‘Shhh!’ Lydia pressed her finger to her lips, pushing aside large quantities of Vincent, who appeared to be on top of her, in order to sit up. As the blood began to flow back into her limbs, they tingled and popped. ‘Guys, a bit less of the singing.’
‘But it’s Christmas Eve … Day,’ Tilly said, excitedly, hoping from foot to foot.
‘I know and it’s lovely, but … do you know “Silent Night”?’
‘Silent Fart, Holy Fart,’ Jake immediately began singing at the top of his voice.
Lydia groaned, her head spinning as clunk after clunk, the memory of what had happened last night thudded into place in her poor sore head.
‘Aunty Lydia I’m hungry and Mummy and Daddy have locked the bedroom door and are doing animal impressions,’ Tilly said. ‘Will you feed us?’
‘If you stop singing,’ Lydia said.
‘Look what I found!’ Jake held up Lydia’s bra, which she dimly remembered unhooking and feeding through the arm of her dress last night, somewhere towards the bottom of a bottle of very passable Shiraz. ‘And a bra that was mean to hold three!’
‘Hey! Come back!’ Lydia called lamely, as Jake raced off into the depths of the house, holding her bra aloft, with a giggling Tilly in his wake. A quick check determined that Vincent had spent the night with his nose buried in her tights, so Lydia had no option but to venture out into the world wearing her wine-red knitted dress and panties, and nothing much else. Hopefully, Katy and Jim’s locked door meant they were making up, and judging by the amount of drinking going on last night, she was hopeful that everyone else would be in bed long enough for her to throw some cereal at the kids and go and get a shower.
Vincent grumbled as she pushed his paws off her lap and stood up, taking a moment to steady herself. Braless, tightless, boyfriendless, and, if Joanna found out about what had happened with Jackson, soon to be friendless.
If anyone asked Lydia to name her worst ever Christmases, then the one when her father left would have been number one, closely followed by the year when her father was still with horrid Karen and had banned Lydia from visiting. Lydia had been bereft at being rejected by her father, her feelings not helped by the realisation that this also meant she didn’t have to go to see the Wicked Witch of the Midlands that year. Her mother had been really excited about a new boyfriend, who she’d said had even got her a present. Lydia had never forgotten opening that box to see two little beady eyes staring back at her. Her Christmas present had been a badly stuffed dead hedgehog, courtesy of the boyfriend’s taxidermy hobby.
Later – much later – she’d been able to laugh about it with her friends, and had even kept Mrs Twiggywinkle on her desk during all of her final exams. At the time, though, it had been horrendous, a symbol of all that had been wrong about her childhood. This year, however, was shaping up to achieve the impossible and be even worse than the year of the dead hedgehog.
The children were already in the kitchen when Lydia arrived to see Tilly attempting to open a packet of bacon with a very large bread knife.
‘Whoa!’ Lydia stepped in, removing the knife and bacon from Tilly just in time.
‘How about this?’ Jake said, revving up the carving knife that he’d plugged in next to the oven.
‘Or,’ Lydia suggested, dancing across the cold stone tiles in her bare feet to confiscate the deadly weapon, ‘how about some Weetabix?’
‘Weetabix isn’t Christmas Eve breakfast,’ Tilly complained. ‘We have to have something special and Christmassy.’
Lydia looked around, her hand on her hips. ‘Mince pies?’
‘Aunty Lydia!’ Tilly rolled her eyes. ‘Bacon and eggs, please.’
‘But you had bacon and eggs yesterday,’ Lydia said. ‘How is that Christmassy?’
‘Because it’s our favourite,’ Tilly assured her, in a very patronising tone of voice.
‘But how is it Christmassy?’ Lydia protested.
‘It just is!’ Tilly said, rolling her eyes.
‘Do you want to know where you bra is?’ Jake said mildly, smiling sweetly.
Squinting at him as menacingly as she could, Lydia turned on the grill, and Vincent sloped into the room with the prescient knowledge that there would soon be cooked pig.
Everything had been going to plan. Lydia had found her stiletto ankle boots to wear as slippers, she had coffee on the go, the children had hot chocolate topped with squirty cream from a can plus a sprinkling of ground cinnamon – which was her token gesture in honour of the season – she had sliced bread and garnished it with Ketchup ready for the bacon that was nearly done.
