mothers, eh?’ Suzy said. ‘Who’d have ‘em!’

  She was making a joke of it but Janey knew Suzy was probably more hurt than she was by their mother’s indifference. The children needed a grandma in their lives. Well, Janey thought so.

  In the background Janey could hear one of Suzy’s children calling her.

  ‘Sounds like you’re wanted!’ she laughed.

  ‘Seems so. Anyway, I’m so glad you rang. I’ve been awake all night thinking what a complete shit I was reacting the way I did yesterday.’

  ‘Forget it, Suze,’ Janey said. ‘And you’d better go and begin the day. Happy Christmas. I’ll ring you to let you know what my plans are after tomorrow. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. Happy Christmas, Janey. I hope it will be. Happy. And that you’ve got kind and supportive people around you.’

  ‘I have. The best. Now go.’

  ‘Love you,’ Suzy said.

  ‘Back to you,’ Janey said, and then Suzy killed the call.

  When was the last time they’d said those words to one another? Possibly never because Janey couldn’t remember saying them herself. Or hearing them. Maybe it took a crisis for people to open their minds to what was in their hearts.

  A lone tear escaped and slithered down Janey’s cheek. She let it roll all the way to beside her ear and down under her chin.

  Janey slid her phone back in the pocket of her coat and carried on sketching until she began to feel chilled. Half an hour? An hour? The sky was quite light now and there were more early morning dog walkers on the beach, throwing balls for their pets, some of them even running into the sea to fetch them.

  ‘I might get one of you,’ Janey said as a woman with three retrievers tried to protect herself from her dogs’ frantic shaking of their fur as they came back to her on the beach.

  A retriever. Something to snuggle into. Something to make her go out and face the world every day, be part of it, when she no longer had Lissy, and Bobbie, and Xander around. Stuart had refused to even discuss having a pet.

  ‘Well, I don’t have to ask him now, do I?’ Janey said. ‘About anything.’

  She stood up and turned back towards the road that Strand House was in. It was bathed in the soft dawn light, like a candle glow.

  She couldn’t wait to be back there now and ran up the road.

  Chapter 24

  Lissy

  Lissy’s Christmas Day plan was running like clockwork. That was the thing about being an accountant – she was good with numbers, whatever form those numbers took.

  She’d made croissants for everyone’s breakfast. They were on a baking tray under a tea-towel having their second prove. As soon as everyone was up then she’d pop them in the oven. And she’d prepped all the toppings for the bruschettas she planned to serve with drinks about an hour before they all sat down to eat the Christmas meal. That, she planned to serve about four o’clock, just as the light was going. The turkey crown, with its apricot and pine nut stuffing, was in its tin ready to go in the oven later. She’d made a chocolate brownie studded with cranberries in lieu of a Christmas pudding because the others had said they weren’t great fans of that tradition. A half-kilo tub of clotted cream sat at the back of the fridge waiting to go with that. She was glad she’d bought it, now that she knew Xander was such a huge fan of it.

  And then as though just thinking about him had conjured him up, he came into the kitchen. He was carrying two bottles of champagne by their necks in one hand, and he had two boxes of orange juice in his other arm, cradled like a baby.

  ‘This,’ he said, lowering them gently onto the kitchen island, ‘is about the total limit of my festive cookery.’

  ‘That’ll do me,’ Lissy laughed. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth. Bucks Fizz more than acceptable. Thank you.’

  ‘You look like you’ve been busy,’ Xander said. He lifted up a corner of the tea-towel. ‘Oh, croissants. How did you know they’re my guilty pleasure?’

  ‘Aren’t they everybody’s?’ Lissy laughed.

  ‘If they’re not then they should be,’ Xander said. He was wearing shorts and a polo shirt and Lissy wondered if he would be going for a run. ‘Am I the first up?’

  ‘No. I heard the door go earlier. Janey. She left a note. I looked out and could just pick her out walking towards the top of the steps.’

  ‘Ah. I’m glad she’s done that.’ Xander peered into the dishes covered in clingfilm that held the bruschetta toppings. ‘This all looks a bit yum. And this,’ he said, pointing at the brownie cooling on a rack ‘is the stuff of gods. Never had it when Claire … well, you know. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Lissy told him. ‘None of us can expect you not to mention her when memories come flooding in for whatever reason. Claire and I shared more than a few as well and I’m thinking about her much of the time being here.’

  ‘But she didn’t do brownies,’ Xander said.

