The Night Before Christmas (22 page)

Lydia sighed. ‘Fine! Let’s do it!’

Katy clapped her hands together and the children cheered.

‘Can I bring my light sabre?’ Jake asked her. ‘I want to see if I can use the force on sheep.’

Chapter Seventeen

There was no one in the pub when Lydia and the motley crew of stragglers plus a one-eared dog made the final descent into the heart of the village. It seemed that everybody, including a small brass band consisting mainly of awkward and resentful-looking teenagers, was gathered around the village war memorial, singing carols that were being conducted very enthusiastically by the vicar, whose fur-collared black overcoat lent him quite a camp air, for such an elderly man.

A very blonde and tanned lady, decked out in full neon-pink ski gear and cradling a stack of hymn sheets, beamed at them, handing them each a sheet as they dragged the sleigh, now bearing Tilly and Jake too, to the edge of the gathering.

‘
Once in Royal David’s city
,’ Jake climbed out of the sleigh and joined in loudly, brandishing his light sabre. ‘
Stood a lonely battleship
… Death star, probably,’ he whispered to Tilly, who hopped from one red polka-dotted wellie to the other as she sang.

Setting down her carrier bag full of turkey limbs between her feet, Lydia unfolded her hymn sheet and joined in with the age-old English tradition of singing
along to the music, very quietly, and looking exceptionally embarrassed and apologetic about it. Still, she was certain nobody minded, as Jake was belting out an approximation of the words at the top of his voice and Joanna was doing that ridiculous descant thing she did, as if two weeks in the university choir, while she was shagging the choirmaster, qualified her as the next Katherine Jenkins.

As she sang, Lydia looked around the group for any faces she might recognise, and sure enough, there, right at the back of the gathering, on the other side of the memorial, were Jackson and Stephen, best friends now, apparently. Jackson was singing out loud and proud, with that kind of misty-eyed optimism that Americans did so well, and Stephen was mumbling into his scarf. Lydia smiled fondly to herself; he really did have a terrible voice, so terrible that his mother had actually banned him from singing in the house as a child, which Lydia had thought was very unkind until she’d heard him singing in the shower and had been forced to go out. Her two exes were already a little merry, judging by their ruddy cheeks and Stephen’s rhythmic sway, but there was no sign of Will at all. Perhaps he wasn’t here, Lydia thought, stung by the disappointment she felt. His absence should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. At that moment, even being moodily ignored by him seemed a better prospect than never seeing him again.

‘Pull yourself together, woman,’ Lydia muttered, as
the congregation launched into ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, those of them who were standing within earshot of Tilly and Jake learning some new lyrics pretty quickly.

Lydia couldn’t help but feel happy as she watched the children singing, and looked around her at the beautiful little village covered, quite literally, in Christmas. Pristine snow capped every roof and carpeted the surrounding sweep of the mountains, sparkling under the clear blue sky, punctuated with a ghostly half moon lying on its back. For a few days at least, the snow had made everything perfect, even the people, huddling together for warmth as they sung, half of them decked out in the brand new scarf sets they’d received that morning. Lydia’s Christmas Day so far had been devoid of any actual present, unless you counted the papier-mâché egg cup that Tilly had made her, but this moment, in the shadow of the mountains and under this flawless sky, was as perfect a Christmas memory as any she could ever have hoped for, and it was impossible not to feel her spirits rise.

Maybe nothing she had hoped for had gone to plan, she told herself, and perhaps she really had royally messed up everything that she possibly could, but she was surrounded by good people, more than willing to take in strangers and make them feel welcome, and she still had her friends. Even Joanna, who by rights should be her mortal enemy, still loved her. Best and most
impressively of all, last night she had, practically single-handedly, delivered baby Carole. Lydia had been the first person in the world to hold that tiny life in her hands and feel her little chest rise with her first breath, and it had been in that moment that Lydia realised Christmas wasn’t about snow, fairy lights, presents and forced happiness. It wasn’t about the Hollywood ideal she’d pursued so hopelessly since she was a little girl. It was just about a baby, being born surrounded by hope and expectation, and remembering to treasure the people that matter.

