Christmas at Strand House: A gorgeously uplifting festive romance!. Linda Mitchelmore

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СКАЧАТЬ over an ankle-length paisley dress, the background of which was an identical shade of red. A floral bag – mostly shades of red – was hooked over one shoulder. Claret-coloured heels completed the look.

      Standing in the hall in faded jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt with her ancient but comfy Ugg-boot slippers on, she’d been hanging Christmas decorations with Janey when Bobbie rang the bell. Janey had excused herself and rushed upstairs saying she’d leave Lissy to welcome her guest. Lissy had never felt so frumpy in her life.

      ‘Darling, do relax,’ Bobbie laughed. ‘It’s only me. This room will be more than fine. I’m just glad to be here, to be honest. Christmas almost always is a solo affair for me.’

      ‘Oh, any reason?’ Lissy asked.

      ‘A few,’ Bobbie said, the smile sliding from her face. ‘But you don’t want to hear them. I promise to be full of ho-ho-ho and good cheer, and – hopefully – a few glasses of something seeing as it’s Christmas. But before you even think about getting the violins out and feeling sorry for me, the reason I’m usually alone at Christmas is choice, mostly. Work sometimes. That is all!’

      ‘Okay,’ Lissy said. ‘Violin is back in its case.’

      Bobbie was being so very Bobbie, able to take control of a situation in the blink of an eye. Lissy had a feeling there was another reason Bobbie chose to spend Christmas alone but she wasn’t going to ask.

      ‘Good. And lose the bow!’ Bobbie said with a giggle.

      ‘Already have,’ Lissy joked back. ‘But if, you know, there’s something you want or need to say then … well, you can guess the rest and …’

      ‘I’ll keep you posted.’ Bobbie shrugged herself out of her coat, and Lissy marvelled at how even that was a glamourous, catwalk sort of gesture. ‘This room really is fine and I don’t expect to be fighting Xander for it when he turns up because you are absolutely right – men usually aren’t fussed about what room they have or the view.’ She lifted the smallest case onto the bed. ‘I have brought rather a lot of luggage, haven’t I?’ Bobbie laughed. ‘But you did say to stop for four nights so I’ve packed accordingly. I hope it didn’t give that rather scrumptious taxi driver a hernia carrying it all in.’

      ‘Oh God,’ Lissy said. ‘I ought to have invited him in for a cup of tea or something before he started on the return journey.’

      ‘He had a couple of flasks of tea and a packet of sandwiches. We stopped a couple of times for comfort breaks as well, so don’t worry. He was keen to get back to his kids.’

      ‘Yeah, Christmas is for kids really, isn’t it? Anyway, we haven’t got any, have we? None of us has, you or me, Janey or Xander. We’ll have to play at being big kids for a few days, won’t we? So if this room is okay, I’ll leave you to unpack. Join Janey and me when you’re ready. Ah, is that the gentle tones of my Waitrose delivery arriving?’ Lissy went to the window and peered down onto the drive. ‘It is so. So now we’ll all be able to eat!’

       And in a minute I should have relaxed a bit and begun to sound more like me and not someone out of a film out of the Fifties – all perfect diction and political correctness. It’s only Christmas for heaven’s sake and you’ve cooked enough Christmas dinners and made enough mince pies and poured enough cocktails to know how to do it properly.

      ‘I’m glad you like the room, Bobbie. Really glad.’ She was glad now she’d taken the trouble to pick a few bits and pieces from the garden that had berries on and add a white rose bud from the bunches she and Janey had bought in town. In a rush of affection for her friend she enveloped her in a big hug, a hug Bobbie returned with rather less pressure than Lissy. And when Lissy pulled back and looked at her friend there was something about the guarded look in her eyes, and the way she nodded instead of answering her question – as though she couldn’t trust herself to speak at that moment – that told Lissy she had said the wrong thing. But what?

       Chapter 6

      Xander

      ‘Christmas, Felix, who’d have it? It’s a woman’s thing. Claire loved Christmas, didn’t she?’

      Xander reached to fondle the soft fur of Felix’s head, smoothing the palm of his hand over it, gently circling the cat’s ears with his fingers. Sometimes Xander wondered how he would have managed after Claire’s death if he hadn’t had Felix around – another body to touch, someone to talk to.

      ‘Not a very original name I gave you, is it?’

      But Felix had seemed appropriate at the time when Claire had come home with him. One of her students – Sandy, if Xander’s memory served him well – in the fitness classes she ran had come in with a kitten that her father said he would put down if no one wanted it because they already had too many cats in the house. Sandy had begged someone to give it a home. So Claire had. She’d arrived home with it in a cardboard box sealed with masking tape, and some holes punched in it so the cat could breathe, that old Arthur from the newsagent on Manor Corner had given her.

      Xander remembered, still stroking the cat, how he’d laughed because the cat had looked like a living version of the cartoon cat in the Felix cat food adverts. So Felix he had become. And now Xander was reluctant to leave him for four days even though it was only a mile along the prom from his cottage to Strand House.

      ‘I could pop home every day to see you, old boy, if you like.’

      Felix purred, pushed his head further into Xander’s hand as if to say, ‘How could you give up on all this affection I’m dishing out, man? Abandon me if you must. Leave me to Eve Benson’s ministrations if you must.’

      ‘I know it’s no hardship having Eve look after you. And don’t think for a second, I don’t know you spend half your day in her house anyway, because I do.’ Xander increased the pressure of his hand on Felix’s head and then ran it along the full length of the cat’s back. Felix stirred, stood up, stretched. ‘Had enough of that then, have you, old chap?’

      Xander stood up too and began clearing his lunch things. There was no need for him to be at Strand House until five o’clock. And what a surprise that had been, to get Lissy’s invite to spend Christmas there with her, and Janey and Bobbie. He knew Lissy, of course, because she’d been of Claire’s oldest friends, but Janey and Bobbie he’d only met the once – at Claire’s funeral. It had been kind of them to come but in all honesty, he couldn’t remember them. He’d probably pass them in the street as though they were strangers. Had he, he wondered, made a grave mistake accepting Lissy’s invitation? What did any of them have in common? What would he talk to them about? It wouldn’t add anything to the festive spirit, would it, if he said he’d been mourning Claire so long he never thought he was going to feel like himself ever again and that his building business was suffering. Really suffering. A few days ago, he’d been called in to see his bank manager and been told that his overdraft could not be increased. It was only a small business and if he’d been the sole workforce then he could sell his cottage, find a flat somewhere for him and Felix, pay off his debts. But he wasn’t the sole workforce; there were Tom, Josh, and Ethan in the equation too. Each with families to support. Ah yes, families. How he wished now that he and Claire had had one because then he’d have someone who looked like her around, someone who had her genes, the essence of her. But Claire hadn’t wanted children.

      ‘I wouldn’t have minded СКАЧАТЬ