Last Christmas Page 19

  ‘How’s it all going, chaps?’ Great. Luke Nicholas came swaggering up in a Barbour and this time, Noel noticed to his amusement, wellingtons, looking every inch the country squire.

  ‘We’re having a few difficulties with the builders’, explained Noel, seeing that Matt looked like he was going to fudge the issue once more. ‘They’re saying it’s not possible to carry on building in this swamp, so they’ve downed tools and swanned off to another job.’

  Luke’s eyes narrowed, and a vein began to throb dangerously on his upper temple. Noel stared at it, fascinated. It seemed to be developing a life of its own.

  ‘Not good enough, people,’ he said. ‘We have investors to keep happy here. Investors who need reassurance in these difficult times that this particular investment is safe.’

  Wondering how on earth anyone was going to guarantee that the houses here would actually be sold now that the world’s finances were in such a downturn, Noel simply said, ‘What do you suggest we do?’

  ‘Throw money at it,’ was the succinct reply. ‘Whatever the other job is offering them, double it. We’ve spent too much on this to back out now. And you two. You’re the engineers. Find a solution. Presumably you can find some way of drying the earth out so the building can recommence. It can’t be that hard, can it?’

  ‘It’s not quite as straightforward as that,’ began Noel, thinking of the fact that they were building on clay, which was going to lead to subsidence problems anyway once the earth had dried out, but he knew he was wasting his time as soon as Matt chipped in with, ‘That’s fine, Luke. I’m sure we can work something out, can’t we, Noel?’

  Noel said nothing. There was no point. But he looked at the swamp again and knew the project was failed. No matter how much money Luke Nicholas thought he could throw at it.

  Cat was ostensibly working at home on the Christmas issue but so far this morning she’d managed to put on three loads of washing, clear a space on the floor in the chaos that was Ruby’s room and make herself three cups of tea. Cat had forgotten how very difficult it was working from home and trying to juggle the competing demands of seeing what needed to be done in the house with that of an editor screaming for copy yesterday.

  Since Magda’s departure, Cat had been trying to wangle more and more days at home so that she could at least do the school run without relying too heavily on Regina. Regina had been fabulous, it was true, and would help out at the drop of a hat, but Cat knew it wasn’t fair to expect it of her friend. She wasn’t often in a position to pay back the favour—having to work like a demon in between sorting tea out and getting the kids to bed, Cat couldn’t manage to cope with Regina’s mob for tea more than once a week—and she was guiltily aware that in the school-mum-helping-each-other-out bank she was heavily in her friend’s debt.

  In the first couple of weeks after Magda had gone, Cat had asked her mum to help out, but things hadn’t gone according to plan. Mum had needed to be reminded every day she was picking the children up from school and, when she got home, the children had started complaining to Cat that Granny Dreamboat was either paying them no attention, or getting cross with them for no good reason. When quizzed about it, Mum was incredibly vague, and Cat was beginning to realise she couldn’t even rely on her mother to cook the children’s supper when she got in. Nine times out of ten when she got home, Mum would have been ‘just about to’ put the tea on, the kids were starving and snappy with each other, and the house was in more chaos than Cat could have thought possible.

  It was becoming increasingly clear to her that though her mother continued to be delighted to see her grandchildren, and frequently moaned that she didn’t see enough of them, the reality was they were exhausting her. And after two more occasions when Mum had simply forgotten to turn up on the school run, Cat reluctantly came to the conclusion that her mother was no longer to be relied on. She pushed away the gnawing ache of worry that that was engendering in her. She had enough to deal with, without thinking too hard about the fact her mother appeared to be losing it. Besides, the thought of something being wrong with her clever, capable mother made her shrivel up inside. She wasn’t ready to face it.