  ‘No,’ Lissy said. She knew that. Claire had rarely eaten anything that had more than a hundred and fift
y calories in it. ‘Not good for the figure, is it? And she needed to present the perfect body when she stood in front of her students. Not that I was ever one of those, however many times she tried to persuade me that I should be.’

  If Xander needed to talk about Claire on Christmas Day then she’d listen.

  ‘You look pretty good to me,’ Xander said, his voice a bit husky. ‘Nice dress.’

  Lissy was in one of Vonny’s housecoats – such an old-fashioned word, but then Vonny had been a throwback from a different era. She’d bought the house for its Art Deco looks. Anything from the Thirties was good to have around in Vonny’s opinion. There were mirrors and little side tables all over the house that were from that era.

  ‘This “dress”, I’ll have you know is vintage. Silk. It’s a housecoat, or sometimes known as a peignoir. I’ll change in a minute.’

  ‘Oh, are we dressing for breakfast?’ Xander pulled a mock terrified-he-might-have-to face. ‘As you see I’m a bit of a beach bum at heart.’

  ‘Good look,’ Lissy said. ‘Do you sport it winter and summer?’

  ‘Mostly. Lots of blokes my age around here do. Unless it’s cold enough to freeze the hairs on your legs off then we sport shorts, as it were.’

  ‘Shorts at breakfast will be fine by me,’ Lissy said.

  Fine any time at all, she wanted to say. Xander was taking her breath away a bit standing there looking so, well, so damn sexy. He’d always been a handsome bloke but a few years on him since his wedding had brought improvements, if any were needed. A few silver threads in his hair only added to the look, in Lissy’s opinion. They seemed – she and Xander – to be back to the happy banter they’d enjoyed before that fateful encounter with Claire’s parents up at St Paul’s.

  ‘Great,’ Xander said. He came round to the same side of the kitchen island as Lissy. ‘Anything I can do? I’m an ace potato peeler I’ll have you know. Ditto carrots, parsnips, and swede. Not so hot on the sprouts and my cabbage-shredding leaves something to be desired, but they remain edible. My mother trained me well. And I’ve just rung her to wish her Happy Christmas should you be thinking I’m a neglectful son.’

  ‘She obviously trained you well, then. And I was thinking no such thing.’

  ‘So there’s nothing left for me to do apart from give you a Happy Christmas kiss?’

  Lissy gulped. She’d been thinking along exactly those lines. And she was going to have to summon up all her willpower here not to let that kiss deepen, not to throw him over the kitchen island and beg him to make love to her, wasn’t she?

  ‘How neglectful!’ Lissy said, turning to face him. She put her hands on his upper arms, stood on tiptoe and offered him her lips to kiss.

  When Xander’s lips touched hers she was in no doubt about her feelings for him.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  ‘Saved by the bell!’ Lissy quipped. ‘That’ll be Janey. Can you let her in? I’ll go and get dressed.’

  ‘I hadn’t got to that bit,’ Xander said. He took Lissy’s face between his hands and kissed her forehead. ‘Instigating the need for you to get dressed.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But the thought wasn’t a million miles from my mind.’

  ‘Nor mine,’ Lissy gulped.

  She stood there, her head still being held so tenderly, and her legs had taken on the consistency of marshmallow. Her insides seemed to have turned to melting toffee.

  ‘If only we were here alone,’ Xander said in very theatrically wistful way.

  ‘Well, we’re not,’ Lissy laughed. She put her hands up to prise Xander’s from her face and ran for the kitchen door. She turned to look back at him. He blew her a kiss. ‘And I am in dire need of a very cold shower!’

  Chapter 25

  Bobbie

  ‘Happy Christmas, everyone!’ Bobbie said coming into the kitchen, thinking she was the last down because she’d heard all three different voices not long ago. ‘Oh, where is everybody?’ Only Xander was there sitting at one of the bar stools at the kitchen island drinking coffee. ‘Have I missed breakfast?’

  ‘Happy Christmas to you, too. And to answer your question, not yet,’ Xander said. ‘Janey’s back from a stupid o’clock visit to the beach making sketches and has gone upstairs to start on something. Lissy must have been up for hours preparing this little lot.’ He waved an arm towards bowls and trays covered with cloths or clingfilm. ‘She’s just gone upstairs to get changed and we have these little delights to come.’ He lifted a tea-towel to reveal pastries waiting to be cooked, and grinned like the cat that had got the cream.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Bobbie said, ‘but I’m starting to feel a bit guilty that we’re not doing anything to help Lissy.’

