The Christmas Sisters: The Sunday Times top ten feel-good and romantic bestseller!
“I hear your long-term tenant volunteered to be a body.”
“He did, and Bonnie had no trouble finding him.” Posy didn’t bother asking where she’d heard it. Jean was married to the leader of the mountain rescue team, but even if she hadn’t been, the gossip still would have spread. It was the reason Posy was reluctant to have a relationship with anyone locally. She’d done that once, and it had been a disaster. She and Callum were back on speaking terms now, but for years they’d done nothing but glare whenever they’d passed each other, which in a village the size of Glensay was often.
“I wouldn’t have had a hard time finding him, either. There are some folks I’d happily leave under the snow, but that man isn’t one of them. I’d dig him out with my bare hands.” Moira gave a laugh and Posy smiled as she cleared plates from an unoccupied table nearby.
“Moira Dodds, that is the dirtiest laugh I have ever heard. Shame on you.”
Moira sliced into the brownie. “All your girls will be home for Christmas this year, Suzanne?”
“That’s right.” Suzanne wrote a label for the St. Clement’s cake she’d baked that morning. “It’s great Hannah is able to make it.”
Great that her sister had found time in her busy life to finally remember she had a family.
Posy realized she was grinding her teeth and made a conscious effort to relax her jaw. If she ground her teeth every time she thought of her sister, she’d be reduced to chewing her Christmas lunch with her gums.
Jean beamed at Posy. “I bet you can’t wait to see your big sister again.”
Posy beamed back, although it took some effort.
She knew that by the end of it she’d want to drive her sister to the airport early.
Beth would come bearing gifts and goodwill. She’d willingly help with everything and anything.
Hannah would bring emotional turmoil.
Memories of Christmas past grew in Posy’s mind.
There had been the year Hannah had barely left her room except to eat a Christmas lunch that other people had prepared. And the year she’d spent most of the time in the café, not helping as Beth had done, but availing herself of the free Wi-Fi, which was unreliable in the lodge.
Posy didn’t really understand what it was her sister did. The conversations she’d overheard might as well have been conducted in a foreign language. She knew nothing about strategy, economics or five-year plans, but evidently her sister did and people were prepared to pay a great deal for her expertise.
Posy found Hannah a little intimidating, but the root of the problem was that her sister hurt her feelings. Posy was naturally affectionate and Hannah was distant with her.
Jean and Moira went back to their coffee and chat, and Posy strode into the small kitchen and started making up lunch items with Duncan, their chef.
“Today is curried parsnip and winter vegetable.” Duncan pointed to the board and she nodded.
“Got it.” Every day in the café they offered two soups, and they changed daily so that regular visitors didn’t end up eating the same thing.
Posy loved chopping vegetables. There was nothing like attacking something with a sharp knife to let off aggression.
Damn Hannah, she thought as she slaughtered a helpless onion. This year she wasn’t going to let herself be upset. She wasn’t going to be sensitive.
The parsnips suffered the same fate as the onion, as did the potatoes.
Duncan glanced across at her. “Promise me if I ever annoy you, you’ll tell me before you reach for the knife.”
“You have my word on it.” She’d been Duncan’s babysitter when she was a teenager, so seeing him working in the kitchen always made her feel old.
Her life was slipping through her fingers. At this rate she’d still be here when she was ninety, taking the minibus to the store.
With a sigh, she dropped the vegetables into the pot.
She would rather have been climbing a rock face than cooking, but her work as a mountain guide was sporadic, and working in the café brought in an income, as well as helping her mother. It was a family business, and family was everything to Posy. It was a warm blanket on a cold day, a safety net when you fell, a chorus of support when you attempted something hard.
The vegetables and spices were simmering when Suzanne walked into the kitchen.
“I’ve written today’s specials on the board.” She gave the soups a stir. “You should have brought Luke to the café for a bowl of hot soup, poor man.”
“There’s nothing ‘poor’ about him.” Posy rinsed tomatoes. “He has a log burner, a stocked freezer and the facility to heat up his own bowl of soup if that’s what he wants.” And apart from that, her feelings about him were complicated.
