Christmas at Strand House

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Very smart,’ Janey said.

  Lissy couldn’t think of a thing to say except perhaps that if it was the last sight she saw on this earth she’d die a happy woman. She was waiting for Bobbie to say something witty and pithy to fill the gap. All she heard was a strangled sort of cry, a half sob. When she looked Bobbie had grabbed the edge of the kitchen island and was struggling to hold herself upright, her legs sort of buckled beneath her.

  Xander came rushing forward to grab her before she fell.

  ‘I’ve never had that effect on a woman – any woman – before,’ Xander laughed. ‘Hey! You okay?’ He righted Bobbie, and Janey slid a bar stool under her so she could sit down.

  Lissy wondered just what it was about her kitchen that had made two women now go weak at the knees over something. Xander was having that effect on her as well but she was hardly in danger of collapsing.

  ‘Low blood sugar,’ Bobbie said. ‘I missed lunch.’

  ‘Bruschetta coming up,’ Lissy said, offering her the tray.

  Somehow she didn’t quite believe that explanation of events and she had a feeling Xander and Janey didn’t either.

  Chapter 30

  Bobbie

  ‘If I don’t eat for a week,’ Bobbie said, ‘it’ll be too soon. That, Lissy, was Michelin star. More than. And trust me, I’ve had more than a few Michelin-starred meals in my time.’

  Everything about the meal had been perfect – the fabulous setting of Lissy’s hall, the food itself, and the company. She couldn’t remember ever having had a better Christmas.

  She was feeling stronger now, but it had been a momentary struggle to recover from her panic in the kitchen. The sight of Xander, standing there so tall, so handsome, so very like the man to whom she’d given her heart – and who had changed her life so dramatically – had thrown her momentarily. He was dead now. She knew that beyond doubt, because she’d read his obituary in The Times. But she’d thought quickly and blamed missing lunch and low blood sugar for her sudden loss of self control. Yes, got away with that one, she smiled to herself, scraping up the last of the chocolate mousse and popping it in her mouth.

  ‘And this stuff is pure ambrosia. Gods never had it so good in my opinion. This has to be, for me anyway, the best Christmas Day ever. Nothing could better it.’

  ‘Oh, Bobbie, that’s a lovely thing to hear. I’m just glad you’re enjoying it,’ Lissy said. ‘It was getting a bit sad, cooking up all this stuff just to take photographs of it and post them on social media and then throw most of it away. Thanks, you know, for all joining me so I can show off.’

  ‘It’s not showing off,’ Janey said. ‘If you’re good at something why shouldn’t you let others know?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Bobbie said, wiping delicately at the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin decorated with silver stars on a black ground. Very classy. Very chic.

  ‘Hands up for coffee,’ Lissy said, and then three hands shot up in the air.

  Bobbie would need something to sharpen her mind after so much food and a glass or two of wine more than she would normally have drunk, but hey, this was Christmas.

  And then she felt her mobile tremble in the pocket of her palazzo pants. Lissy had said she’d prefer it if no one used their phones at the table and they’d all adhered to that request. But she hadn’t said she couldn’t have her phone on her, had she?

  ‘So, so sorry, everyone,’ Bobbie said, getting up. ‘I’ve been expecting a call about work so I need to take it. Sorry, sorry to be breaking up the party. I’ll take it in the sitting room, okay?’

  That wasn’t strictly true. None of the outlets she worked for were likely to be calling her on Christmas Day, were they? There was a flutter of something under her breastbone – who could it be?

  ‘Okay,’ Lissy said. ‘I’ll get coffee when you come back. No worries.’

  Bobbie threw her a kiss for her thoughtfulness and hurried across the hall floor to the sitting room, closing the door behind her. She heard the volume of music go up in the hall – another of Lissy’s kindnesses, drowning out any possibility of eavesdropping.

  ‘Is that Roberta?’ someone said before she got the chance to say hello. She didn’t recognise the number coming up, but answered anyway.

  A man’s voice. Deep.

  ‘Yes. Roberta. Bobbie.’