  Particularly not at a time when both Noel and Mel seemed to be locked in their respective bubbles of misery. Noel had clammed up completely on her. He was taking quite a few days working at home (funnily it never seemed convenient for him to do the school run), but, whether at home or work, he seemed silent and morose. She couldn’t even get him to row with her, which at least would have shown some spark of something. It was as though Noel had lost interest in her and the children. While Mel, Mel was becoming harder and harder work. Cat knew the transition from primary to secondary school had been difficult for her clever, sensitive daughter, but, whereas the other mothers she knew were reporting their children settling down into their new schools, Mel seemed more and more closed in on herself. It was Cat’s secret fear that her daughter was being bullied, and she was keeping a weather eye on Mel’s MSN account to make sure nothing untoward had happened. It caught at her heart to see her daughter so very unhappy and be unable to do anything about it.

  Cat sighed. Maybe she should blog about Mel’s problems. One of the bonuses of the blog, she’d found, was that talking about domestic problems she had (not that the Happy Homemaker often admitted to having problems) usually resulted in a wave of supportive posts from people who had been through similar. She’d do that now and get going on the magazine later. It was important that she keep her blog posts up, they’d become a bit sporadic of late.

  It’s every mother’s nightmare. The thought that your child is being bullied and you can do nothing about it. But how do you know if you’re child is being bullied? And what, if anything, can you do to prevent it?

  Cat began to type and was soon lost in her words. It was one way to stop herself worrying.

  Marianne raced late into the latest Post Office Meeting. Vera had called it at short notice, so Pippa and Gabriel had both said they couldn’t make it and she’d agreed to let them know how it went.

  How it went was very simple. Vera got up, looking ashen-faced, and said in a straightforward manner,‘I’m really sorry everyone, but our campaign has failed. Despite the petition and the picketing of Mount Pleasant, I heard today that my post office licence is being withdrawn. It’s nobody’s fault, really, they’re just following government guidelines, but there’s nothing more any of us can do. I really appreciate the help you’ve given—’

  She stifled a sob and sat down again, looking stricken. Mr Edwards, who was sitting next to her, patted her hand sympathetically and handed her a tissue.

  ‘That’s outrageous!’ Diana Carew boomed from the back of the hall. ‘There must be something we can do.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Miss Woods came up, banging her stick determinedly into the ground in a way only she knew how.‘Never say die, that’s my motto. Can’t we use the interweb a bit more? Set up a Spacebook account or something?’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Diana, and Marianne smiled at the sight of the two of them, for once on the same side, though really she didn’t feel like smiling at all.

  ‘Why don’t we run our own community post office?’ said Miss Woods. ‘I’ve been skiing the interweb and discovered all sorts of places where communities have kept their post offices alive by working together. We could move it here, to the village hall, and work together with the village farmers to sell some of their local produce. Pippa, you could use it as an outlet for your produce. See, I printed something off about a village in Somerset that did the very same thing.’

  ‘What an excellent idea,’ said Diana, who only looked a little put out that she hadn’t thought of it herself. ‘And what with the new eco town, we might get an injection of new blood into the area, so why don’t we suggest to the developers they get involved too?’

  Marianne stifled the thought that Luke wouldn’t be at all interested in developing anything if it involved the word community. It was a good idea
. Maybe it would work.

  The meeting broke up in a muddle of excited talk and gloomy harbingers of doom declaring the scheme was doomed to failure. Marianne set off for Pippa’s to tell her what had happened, but she paused before she got there and, without questioning herself as to why she was doing it, she walked further up the lane to Gabriel’s house. Since the incident at the Monday Muddle she’d been seeing him regularly but, despite her epiphany, to her disappointment nothing had yet happened between them. Gabriel was an inscrutable kind of character, quite hard to read, but she thought he liked her. Trying to calm down her nerves, which were on edge, and her heartbeat, which was so erratic she wondered she hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest, she walked down the path and knocked on his cottage door. Maybe she was making a mistake. Perhaps she should have told Pippa what had happened at the meeting and just run into Gabriel in the normal way.

  The dark path flooded with light as Gabriel came to the door.

  ‘Marianne, how great to see you.’ His warmth seemed genuine.

  ‘I just came—’ She hesitated, suddenly feeling like a total idiot. ‘I thought you might like to know how the meeting went.’