Still, Luke’s presence here was temporary, so if something did happen, at least she didn’t have to worry that she’d be bumping into him for the rest of her life.
Posy chopped herbs and sliced tomatoes while her mother helped Duncan with the leek and ham pies.
Suzanne rolled out pastry. “You and Luke seem to be getting along fine.”
Posy threw herbs on the tomato salad. She knew what her mother was asking, and the one thing she had in common with Hannah was that she wasn’t prepared to discuss her love life with her mother. “He’s paying us good money to rent the barn. I make sure I stay on good terms with him.”
And yes, she liked him.
Take this morning. How many men would volunteer to lie buried in snow while patiently waiting for a dog to find them? And he loved mountains, which made him interesting as far as she was concerned.
Right now, he was writing a book on the great climbs of North America.
Posy had never climbed in North America.
Once, when she’d been doing her weekly clean and bedding change in the barn, Luke had come back early and she’d asked him to tell her about Mount Rainier.
“Why do you want to know?”
She wasn’t ready to tell him that. “It’s going in your book?”
“Rainier? Yes.” He opened his laptop and hit a couple of keys.
An image appeared on the screen of a white snowcapped mountain.
She’d seen the same, or similar, before of course, but somehow the fact that it came from his own photo collection made it more real.
She stepped closer, studying the heavily glaciated faces of the mountain. She had so many questions, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to answer any of them. “You’ve climbed it?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own.
“Many times.”
“And it’s a volcano. Dormant, though.”
“We call it episodically active.” He saw her surprised glance. “I worked for the US Geological Survey after I graduated. Lived just outside Seattle. I could see Rainier from my bedroom window.”
She’d almost confided in him then, but something stopped her. She didn’t want to risk him raising it with Suzanne. “Which route did you climb?”
“I’ve climbed all of them, at different times of the year. In the summer you have wildflower meadows. In the winter you find yourself waist deep in snow. You’ve never climbed in the US?”
“No. Scotland, and the Alps.”
“You should come to the US.”
One day, she thought, although she wasn’t sure she was ready for Mount Rainier. Maybe she never would be. Going there would upset her mother.
Posy thought back to that conversation as she made large bowls of salad.
“Hannah emailed me last night,” Suzanne said. “She sent a list of the foods she is avoiding at the moment.”
Posy focused on the salad. If she rolled her eyes, there was every chance they’d be stuck in her skull never to emerge again.
“Right. Well, you’d better forward that email to me so I can adjust my list. What was it she asked for last time? Quail eggs? I found that deli in Edinburgh that did mail order.” And used half the Christmas budget in the process. “If I’d thought about it, I would have explored the possibility of keeping quails.”
“I read somewhere they get easily stressed.”
“And that’s before they meet Hannah.” Posy caught her mother’s eye and swiftly changed the subject. “Talking of our feathered friends, Martha has stopped laying.”
“It’s December.” Suzanne trimmed the pastry with a knife. “Not enough light.”
“I’m using artificial light. I don’t think it’s that.” Maybe Martha knew Hannah was coming home. Maybe she didn’t see the point of laying whole eggs when Hannah ate only the egg white. “I need to give Gareth a call. With a houseful of people, we’re going to need eggs. Normal eggs,” she added. Normal eggs for normal people.
Her mother wiped her hands. “I wish you and Hannah were closer.”
“Me, too.” That part wasn’t a lie. “But she lives so far away.”
That, of course, was only part of the problem.
If her sister had been a laptop, Posy would have run antivirus software because there were times when she was convinced Hannah had been taken over by malware.
Posy considered herself to be tough and hated the fact that her feelings could still be hurt.
Fortunately, she wouldn’t have to handle Hannah alone. Beth, Jason and the girls would be there, too.
Posy and Beth were still close.
There was no drama in Beth’s life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Beth
BETH HAD SETTLED the girls in bed and was clearing toys out of the bath when Jason arrived home. This was her favorite time of day, when the chaos was almost behind her and the prospect of a calm evening stretched ahead. Sometimes she poured herself a glass of wine and allowed herself to read a few pages of a magazine before she started on dinner.