‘Oooh, look.’ Lydia found some croissants in the bread bin. ‘I’ll warm these up too.’
No sooner had she switched on the oven than there was a loud bang and the oven went dark.
‘Oh,’ Lydia said, going to the plug and switching it off and on again. ‘Um.’
‘What is it?’ Tilly asked her.
‘Run about and try all the lights and things,’ Lydia, told the children, who scooted off obediently, for once. Anxiously, Lydia tried all of the kitchen lights and found nothing working. ‘Oh fuck, I’ve broken the house and destroyed the cooker in the process. Katy is going to kill me. Everyone here is going to hate me and want to kill me too. Fuck.’
‘Nothing’s working,’ Jake reported back. ‘Shall I get Dad?’
‘No, no … no, we don’t want Mummy to worry just yet.’ Lydia peered under the grill. ‘Look, the bacon is done. You guys, stay here and eat your sandwiches and I’ll go and ask Will if he can help.’
There was no answer the first time Lydia knocked on Will’s door, nor the second. Perhaps he had taken his chances and absconded in the night, she thought, or maybe he’d gone out to the boathouse again. Trying the door handle, she found it unlocked, so she quietly pushed open the door, slowly advancing into the room.
His bed had been slept in but was now empty.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ Lydia whispered bitterly.
‘Sorry?’ Will appeared behind her, wearing nothing but a towel. Lydia yelped, swore again and then, remembering she was barely dressed herself at the exact same moment that she noticed Will’s rather impressive torso, she pulled at the hem of her skirt.
‘Shit, you scared the life out of me.’
‘Sorry,’ Will said. ‘But you have sort of broken into my room.’
‘I didn’t break in; the door was open. Normal people lock their doors.’
‘No, normal people knock,’ Will informed her, his gaze slipping to her unbridled bosom before being hurriedly redirected to a spot on the wall just above her left shoulder. Looking down, Lydia realised that the early chill in the air meant it was especially easy to tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra; her nipples were clearly visible beneath the fine knit of the dress. Mortified, she again pulled down the constantly riding-up hem of her dress over her naked thighs, and then crossed her arms over her chest. Will coughed, careful to look anywhere but at her as he grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it over his head, obviously as uncomfortable about her state of virtual undress as she was. He had very nice arms, Lydia thought, wistfully, and a very manly chest. Just the sort of chest she could imagine resting her head on as she drifted off to sleep.
‘Look, why are you here?’ Will asked her, snapping her out of the spell of his partial nudity.
‘Oh right, yes. I’ve blown up the cooker and now no lights are working downstairs,’ Lydia told him. ‘And it’s Christmas Eve and if I’ve really killed the cooker, Katy will kill me and I can’t take any more, I can’t. Everybody hates me as it is.’
‘Er, excuse me?’ Will gestured for Lydia to turn around.
Obediently, Lydia moved away to stare out of his bedroom window at the steep incline of the back garden, where somewhere, under feet of snow, poor Mad Molly was buried. She heard the soft thud of wet towel hitting carpet and then the jingle of loose change in pockets as Will pulled up his jeans, followed by the rasp of the zip and the clank of the belt buckle. Will was
buttoning up his shirt as she turned around, forgetting, in her anxiety, to cover her chest or stop her dress from creeping up her thighs again. Will sighed, crossly.
‘Look, I’m really sorry to ask you, but look at it this way – you are literally saving Christmas if you can fix the oven, which must be good karma. Do you think you can fix it?’ Lydia bit her lip, wondering if Will, who was glaring out of the window himself now, was angry with her because she was southern, or because he wasn’t a morning person, or maybe not so fond of strange half-dressed women invading his privacy.
‘I’ll take a look at it,’ he agreed.
‘Great, thanks.’ Lydia took two or three steps towards him. ‘I’ll make you a luke-warm coffee. The kettle boiled just before everything went kaput.’
‘Before you do …’ Will still couldn’t quite manage to look at her.
‘What?’ Lydia asked him.
‘It’s just, well … could you get dressed first?’
‘Yes, fine, fine. God, sorry I didn’t realise I was so offensive.’ Lydia turned on her heel, leaving Will in his room looking at his feet. He stood there for a good moment or two longer before taking a breath and going downstairs, quietly swearing to himself under his breath as he went.