  ‘Are you a relative of Pamela and Charles?’

  ‘Pamela, yes,’ Bobbie said. She pushed herself back in the couch, snuggling into the cushions. She kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet up to one side. She was getting all sorts of funny sensations running through her now, but she couldn’t afford to go to pieces as she had in the kitchen earlier. ‘We’re cousins. Has something happened?’

  ‘I think,’ the voice continued, ‘and there’s no easy way to say this … I think you’re my mother.’

  Bobbie’s mouth went wide with shock and her intake of breath seemed to rush through her, as far as the bottoms of her feet. Her fingers began to tingle. Oliver?

  ‘Oliver?’ she said.

  ‘I’m called Olly – with a y – these days.’

  ‘Where are you? Olly with a y?’ Bobbie was thinking fast – if he’d called her he must want to be talking to her, but why now? On Christmas Day of all days.

  ‘So, are you my mother?’

  ‘Yes. But—’

  ‘Is it okay for you to talk right now?’ Olly interrupted. ‘I mean, it’s Christmas night and you’re probably with family.’

  ‘I’m not with family, no.’

  No family. She’d given Olly away, under family pressure, and had made a conscious decision not to have another child. How would it be for Olly now if she had to say, yes, she was with family – three or four children on whom she’d lavished love and cash, when she’d given him away.

  ‘Did you get my letter?’

  ‘Your letter?’ Bobbie had received a letter with an Australian stamp on it via her solicitor – the one she’d purposely not opened in case it contained bad news about Oliver. Olly – with a y now. She must remember to call him that. ‘I haven’t opened it yet.’

  ‘Ah, that might explain things. Are you alone?’

  ‘At the moment, yes.’

  She had so many questions she needed to ask him, but where to begin? And besides, she was aware that her three friends were sitting around the table still amongst the detritus of a fabulous meal, and all waiting for her to come back and join them.

  ‘I have news,’ Olly said. ‘Whether that’s good or bad I’ll leave to you. Okay.’

  ‘Mmm,’ was all Bobbie could manage.

  ‘Pamela and Charles are both dead now. Charles two years ago, and Pamela last September. Clearing out their effects I found stuff.’ Olly’s voice seemed to be breaking now.

  ‘What stuff, Olly?’ Bobbie asked. There was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she knew what the answer to that would be if he was asking if she was his mother.

  ‘First up, that they weren’t my parents.’

  ‘And you didn’t know until last September?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But were they good to you?’ Bobbie asked. She had to know. She’d been promised they’d care for him as if he was their own. That he would want for nothing. She wasn’t surprised that Pamela had kept the fact she wasn’t Olly’s mother from him because appearances were all to her, and being childless was, to her, a failing in her somehow.

  ‘Yes. I can’t deny that but I’m feeling short-changed now. I couldn’t find any adoption papers though.’

  ‘There weren’t any,’ Bobbie told him. There was no need for that, her parents had said. Pamela was family, wasn’t she? It happened all the time in China, people who weren’t a child’s parents bringing them up. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, whoever. And she’d believed Pamela when she’d said she’d see that Oliver always knew about her being his birth mother. It hadn’t taken Pamela long to renege on that one. ‘All future communication will be via solicitors,’ Pamela had sai
d in a letter when Olly was eleven, or maybe twelve, years old. ‘It will be for the best.’

  ‘Ah,’ Olly said.

  ‘How much do you know?’ Bobbie asked. ‘You know, about why …’

  ‘I’m learning,’ Olly said and Bobbie could see in her mind the wry look he’d have on his face – understatement was probably the word for how it was for him right now. ‘I’ve found a whole trunkful of letters. Cards. Presents. Small boy presents. You sent them, didn’t you?’

  ‘Always. Until you were about eleven or twelve.’

  After that Bobbie had had no idea what boys growing up would like or need so she’d stopped sending presents on Oliver’s birthday and at Christmas. The parcel she’d sent for Oliver’s thirteenth birthday had been returned – ‘Not known at this address’ – and then she’d got that solicitor’s letter so she’d stopped sending them. But she hadn’t stopped buying presents for him. She had a trunkful of things relating to him back at her mews house in London.