Tonight, she was too excited to contemplate reading anything, but she knew she had to at least let Jason take his coat off before she told him her news.
As she scooped up wet towels, Beth could hear him talking on the phone.
“We nailed it. They loved the ideas. I’m going to talk to Steve in the morning and get those figures sent over. The London office is closed now, but I’ll call first thing tomorrow. I’ll be in the office at six.”
Beth turned off the light. Six would mean a 5:00 a.m. alarm call, which also meant that if the girls disturbed her in the night, which Ruby did with frustrating frequency, Beth would be woken again predawn by her husband.
Trying not to think about her sister flying first-class with her own cubicle and champagne on tap, Beth dealt with the towels and then walked to the living room, where Jason was ending the call.
Soft light bathed the room in a warm glow. She’d cleared away all traces of the toys, tutus and tiaras that had been strewn around the room a few hours earlier. The glossy fashion magazines that were her indulgence were neatly stacked on the table. A vase of lilies added an illusion of elegance only slightly marred by the two Lego bricks peeping out from under the sofa.
Beth loved flowers. She loved their fragility, their femininity. She loved the way they transformed a room and lifted her mood. She associated them with happiness, and she associated them with Jason.
At the beginning of their relationship, he’d bought her flowers every week. Once they’d had the girls and money was tighter, it had happened less often, and the occasions when he’d splurged and brought home a bunch of blooms had been all the more special.
For this brief moment in time the apartment seemed like a child-free zone, an adult-only space, where the conversation of the occupants might revolve round current affairs, travel and Manhattan restaurant experiences rather than debates about whether the next game should be “ballerina” or “firefighter.” A tidy apartment gave Beth the fleeting sense that she was in control, even when she knew she wasn’t. When it came to the kids’ mess, there were many days when she felt as if she was bailing water out of a sinking boat.
Jason ended the call and smiled at her, his face transforming from serious to sexy.
Today he wore a bespoke suit with a black shirt open at the neck. She noticed absently that his hair needed a cut.
They joked together that as Creative Director of the agency his appreciation for design started with himself. This is a creative business, honey, and before I pitch for a brand, I have to pitch myself.
They’d met when Jason had been working on an ad campaign for one of the beauty brands she’d also worked on.
Jason’s star had continued to climb, whereas hers had fallen to earth so hard she was still stepping over the broken fragments.
For a moment she saw the businessman rather than her husband.
This, she thought, was how the people at work saw him. They didn’t see him sprawled with the Sunday papers and a severe case of bedhead. They saw the dynamic creative director of a top Manhattan multimedia agency.
Jason had done well. His boss liked him and he was due another promotion and a fat salary increase.
Beth would have forfeited the extra money to have him home more. It wasn’t only that she would have loved more family time, it was that somewhere along the way she’d lost the feeling they were a partnership, but she was about to address that.
She’d thought all afternoon about the best way to handle the conversation but in the end decided to be straight.
Jason pulled her toward him and kissed her. “How was your day?”
Beth wrapped her arms round his neck. She liked the fact that Jason was only a few inches taller than she was. They fitted perfectly.
“Hannah has canceled tomorrow. Business trip.”
“Does that mean I don’t have to rush home from work for an early dinner?” He let go of her and took off his jacket. “What’s wrong? Has she upset you? This is Hannah, remember? Her canceling is not exactly a surprise, is it?”
It wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t disappointed.
She was about to tell him how she felt when there was a chorus of girlish screams followed by the muted thunder of bare feet as the girls pounded out of their bedroom.
“Daddy, Daddy.” They were so excited it was hard to be annoyed, even though she knew she’d have to settle them again and that meant another hour at least before she could have the conversation she was desperate to have.
“Whoa.” Jason caught Ruby and swung her up high until she squealed. “How’s my girl?”
“Mommy bought me a new fire engine.”