  ‘And there was me thinking you were coming to see me,’ quipped Gabriel.

  ‘I was…I am…well, both.’ Marianne blushed in confusion.

  ‘Good,’said Gabriel. ‘Come in and have a drink.I’ve been meaning to ask you anyway.’

  ‘You have?’ Marianne’s heart skipped.

  ‘Yes, I have.’ Gabriel looked at her semi-solemnly, and then said, ‘If only to see you go that spectacular shade of beetroot.’

  Marianne felt her cheeks flame even more and her heart went into overdrive on the skipping front. He did like her. He did. She could scarcely breathe, she felt so overcome. From somewhere distant, she realised Gabriel was motioning her into the lounge.

  ‘Stephen’s in bed,’he was saying, ‘make yourself at home.’

  Marianne collapsed onto Gabriel’s comfy battered old sofa and let out a sigh of nervous relief. She had the weirdest feeling she’d come home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It seemed wrong to be looking up Christmassy stuff at this time of year, but Cat was busy composing an article to go along with the launch of the competition, so she was online, searching through references to Nativity plays of yore, and tracking down more ancient carols to give people a taste of what they were looking for.

  Perhaps, she wrote, in these more difficult times, this Christmas we can return to the simplicity of yesteryear and dispense with too much expense, fuss and nonsense. Perhaps it is time to remember an event, that took place two thousand years ago, in a stable in Bethlehem…

  Too corny? Probably, but she knew that was what Bev would want.

  Cat glanced at her watch—it was gone nine already. Noel had rung to say that he would be late, his train being delayed at Nuneaton apparently. The little ones were in bed, and James and Mel were playing on the Wii—last Christmas’ must-have, over-expensive item, which Cat had felt guilty getting for them at the time. Now, with the credit crunch and the scary amount of borrowing that she and Noel had found themselves embroiled in over the last few years, such purchases were looking self-indulgent to say the least. How had it come to this, she wondered. Cat and Noel had always tried to be careful with money, but then the family had expanded, they’d needed extra space to accommodate the au pair, been unable to move thanks to the craziness of house prices, and ended up borrowing a shedload of money to pay for the loft conversion they required. They’d borrowed it on the strength of the partnership Noel had been promised, but which had yet to materialise. The building trade was bound to be affected by the financial slowdown, and Cat was worried sick about Noel losing his job but, if he shared her concerns, then he was keeping things very close to his chest. Not that he seemed to want to share all that much with her nowadays.

  Cat saved the document she was working on and went downstairs to chase James into bed. He and Mel were in the middle of a row because James had won at tennis again.

  ‘He always beats me, it’s not fair!’ burst out Mel, before rushing off in floods of tears.

  ‘She’s such a bad loser,’ sulked James, about to throw his nunchuck on the floor—but one glance from his mother stopped him.

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe she is,’ said Cat, ‘but I don’t suppose it helps you rubbing her face in it.’ James was generally very self-satisfied when he won and Cat found it most annoying when she played him. With Mel in the sensitive state she was in, he was bound to wind her up.

  ‘You could go easy on her,’ said Cat. ‘She’s having a tough time of it at the moment.’

  ‘I know,’ said James in disgusted tones. ‘Hormones.’

  James had recently had his puberty talk at school and was now apparently the expert on all things hormonal.

  ‘Yup,’ said Cat, ‘so you have to feel sorry for her really. Now apologise and get to bed.’

  Cat followed her son up the stairs and heard him dart in and mumble a feeble apology to Mel before darting out again. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door. She was never sure how Mel would react these days.

  ‘May I come in?’ she said.

  ‘Suppose,’ was the sullen reply.

  Mel was sitting against the wall, red-eyed, playing with her mobile phone.

  ‘Anything in particular bring that on, or just everything?’ said Cat, squashing up next to her daughter.

  ‘No,nothing.Oh,everything!’burst out Mel.‘I hate being eleven. It sucks.’