  ‘I never got those presents,’ Olly said.

  Bobbie was beginning to work that out for herself. Her mind was uneasy mix of anger at Pamela and Charles for not giving Olly the presents she’d so lovingly bought, and sadness for Olly that they hadn’t and also the fizz of joy that he had called her.

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Why did you stop sending them? Or just a card?’

  ‘I didn’t stop,’ Bobbie said. This conversation was so surreal – one she’d had many times in her head and she had to pinch herself that she was having it now, sitting on someone else’s couch in someone else’s house.

  As quickly and as briefly as she could, she told Olly about the solicitor’s letter she’d received. And then she said, ‘Where are you? Australia?’

  She’d begun to detect a slight Australian accent.

  ‘London.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ The first Christmas she’d ever had away from home and now …

  ‘I thought I’d surprise you. Pamela and Charles’s solicitor put me in touch with your solicitor and he gave me your address. It was all in that letter you haven’t opened. I’m a big boy now and while I felt like a small boy who’d had all his toys taken away finding out this stuff, I realised pretty quickly that I wasn’t the only one short-changed and lied to. You were too.’

  ‘Yes. I was,’ Bobbie said, a smile creeping to her face that Olly seemed to have the same sort of humour as she did. ‘I left instructions that you were to be told where to find me. If … you wanted to.’

  ‘I want,’ Olly said. ‘Surprise?’

  Bobbie gulped and it was difficult to swallow for a moment. She felt a little faint.

  ‘It’s a surprise, all right,’ she managed to say at last.

  ‘That’s both of us then, Bobbie,’ Olly said. ‘So now you know where I am and that I’m not angry about anything you did in the past, where are you?’

  ‘Devon.’

  ‘Ah, that will explain why no one answered when I knocked. Are you there alone?’

  ‘No. I’m with three friends.’

  And boy, wasn’t she glad of them. She didn’t want to think now how this call would have been had she been on her own with no one to share the news with. All three of them were going to get a surprise but she didn’t think it would faze any of them. Already so much was happening this Christmas to them all.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Olly said, ‘now I’ve dropped this news you might want to get back to them. There’s so much more I want to tell you, so much more I need to know but hey, it’s Christmas Day, you were having a jolly time until I called so …’

  ‘I’m having an even jollier time now, Olly,’ Bobbie laughed, or perhaps it was more of a nervous giggle and she was that gauche, unworldly, eighteen-year-old again who had made not the best choices ever. She hung onto the thought that Pamela and Charles had been good to Olly, if economical with the truth.

  ‘So, can we meet? I’m curious to meet. I’ve discovered you’re quite a famous face for followers of fashion! My daughters are made up!’

  ‘Granddaughters?’ Bobbie said. ‘I’ve got granddaughters?’ She was still struggling to get more than a word or two out at a time, afraid if she said too much she’d dissolve into tears of pure joy, and not a little guilt as well.

  ‘Three. Grace, Martha, and Emily.’

  Bobbie had never factored having granddaughters into the equation.

  ‘Ages?’

  ‘Eighteen, sixteen, and twelve. In that order.’

  Eighteen – the same age Bobbie had been when she’d given birth to Olly, held him in her arms for so short a time. Loved him. And then given him away.

  ‘Can I meet them, too?’ she asked, fearful that Olly would say maybe not yet, or no, or that it would be up to them and then they’d more than likely – being teenage girls – decide it was uncool for this to be happening …

  ‘Of course,’ Olly said, cutting into her wayward thoughts.

  She’d always been such a clear thinker! Now her thoughts were fractured, all over the place. There were thoughts and ideas rushing through her mind like a reel of film. What welcome presents could she buy for girls of that age? Where could she take them in London that would impress girls of that age? Where would they all stop? With her? Her house had four bedrooms, over three floors. There’d be room. But would they want to?

  ‘Are you still there?’ Olly asked. ‘I know this is a shock, and maybe not the best day to have dropped all this on you …’

  ‘Any day would have been the best day,’ Bobbie said. ‘But this is the best.’