“She did? Another one? So I guess that means you have a whole fleet now.” His gaze snagged Beth’s and she felt herself blush.
Ruby squeezed him tightly. “I want to be a firefighter.”
“You will be a fantastic firefighter. No fire will dare to burn with you nearby.”
“Will you play with me? Can I save you from a burning building?”
“Not now because you’re supposed to be asleep. Maybe tomorrow.”
Melly pressed close to his leg, more reserved than her sister. He set Ruby down and scooped her up. “How’s my other girl?”
Melly laid her head on his shoulder. “Ruby is always telling me what to do.”
Jason laughed. “She has great leadership qualities, don’t you, Ruby? And so do you.”
“I don’t like shouting.”
“Leadership has nothing to do with shouting, honey.” He stroked her hair. “One day you are going to have a very important job and everyone is going to listen to you. You won’t need to shout.”
Beth loved the fact that he never favored one child over the other. She loved the way he was with the girls, even though she knew he got the good parts. If parenting was a meal, then Jason came straight in at dessert, bypassing all other courses including vegetables. He skipped the tantrums, the food fights and the relentless arguments. He also escaped the unique brand of loneliness that came from being at home with young children. Not that she was alone, of course. With two young children, she was rarely alone, but that didn’t stop her feeling lonely. She’d discovered it was an impossible concept to explain to people who weren’t in the same situation.
“If you want to put them back to bed, I’ll finish off dinner.”
“Daddy, will you read us a story?”
“Yes.” Jason caught Beth’s eye. “Why are you looking at me like that? What have I done?”
“I’ve already read them two stories and settled them down. They need sleep.” Also, Beth had been with them all day and she was ready to sit down with a glass of wine. She felt brain dead, which made no sense because these days her brain didn’t get much of a workout.
Jason frowned. “One story won’t hurt, surely? I haven’t seen them all day.”
Three pairs of eyes watched her hopefully. She knew she should say no.
“They need routine, Jason.”
“I know, but just this once.” He leaned across and kissed her, which basically meant she no longer had any say in it, then held out his arms to the girls and carried them back to bed.
Ruby’s voice carried from the bedroom. “Daddy, can I sleep with my new fire engine?”
Beth walked to the kitchen and checked the casserole.
She stirred, adjusted the seasoning, breathing in the cinnamon and spice scent of the warming winter dish. It was one of her mother’s recipes and it reminded her of home.
She loved this time of year. She found the lead-up to the holiday season almost as seductive as the holiday itself. She loved gazing into brightly lit store windows, enjoyed ice-skating in Central Park and their annual trip to the Christmas tree lighting at the Rockefeller Center. The previous year they’d taken the girls to see the New York City Ballet perform The Nutcracker. For once, Ruby had stopped wriggling, hypnotized by the dancers whirling round the stage. Melly had been enchanted, utterly lost in the world of Sugar Plum Fairies and glistening snowflakes, all her princess fantasies coming true to Tchaikovsky’s romantic score.
Even Jason, who had previously declared he’d rather stand in Times Square buck naked than go to the ballet, had admitted the evening had been magical. What he was really saying, of course, was that watching the faces of his children had been magical.
I love these moments, he’d said as they’d walked along snow-dusted streets to a small bistro with fogged windows and fairy lights that had been bathed in so much festive atmosphere Ruby asked if Santa would be arriving soon.
Beth loved those moments, too, but the difference was that Jason only had those moments.
He had the bathed, excited, scrubbed, fantasy version of parenthood.
She had the reality.
Was it wrong of her to want more?
By the time Jason joined her, she had laid the table and warmed the plates.
“They’re growing up fast.” He’d taken a quick shower and changed out of his suit. Dressed in jeans and a black sweater, he looked younger. Less the ambitious creative, and more the man she’d married. “Something smells good. What are we having?”
“Lamb. I was going to cook it for Hannah tomorrow, but since she isn’t coming—” She shrugged and picked up one of the plates.
“Hannah’s loss is my gain.”
Beth spooned rice onto a plate, added a generous portion of casserole and passed it to him. She didn’t want to think about Hannah.
