A Christmas Cracker: The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!. Trisha Ashley

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      ‘She’s my Girl Friday and very artistic, so I hope she’s going to come up with some great ideas to liven up Marwood’s crackers. I’ll be taking her down to the mill after breakfast and introducing her to everybody.’

      Freda shook her head. ‘The others aren’t likely to take to being livened up.’

      ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Mercy said briskly. ‘I’ll call a meeting as soon as Tabby’s had time to think things over, and I’ll want you and Job to be there, too.’

      ‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away,’ Freda declared. ‘Right, I’m off to the supermarket for a few things and I’ve got the list off the fridge. Was there anything else you was wanting?’

      ‘Did I put crumpets on there? You can’t get a crumpet in Malawi,’ Mercy explained to me. ‘One of the things I most missed, along with a bit of fried bacon and a potato cake.’

      Freda took the list and went. Our conversation had certainly been illuminating. I was also starting to understand some of the problems Mercy might face in making changes, when everything had been the same for so long.

      My new employer was now getting out eggs and bacon and a frying pan. ‘I thought we’d have a good cooked breakfast this morning, to set us up before we start,’ she said, tying on a tartan pinny.

      She wouldn’t let me help her cook it, but effortlessly produced eggs, bacon, and potato cakes cooked in the fat, with half a grilled tomato, which was delicious.

      While we were eating, I confessed I’d used the expensive French soap in the shower, plus the robe and towels.

      ‘Well, of course you did, dear – I put them there for your use,’ she said. ‘Consider yourself as part of the family while you’re under my roof. And I constantly get soaps for Christmas, but there are only so many bars one person can get through in a lifetime.’

      ‘You are so kind,’ I told her, tears coming to my eyes.

      ‘Not at all – you’ll be doing me a kindness, and it’s so lovely to have a young person under my roof again.’

      ‘I’m not that young,’ I said. ‘I’ve just turned thirty-seven.’

      ‘So has my nephew, Randal – what a coincidence! My goddaughter, Liz – short for Liziuzayani, did I tell you about her? – usually stays here in the school holidays and it will be so nice for her to have some younger company.’

      ‘How old is she?’

      ‘Sixteen, and I have her at a very nice Quaker boarding school near Pontefract. She wants to be a doctor and is a very serious kind of girl. Other than that, our only other regular visitor is my nephew and he’s back now from wherever it was he went – I forget – and wants to come and discuss his plans with me next week. I expect we’ll have all kinds of suggestions of our own to make by then, won’t we?’

      She beamed, obviously relishing the challenge.

      ‘First, a quick tour of the house,’ she said, when we’d stacked our crockery in the capacious dishwasher. ‘It won’t take long because, as I told you, it’s not huge.’

      ‘It seems very big to me.’

      Pye, who’d been hanging around in the hope of sharing our breakfast, elected to accompany us.

      ‘Now, you’ve seen this wing, though you may not have noticed that that door there in the passage isn’t another cupboard or storeroom, but leads down to the cellars – there’s electric light down there and the boiler …’ She shut the door again. ‘And you’ve been upstairs to the bathroom, so you could see that all the bedrooms and two more bathrooms are off it. At the far end, past the top of the main stairs, you come to my nephew’s rooms in the east wing. When my husband died, I thought it fitting to give them over to Randal, since all would one day be his. Mine is the Rose Room – there’s a little plaque on all the doors of the main bedrooms – should you need me in the night.’

      We went through the dining room, where Mercy opened a door in the panelling to let me peep into a small parlour that looked out at the back.

      ‘The ladies of the house used to like to sit here in the mornings, I’m told, but it isn’t much used now unless I’m doing some sewing and want to be out of the way. I store any old sewing machines in there as I collect them, too, until I have enough to send out to Malawi.’

      In the drawing room, the dark, shadowed corners had been dispelled by the bright rays of sunshine that were falling through the mullioned windows and warming the muted but lovely colours of the carpet.

      ‘Now, as you saw last night, this passage with the stairway leads from front to back of the house – we think it’s the oldest part, because that was the way the houses were built then, with the family in one side and the animals in the other. But you can explore the garden later. Bradley keeps it tidy, he’s keen on gardening, but it’s not extensive.’

      She opened yet another door. ‘This is the library, which my nephew seems to favour quite a bit. Are you a great reader?’

      ‘Yes – in fact, I got most of my education by working my way through the small branch library near my home as a child, because I had to miss quite a bit of school and we didn’t have much money to buy books.’

      ‘The public libraries are a great asset that should be cherished,’ she said. ‘Silas’s apartment is down that corridor, but we won’t disturb him. He has a small sitting room, bedroom and a tiny kitchenette, where he can make himself a hot drink or a snack, if he can be bothered. And there are the usual offices – the wing was extended at the back in the days when listed buildings were not beset by all these silly rules.’

      ‘What does he do all day?’ I asked curiously.

      ‘He’s compiling a genealogy of our family, the Fells, and also the Marwoods. The internet has speeded up that kind of research remarkably in the last few years.’

      ‘You can get on the internet here?’

      ‘Yes, though it’s far from fast. In fact, Freda usually does the main weekly supermarket shop via the internet and it’s all delivered – so convenient, just like when I was a little girl and the tradesmen brought what you ordered round in a van.’

      ‘I suppose it is,’ I agreed, thinking how wrong I’d been to equate age with a lack of computer skills. I suspected I was in for a surprise, and so it was.

      ‘Job went on an evening course for beginning computing and passed on what he learned to Silas, and Freda seems to have a natural bent for it. But there, I picked it all up from young colleagues out in Malawi, so it’s not at all difficult. When my ward, Liz, is home she keeps me up to date on all the latest technology.’

      ‘I think you’re probably more up to date than me, then,’ I said ruefully. ‘Jeremy – my ex fiancé – had an old laptop he gave me, but I notice it wasn’t packed up with the rest of my things, so he must have kept it. And my phone’s just a basic pay-as-you go one.’

      ‘You can use the desktop in the library – the password is stuck to a piece of paper under the mouse,’ she offered.

      ‘Thank you,’ I said, though I didn’t know СКАЧАТЬ