  ‘My wife said you’d say that!’ Olly laughed. ‘She said it was a mother thing and that’s how she’d feel if she was in your position.’

  So, Olly had a wife.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Beth. Bethany really but everyone calls her Beth.’

  ‘Beth,’ Bobbie said, feeling the sound of her daughter-in-law’s name on her tongue. That made her a mother-in-law, something else she hadn’t factored into the equation of future possibilities.

  ‘She can’t wait to meet you. I think she’s got fed up of me talking about you constantly since I found out you exist. So, when will you be back? Or shall we all come down to Devon? I’ve hired a car.’

  Bobbie had planned on returning to London the day after Boxing Day. There’d be more chance of getting a taxi all the way to London then. Taxi drivers worked on public holidays but she doubted there’d be one free to drive her all the way to London tomorrow. Besides, it would be rude to break up Lissy’s party too soon.

  ‘The 27th,’ Bobbie said. ‘I’ll be home then.’

  She looked at her watch. She’d been on the phone talking to Olly for over half an hour now. How easy this conversation had been after all. After all the imaginary conversations she’d had with him in her head – angry conversations, blaming conversations, tearful conversations. Olly, she was fast discovering was more like her in the direct way he spoke, than she could ever have wished he might be. She could happily talk to him long into the night but he had a family to be with and she had three of the kindest, dearest, friends a person could ever have waiting for her so they call finish their Christmas meal.

  ‘Safe journey,’ Olly said. ‘I’ll let you get back to your friends now. And if I’m honest I need Beth and the girls too. I’ve only just held it together in the tears department. I’m a blubbering wreck inside.’

  ‘Me too,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Until the 27th, then?’ Olly said, and Bobbie detected just the sliver of doubt in his voice that she might pull out.

  ‘Of course.’ Bobbie couldn’t trust herself now to say much more without breaking down and Olly didn’t need that. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ Olly said, his voice still firm. But then on the end of it, Bobbie heard him whisper, ‘Mum.’

  Bobbie only just had the presence of mind to save his number before going back to the others.

  Very slowly she opened the door into the hall. All three turn
ed to look at her, their faces anxious, not knowing what it was they were about to hear. Bobbie took some slow deep breaths and Xander got up to turn off the music.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Bobbie said, ‘to have taken so long.’

  ‘Bad news?’ Lissy said, getting up to come to her.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Bobbie said, her face breaking into a wide grin so strong and sudden that her jaw cracked. ‘That was Oliver. Olly now. My son.’

  Chapter 31

  Lissy

  After they’d all got over the shock of Bobbie’s reveal, Lissy said they were all in dire need of coffee, possibly with brandy in it for the shock, and she got up right away and went into the kitchen to make it. Never in her wildest dreams had she even considered that this Christmas would turn out the way it had. First there was the very deep attraction she realised now she’d always had for Xander, and the delight that he felt the same. And Janey – so much there for her to be dealing with after this Christmas break was over and Lissy could only be pleased that she had been able to provide Janey with such a safe haven.

  And now Bobbie with her secret lovechild. There was going to be a story there and she had a feeling it was going to unravel over coffee and brandy. Lissy added some mince pies and some leftover slices of brownie – not that any of them needed any more food but sometimes it helped to be doing something in a difficult situation – to the tray and carried it in.

  ‘I’ve waited until you got back,’ Bobbie said. ‘It’s going to be a struggle saying it all once, so I thought I’d wait.’

  ‘Only as much as you feel you can or want to,’ Lissy said, setting down the tray.

  Xander set out the cups and poured the coffee, while Lissy laid the plates out on the table. Janey took the top from the brandy bottle and picked up the measure Lissy had put beside it on the tray. A team – they were a team.

  ‘Everyone?’ Janey said.

  ‘Make mine a double.’ Bobbie laughed nervously. ‘I’m shaking like a leaf.’

  ‘So are we!’ Janey said.

  The group fell silent for a few moments while Xander handed round the cups and everyone helped themselves to something to nibble at should they need it.