“How was your day? How was the pitch?” She held on to her own news, wanting to pick exactly the right moment.
“It was good.” He waited for her to serve herself and then picked up his fork. “Sam called me into his office today.”
Sam was Jason’s boss. “What did he want?”
“Conrad Bennett is leaving.”
“Leaving?” Beth toyed with her food. It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in his office gossip, but all she could think about was the phone call she’d had earlier. “But he’s Chief Creative Director. Why would he leave?”
“He’s setting up his own agency, and you know what that means—”
“He’s taking you with him?”
“No. Better than that.” Jason picked up his wine and raised the glass in a toast. “I’m being offered his job.”
Beth gave a squeal. “You got a promotion?” She ignored the little voice in her head shouting out that this conversation was supposed to be about her career, not Jason’s.
“In the last year I’ve brought in more clients than any other member of the agency.”
She wondered what the promotion would mean for her and felt guilty for being selfish. “Chief Creative Director. I’m proud of you.” And she was. Was it wrong that she was also a teeny bit jealous?
There was a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “Yes. It’s the best Christmas gift. And talking of Christmas gifts, tell me what you’d like and it’s yours. New dress? Coat? Sexy boots? Think about it and write a letter to Santa.”
I’d like to go back to work.
She’d counted on Jason adapting his schedule to finish work early a couple of days a week. She’d counted on him being there for the girls. It was as if he had mapped out his future and forgotten her.
“It was a shock, although a good shock, obviously—” he dug his fork in the rice “—but it got me thinking about you. About us, and our future.”
The vague feeling of resentment floated away, leaving warmth in its place.
“I’ve been thinking about us, too.” She took a mouthful of wine. “There’s something I need to say to you, and I’d like you to hear me out before you speak. We talked about it a while ago, but not recently.” Nerves fluttered in her stomach. She had no idea what his reaction was going to be.
“Stop.” Jason reached out and covered her hand with his. “I know what you’re about to say.”
“You do?”
“Yes. It didn’t seem worth mentioning again when the girls were little and such a handful, but they’re older now and you have more time on your hands.”
It hadn’t occurred to her that this might be easy. “You’ve been thinking about it, too?”
“It’s perfect timing for our family.” He went back to his food. “This is delicious, by the way. You’re a great cook, Beth. In fact, you’re great at pretty much everything.”
Did he realize exactly what it would entail? “If we did this, I’d be under a lot more pressure. I thought perhaps your mother might help out. And you’d have to help more. You wouldn’t mind?”
“We’re a team, Beth. And of course my mother will help. Try keeping her away. She’ll be as excited as I am.” He helped himself to more rice. “The timing of these things is never perfect, but this is about as perfect as it gets. We should go for it.”
She felt a rush of elation.
She should have talked to him sooner. She should have mentioned how lonely she was, and how she’d felt her skills and confidence slowly draining away. She was touched that he’d noticed she needed more. “How would this fit with your promotion?”
“Sam knows the score. I’m a father. Sometimes I need to be there for my family. I can juggle work and home. I’ve been doing it for years. It’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t leave the company. It has a great culture.”
Was juggling the right word? She knew that for her to work, too, they were going to need to display more juggling skills than a circus performer.
“It’s going to be a big change for us as a family, but I know we can make this work. I’m excited.”
“Me, too. I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too.” Tears stung her eyes. She was so very lucky to be married to him. “Do you think the girls will be okay with it? I feel guilty.” She was desperate for reassurance that she wasn’t a bad mother. “I’m worried they’ll think they’re not enough.”
“It will be great for the girls. So they’ll have a little less of you…” He reached for his wine and shrugged. “Quality, not quantity, right?”
Beth shifted in her seat.
Did the girls have quality?
There were days when she felt the best she achieved was to hold it all together, but right now she was feeling too euphoric to indulge in a session of maternal self-flagellation.
Jason stood up and cleared the plates, and she followed him into the kitchen and fetched dessert.
Was it too late to call Kelly back tonight?