By the time a very irritable and embarrassed Lydia came back downstairs, properly attired so as not to offend the sensitive nature of the local handyman, Will was in the kitchen, lying on his side on the kitchen floor, unscrewing the back of the cooker, with Jake’s chin practically resting on his shoulder as he watched, fascinated by the secret world of wiring.
Will looked up at Lydia, who’d found jeans and a jumper, not to mention all the appropriate underwear, as she came in. ‘White and two sugars, please.’
‘This decent enough for you?’ she snapped at him.
‘I just didn’t want you to catch a chill,’ Will said, returning his attention to the oven.
‘We put aunty Lydia’s bra on our snowman,’ Jake told Will, conversationally. ‘It took two massive snowballs to fill it!’
‘Hmphf.’ Lydia put the kettle on.
‘The element’s blown, which tripped the lights on this floor,’ Will explained as she stepped over him to find a mug. ‘Which at least means this place is wired properly. I just had to reset it to get the power back on. It’s not quite so simple for the oven, I’m afraid. It’s knackered. There is no way I can find a replacement part for something this old, in one day, not on Christmas Eve, maybe not ever.’
‘Oh, God.’ Lydia kneeled on the floor, absently taking a sip from Will’s coffee before she handed it to him. ‘No oven, no hob. Katy is going to kill me. You know what, I’m just going outside, I may be some time …’
‘I’m going to tell Mum,’ Jake said bouncing to his feet, Tilly and Vincent in his wake, and Lydia didn’t stop him. Better for a six-year-old boy to break the news than her; she was fairly sure Katy wouldn’t throw her own son into the lake.
‘For what it’s worth, this at least isn’t your fault,’ Will told her. ‘Same thing would have happened to whoever it was switched the oven on next.’
‘I’m too helpful,’ Lydia complained. ‘You never get Joanna accidentally blowing up ovens on Christmas Eve. Oh, no, she’s still in bed … doing stuff. And Alex is busy being heavily pregnant, so she never gets into trouble.’
‘How selfish of her,’ Will said, able to look at her again now she was covered up. ‘Look, it probably seems bad, being snowed in with your recent ex, a very dead turkey and an oven that doesn’t work, but trust me, it’s not the end of the world.’ He pushed himself into a sitting position, leaning his back against the defunct cooker.
‘No, not in the grand scheme of things, probably,’ Lydia conceded. ‘I mean, better that Stephen and I split up now, rather than after he proposed to me, and at least we’ve got a turkey, even if it is in bits. But the oven, not working, is going to be the end of Christmas. I swear, I am like a Christmas curse, wherever I go shit follows. Next year, I’m going to lock myself in my bedroom and never come out.’
Will nodded. ‘I think we’d all sleep sounder in our beds if we knew that.’
‘Hey!’ Lydia caught his eye, and saw the smile hiding around his lips. ‘Go on, tease me, if it makes you feel better. You must be mental. After all, you’re still here. You could be at home by now, getting your girlfriend to bring you mince pies, with your feet up in front of a roaring fire and not a dysfunctional person from the wrong side of the Watford Gap in sight.’
‘Aye, I could.’ Will sighed and smiled simultaneously. ‘Instead, I’m working for free, trapped with a load of lunatics, one who insists on breaking into my room, half naked, to get a look at me in a towel. Good job I haven’t got a girlfriend when you think about it, or a wife, seeing as you’re asking.’
Lydia couldn’t help smiling, irrationally cheerful that Will didn’t have a girlfriend or a wife, even though he was mocking her for trying to find out these things with about as much subtlety as a curious elephant.
‘Seriously, though,’ Lydia asked him, as they sat on the kitchen floor, their feet touching, ‘why are you still here?’
Will’s dark eyes met hers for a moment. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he asked her, his voice low.
‘What? Isn’t what obvious?’ Lydia squeaked.
‘Someone’s got to point out to you numpties that you don’t need an ancient leccy oven when you’ve got a massive great Aga in your kitchen. Or did you think it was shoe storage?’
‘It doesn’t work!’ Lydia said, her cheeks blazing, furious that she’d let herself be drawn in by those dark eyes.