  ‘She’s pretty organised,’ Xander told her. ‘I’m pretty sure she’d ask if she wanted us to do anything, though. I think she just wants us to have a great Christmas. No angst about buying the right present for the right person or any of that stuff, and no standing in the queue for hours at the supermarket waiting to be served.’

  ‘Hmm. Part of me thinks we ought to have liaised beforehand and got her something as a thank you.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought that. But what? I mean she probably doesn’t need another parmesan grater or a bread knife, or a set of dinner plates, does she?’

  ‘Probably not!’ Bobbie laughed. She looked around the kitchen, which was vast by anyone’s standards. ‘The trouble is, though,’ she said, ‘that the more space one has the more stuff one needs to fill it up.’

  ‘Precisely why I live in a shoe box,’ Xander said.

  ‘Me too. Mews cottages don’t come big.’

  ‘But valuable?’

  ‘Fairly.’

  Bobbie rarely talked finance with anyone but it seemed perfectly normal to be mentioning the value of things with Xander. Somehow, they always seemed to fall into a conversation about something easily and comfortably enough whenever they found themselves alone together.

  ‘Listed?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah. And that will give you no end of problems if you need to make any sort of alteration.’

  ‘Tell me about it! Putting a shower in took a whole ream of paperwork to sort. One builder gave up completely and pulled out because he just wasn’t prepared to put up with all the waiting and the form-filling. I’m afraid I got on my high horse a bit and told him he ought to think about changing profession because London is full of listed properties.’

  ‘Not a problem I’m likely to have down here. Listed buildings are rarer than hens’ teeth in the bay.’

  ‘Plenty of other work though?’

  ‘So so. I let things slide a bit after Claire died. I stopped answering enquiry emails and texts and people went elsewhere. I had to lay off one of my workers. There’s barely enough to keep me, and the three blokes still working for me, ticking over. This time of year is a bit lean for work as well. Anyway, it’s Christmas morning and you don’t need to hear my woes. Coffee? I made a fresh pot a moment ago, hoping someone would turn up to help me drink it.’

  No, I don’t want to hear your woes, Bobbie thought. She wanted to hear something a bit more positive, more forward thinking. She wanted to hear that he would always keep a place for Claire in his heart but that he was ready to open it up to someone else now. Someone like Lissy. She wanted to hear that that kiss that didn’t happen between them last night after the candlelit service had happened now, or would later today. But part of her was secretly pleased that Xander felt able to talk to her about his feelings. Would he do that if he were her son? Or was that a totally different relationship – mother and son?

  Xander obviously thought she was being slow to respond because he waggled his coffee cup at her to remind her of what she’d just been offered.

  ‘Please. Coffee will be good.’

  Xander stepped off his bar stool and went over to the worktop that had the coffee pot on it. He opened a cupboard over it and selected a mug.

  How
at home he looked here, Bobbie thought. And that grin he’d given her when she’d first come in told her that something had passed between him and Lissy before she’d gone to get changed. Something good.

  Xander lifted the lids on various pots on the counter top, then he opened the fridge and peered inside.

  ‘As your barista for this morning I can offer you sugar – brown or white. Milk with three differently coloured lids – red, green, or blue.’

  ‘Black, please,’ Bobbie said, smiling at him. ‘No sugar. I’m cheap to keep.’

  ‘That,’ Xander said, filling the mug for Bobbie and bringing it over to her, ‘I do not believe. What’s the phrase … high-maintenance?’

  ‘Hey you!’ Bobbie laughed. ‘If I were your mother I’d wash your mouth out for that remark!’

  ‘It was meant to be a compliment,’ Xander said. ‘Honest.’

  ‘Then I’ll take it as one, thank you.’

  ‘Friends again?’ Xander said, sitting himself back on his bar stool.

  ‘Always,’ Bobbie said. A shiver of something shot up her spine. A tingle of something otherworldly. A snapshot of being in the lobby of the art workshop when they’d all said goodbye, she and Janey and Claire, and they’d all said how great it was to have met and how they hoped they’d stay in touch, remain friends and Claire had given them all high fives and said ‘Always!’, flashed up in her mind. She didn’t believe these things but in that second it was as though Claire was in the room with them somehow.

  Lissy and Janey came in then.

  ‘Happy Christmas!’ they called in unison.

  Bobbie slid down over her bar stool and rushed over to embrace her friends.