  ‘Sure does,’ said Cat, ‘but twelve will be better, you’ll see.’

  ‘It might be worse,’ said Mel.

  ‘What, worse than this?’ laughed Cat. ‘Surely not.’

  This elicited a small smile from her daughter and soon Cat had her giggling away as if nothing had happened.

  ‘There’s nothing really wrong though, is there, Mel?’ Cat asked gently.

  ‘NOoo,’ said Mel disparagingly. ‘You always ask that, and I always say no.’

  ‘It’s only because I worry about you,’ said Cat.

  ‘Well, don’t,’ said Mel, closing in on herself again. ‘I’m fine. I just want to be left alone.’

  ‘Okay,’said Cat, ‘but get straight into bed and no reading, it’s late.’

  She paused at the door, looking at her daughter, who looked so vulnerable sitting there.Vulnerable but belligerent.

  ‘You can tell me if something’s wrong,’ she said.

  ‘There isn’t anything wrong,’ said Mel, ‘except that I want you to go away so I can get undressed.’

  Cat laughed, that was a bit more like it. She just hoped that Mel wasn’t hiding anything from her. She sighed. Such a short time ago, she’d been terrified by the responsibility of having a newborn baby. Now she worried about her almost teenage daughter being bullied. It was just as well no one had ever told her what being a parent was really like, otherwise she might never have done it.

  The last person Gabriel had expected to see when he went to answer the door was Marianne. He’d assumed it would be Dan, who sometimes called in at this time in the evening for a beer. It was automatic for him to ask her in. Gabriel had inherited a welcoming gene from his mother and not to have done so would have felt unnatural. One bonus he was discovering from Eve’s departure was that he could invite friends round again. Eve had been wary of people and hated entertaining, so over the years Gabriel had suppressed the welcoming side of his nature. He went into the kitchen to sort out drinks while Marianne browsed through his CD collection. It seemed natural and right that she was here. Gabriel was very glad she’d come.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ he called from the kitchen. ‘Wine or beer?’

  ‘Actually, would you mind if I had something soft?’ said Marianne. ‘I hate going to work with a heavy head. You wouldn’t believe how bad it is trying to teach a bunch of five-year-olds with a hangover.’

  ‘Yes, checking on the sheep early in the morning is equally unf
orgiving,’ said Gabriel as he came into the lounge, scouring it for dirty mugs. ‘Sorry about the mess. I try hard not to, but it’s all too easy to slide into bachelor-pad chaos.’

  ‘It’s neater than my place,’ said Marianne, laughing as she put down a KT Tunstall CD. ‘Can I put this on?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Gabriel. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee would be great, thanks,’ said Marianne as she put the CD on.

  ‘So, how did the meeting go?’ said Gabriel as he sat down opposite her. The light from the lamps cast shadows across her face, but he could see from here the way her eyes lit up as she talked, and the natural spontaneity of her manner. Marianne was like a breath of fresh air in his cobweb-filled life. She was bringing light and dance back into the unparalleled gloom he’d been living in since—since, well, forever. Gabriel had never liked to analyse it too much, but now, with a bit of distance between him and Eve, he was beginning to see just how unhealthy their relationship had been.

  ‘Not great,’ said Marianne. ‘Apparently the post office has got to go, but Miss Woods and Diana Carew are planning to join forces to set it up in the village hall instead. I have no idea if that is feasible or not but, hey ho, it will keep them happy.’

  ‘Miss Woods and Diana agreed on something? Wonders will never cease,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Marianne. ‘But joking aside, I do hope it will work. It would break Vera’s heart to lose the post office. Not to mention causing a huge blow to the village community.’

  ‘You really like it here, don’t you?’ Gabriel said. ‘Don’t you miss the city at all?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Marianne. ‘But I fell in love with this place from the moment I arrived. I love its peace and tranquillity and the fact that I can go walking on the hills in all weathers. I feel hemmed in in the city. Here I feel free and alive and, well, happy, I suppose. I’m glad I was persuaded to stay.’