Men were okay, Lydia thought, as she straightened her shoulders and sang a little louder, but love, and all the crazy irrational things it made you do, was overrated. Just look at her, making ridiculous declarations to a man she barely knew, and who probably farted in bed just like the rest of them. And look at Joanna, so desperate to hang on to her boyfriend that she’d lied, cheated and manipulated her way to being single once again. Joanna was worth more than that, and so was Lydia. And standing there in the snow, with slowly numbing toes and the smell of Christmas dinner beginning to wend its way out of the pub, Lydia decided that nothing was going to ruin the rest of Christmas Day for her, not even the fact that she had accidentally fallen for the world’s most annoying man. With extra gusto, she flung aside her English reserve and belted out the very last line of the song.

‘
And a bra that was meant to hold threeeeeeee!
’

Shame, really, that she was a line too late, and delivered Jake and Tilly’s alternate ending to a silent crowd, preparing to be addressed by the vicar.

‘Well.’ The vicar repressed a smile. ‘It wouldn’t be Christmas if there wasn’t always one who hit the sherry a little too early.’

It turned out that it was impossible for the sixteenth-century building that was the pub to fit the entire village within its walls, and so Mal had put up a large, and thankfully heated, marquee attached to the back of the building via the pub’s French doors. Someone had taken great care in decorating it, adorned as it was with string after string of coloured, flashing, fairy lights. There was a fully decorated Christmas tree in each corner, looking like they’d been lifted out of four different living rooms, and a single spinning glitter ball hanging in the centre of the ceiling. The space had been filled with tables of various sizes, each one surrounded by an assortment of odd chairs that Lydia guessed had been borrowed from local homes, and dressed with a holly and mistletoe table decoration, crackers and a single red candle stuck unceremoniously into a clove-studded orange.

Along one side of the marquee, there were several trestle tables laid end to end, laden down with a buffet made up from the contributions that everyone had
brought to the communal feast, including a selection of hams, a quantity of lovingly decorated Christmas cakes and stack upon stack of mince pies.

Relieving Lydia of her carrier bag, Katy and Joanna followed Alice, who had immediately gone to greet Katy and introduce herself, and some of the other women into the kitchen, where the main attraction was being prepared, letting the children and Vincent loose to run round and round in endless circles with the other village kids in the pub garden. Jim headed straight to the bar, embracing Jackson and Stephen as if he hadn’t seen them for years rather than hours, leaving Lydia standing alone in the bustling marquee, at a loss what to do next. Deciding to take the bull by the horns, Lydia edged through the crowd to greet her two exes.

‘Hello!’ She smiled brightly, kissing them each on the cheek. ‘Happy Christmas! Listen, I just want to clear the air. I’m sorry about everything that has happened. I didn’t behave in the best possible way, I know, and I hope you’ll forgive me, Stephen … even though you let Joanna talk you into proposing to me when you weren’t sure if you wanted to. And Jackson, I’m sorry that I let you kiss me a little bit. I was confused and off balance, but I know it must have been confusing for you too. I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones, if you can?

‘There are no hard feelings here.’ Jackson smiled ruefully. ‘And I figure, if Stephen here and I can be
friends, then there’s no reason why you and I can’t too. Besides, I’ve been thinking about everything, and you’re right. Joanna is an amazing woman. I don’t want to let her slip through my fingers too. If she’ll let me, I’d really like to give the two or us another chance.’ As he talked, he caught sight of Joanna’s flame-coloured hair at the back of the room. ‘Excuse me a moment.’

Lydia took his place and stood next to Stephen; neither of them spoke for a while.

‘Are you all right, really?’ Lydia asked him finally, feeling a pang of what she had lost, the companionship of a decent man.

‘Are you?’ he asked her.

Lydia sighed and gave a little shrug. ‘I will be. Stephen, I’m so sorry I dragged you up here for this. Honestly, we’d have been much better off at my mother’s, or even yours, and that’s saying something.’

‘Maybe so, but then you wouldn’t have had your epiphany about us, and quite probably, right at this moment you’d be engaged to the wrong man,’ Stephen said with a small, sad smile.

‘It would have been wrong for us to get married, though, wouldn’t it?’ Lydia asked him. ‘Not just for me, but for you too. I’m not the girl for you, Stephen. I can’t be, because if I was, then it wouldn’t have taken Joanna to strong-arm you into buying me a ring.’