‘Probably the burner just needs cleaning.’ Will handed her his empty mug. ‘Now, make me another warmish coffee, woman, while I do my third job for free.’
‘It’s working?’ Katy stared at the Aga, her hands clasped together like a little girl who’s just found a puppy in a shoe box.
Will patted the Aga, and checked his watch. ‘Yep, it should be ready to use at around eight tomorrow morning. ‘If you’d had a whole turkey, you’d have needed to brown it in the roasting oven first and then slow cook it for eight or ten hours in the simmering oven, which means you wouldn’t be eating Christmas dinner until midnight. So it’s lucky really that Lydia mutilated it beyond recognition. When you think about it, she did you a favour because now you can probably cook the whole thing in the roasting oven for four or five hours.’
‘Oh my God, I love you!’ Will froze as Katy threw her arms around him and kissed him on the lips for about ten more seconds than was seemly.
‘Fuck, no one said we were swinging,’ Joanna said as she appeared. ‘If we’re swinging, I want a turn on Will next.’
‘Please say you’ll stay and have Christmas lunch with us,’ Katy invited Will as she released him, looking more than a little shell shocked. ‘That is, if you’ve got nothing else planned?’
‘I normally have Christmas lunch in The Royal Oak with the whole village,’ Will said, stuffing his hand in his pockets, as if he’d just noticed he was surrounded by unpredictable women. ‘It’s sort of a tradition. We all bring something, stick it all on a table and get horribly drunk. I’ve got a Yule log.’
‘Oh, oh well, that sounds very nice,’ Katy said, her enthusiasm slightly dimmed. ‘First I’ve heard of it, but still … how nice. The whole village getting together for Christmas. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be part of something like that?’
‘No reason why you couldn’t come down,’ Will told her. ‘Everyone’s welcome.’
Tilly and Jake arrived, pushing their way between the legs of the grown-ups.
‘Mummy, Aunty Lydia forgot to cook us eggs when she blew up the cooker,’ Tilly complained. ‘I’m still hungry.’
‘Ah well.’ Will crouched down to meet Tilly’s eyes. ‘Want me to show you two how to cook eggs in a coal shovel, on an open fire?’
‘Yes, please!’ Jake said enthusiastically.
‘Won’t it taste of coal?’ Tilly asked.
‘Best
bit,’ Will said, grabbing a box of eggs and plate from the side, as Tilly and the ever-hopeful Vincent followed him out. ‘I was practically raised on coal, never did me any harm.’
‘I think my ovaries just palpated,’ Joanna said. ‘I love that man.’
‘Back of the queue,’ said Katy firmly, ‘I love that man. He got my Aga working.’
‘May I be the voice of reason.’ Alex lumbered into the kitchen. ‘Joanna, you allege that you are in love with that hunky American you’ve been giggling with all morning. And Katy, judging by your massive shag hair, you love your husband much more today than you did yesterday. Lydia can’t possibly love him because she’s on the rebound, from Stephen. So it’s official. If he’s cooking breakfast, I love him, and I’m going to name the baby after him, even if it’s a girl.’
Chapter Thirteen
To her shame, Lydia had been so caught up in the drama of the morning that she almost forgot about Stephen until she found him sitting on her bed when she went back to her room to find an extra pair of socks for an unexpected expedition. After delighting everyone by cooking eggs on a coal shovel, Will suggested that he could go back to the village and fetch his Calor gas oven, as there was no other way of heating food until at least tomorrow.
‘Seriously, mate, any chance you could be a bit less dashing?’ Jim asked him. ‘You’re making the rest of us chaps feel most inadequate.’
‘Just trying to help out,’ Will said modestly. Lydia pressed her lips together to suppress a smile, as she watched all the women swoon, and Jim and David perk up as they realised another possible expedition to the pub was on the cards. But their hopes were dashed.
‘Want to come with me?’ Will asked Lydia, who checked over her shoulder to see if he was talking to someone else. He wasn’t.
Lydia could see it was taking all of Joanna’s willpower not to say. ‘Ooooh, get you,’ so she answered quickly. ‘Er, yeah. Yes, why not?’
‘Seems a shame for you not to see the landscape properly, while you’re here,’ Will said, as if he needed to provide an explanation.
‘There are windows.’ Alex raised a brow.
The Night Before Christmas Page 17