‘I am awfully embarrassed that you found out about that,’ Stephen admitted, adding, ‘I promise you, I was
a hundred per cent behind the idea, once I’d had a chance to warm up to it. But you’re right, now everything that’s happened has begun to sink in, I feel, well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I feel relieved. All I want from life is a wife who adores me, three bedrooms in the suburbs and two kids, one of each. You’re a career girl, a high flier, there’s no way you’d ever settle for domestic bliss.’ Lydia thought about Will, and the house he’d fleetingly planned to build for her, and wondered if that was strictly true.

‘It’s not that I wouldn’t settle for it,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘It’s just that I’d want both. Knowing my luck, I’ll probably end up with neither.’

Lydia looked up and across the room, and saw the back of Will’s head, dipped to one side as he talked to a very pretty girl in her early twenties who made a point of laughing at everything he said, and tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder into the bargain.

‘That girl’ll end up with whiplash, if she’s not careful,’ Lydia said, pursing her lips.

‘He got to you, didn’t he?’ Stephen asked her. ‘Will.’

Lydia shook her head. ‘No, not at all. I hardly know the man.’

‘And yet you can’t take your eyes off him.’ Stephen turned back to the bar. ‘You never once looked at me like that, Lydia Grant.’

‘Didn’t I?’ Lydia asked him. ‘Really?’

‘Not once,’ Stephen said, picking up his drink. ‘I’d have noticed.’

Constantly aware of wherever Will was in relation to her, and which pretty young thing, middle-aged wife or fetching older lady was flirting her head off with him at any given moment, Lydia still let herself relax as she settled into a plate of turkey with all the trimmings.

Seated around a table with Katy, Jim, the children, Joanna and a fishing boat hire operator called Craig, Lydia was also reunited with Gracie, the old lady she had met the day before. Her silver hair was worn in a girlish ponytail high on her head, and she was wearing a very smart, hot-pink two-piece. Gracie was thrilled to see Lydia again, insisting that she sit next to her, spending most of lunch whispering in lurid detail about every single sexual liaison she’d had during her years as a Wren in London, during the Blitz.

‘And so I just grabbed it and gave it a good tug,’ Gracie told her, with a wicked chortle. ‘You should have seen the look on his face.’

‘It’s amazing you had any time to do any Wrening at all,’ Lydia teased her gently, full of admiration for the lady who was pushing ninety but still had the sparkly violet eyes that must have once caused quite a stir in the heart of a young soldier.

‘Well, we all thought we were going to die, you see?’
Gracie told her. ‘It gave you a marvellous sort of freedom. Think about it, if you thought there was a good chance that you wouldn’t still be here tomorrow, what would you do?’

‘See what kind of big fish I could get on my hook, that’s what I’d do,’ Joanna said, pouting at a very bemused-looking Craig, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. Lydia looked over at Will, seated at a table on the other side of the marquee, and being all but smothered between the ample bosoms of a very statuesque lady who would have looked stern if she hadn’t been reduced to a pool of girlish giggles by even the merest hint of Will’s smile.

If she knew for a fact that she wasn’t going to be here tomorrow, she’d walk over there right now and kiss him until he realised he couldn’t live a moment longer without ripping her clothes off.

‘Goodness, Lydia, what are you thinking about?’ Katy asked her, ‘Whatever it is, stop it – there are children present!’

‘Sorry,’ Lydia said, glancing back at Will again as she took her fourth or fifth mince pie and crammed it in one piece into her mouth. Not once had she caught him looking at her, not for the whole day. Why would a man go around kissing a girl and talking about house building, if within a few hours he was going to treat her like they’d never met? It wasn’t on, it really wasn’t.

‘Oh, go on,’ Gracie said, digging Lydia in the ribs with a bony elbow. ‘Go over there and have him.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Lydia looked at her.

‘It’s obvious you’re smitten with him and I saw the way he looked at you when he brought you into the pub. I’ve known that lad since he was in nappies, and in all my years, I’ve never seen him look at a lass the way he looked at you. Proper old fashioned, it was. So what if he’s been giving you the cold shoulder all day, a man’s pride is always his biggest downfall. Go over there and tell you want him and I bet you my pension you’ll get him. The direct approach never fails to work for me.’ Gracie puffed herself up, proudly. ‘I’ve had eighty-six lovers, you know.’

‘Right,’ Lydia spluttered through the remnants of her last mince pie. ‘You know what, Gracie, you’re right. Fuck it, I will, then!’