The Magic of Christmas (25 page)

‘No, he’s not: he likes you, Mum.’

‘I think I know your uncle Nick by now
and
all his little ways,’ I said firmly.

After dropping Jasper and Ginny off bright and early at the dig next morning, I went home and changed into my oldest jeans, ready to help dismantle the greenhouse.

But the new owner proved to be one of those men who doesn’t recognise any woman’s existence in a business deal and so addressed himself totally to Nick, who was hanging around looking taciturn. I returned to the kitchen and my jam making.

When they had gone and I went out, I found my little domain totally changed, with the last plants that had been inside it pathetically huddling together in the open, as if for warmth.

It was another thing sorted out, though — and the huge TV has already gone, after I put a card in the post office window. On the proceeds, Jasper had chosen a small one with an integral DVD player to take to university with him. I only hoped he was going to work and not spend his entire student loan on films, drink and stuff.

I’d begun to notice that if Jasper was home when Ritch called by, he seemed to be in and out of the kitchen all the time, and having six foot of sardonic teenage youth critically observing him rather cramped Ritch’s flirting. I didn’t know why Jasper disliked him, unless he had joined the ranks of those trying to pair me up with Nick (I was not blind to all the hints various people, including Juno and Mimi, had been dropping), though I could tell them right then that this was only wishful thinking and not a horse that was
ever
going to run.

But clearly everyone saw Ritch as some kind of threat, to either my heart or my virtue (or both), for when Jasper wasn’t there, Caz seemed to be hanging about the yard until Ritch left, instead.

And I was forever finding Nick wandering about the place, as if he owned it … which I supposed he sort of did, come to think of it, though he didn’t own
me
.

In fact, my cottage seemed suddenly to have become one of the most popular spots in the Mosses.

I invented a recipe for potato and nut biscuits, which came out so well I tried making chocolate flapjacks with mash, too.

However, Jasper said they were more like ‘mudflaps’, so a little more experimentation was clearly in order.

The skiing underwear I’d ordered was sitting in a neat brown parcel on my doorstep when I got back from dropping Jasper at the dig one morning, so I went straight upstairs to try it on.

It fitted tightly, but I had quite a job getting the old, stewed-tea-coloured bodystocking on over it (one of us was losing our stretch with age — or maybe
both
of us).

When I looked in the mirror I saw that I presented a strangely padded and seamed appearance, like an unsuccessful home-made Cabbage Patch doll, especially once I got the totally unrealistic flaxen wig out of its storage box and completed the ensemble.

Sexy it was not, and when I heard someone walk into the hall downstairs I nearly
died
: my heart certainly stopped and I went still as a mouse. There was no way I was going to let anyone see me like this!

‘Lizzy?’ called a familiar voice.

‘Oh, thank God!’ I muttered devoutly. I’d quite forgotten I’d arranged for Annie to come over and help me sort out Tom’s clothes and personal stuff, a task I’d been cravenly putting off.

‘Come up — I’m in the bedroom,’ I called.

She clumped upstairs and I turned to face the door, striking a soulful pose and twiddling one long gold ringlet round my fingers.

‘Have you already started?’ she was saying as she walked in. ‘I’m a bit late, I—’

Her jaw dropped and her stunned expression sent me into near hysteria. After a dumbstruck minute she started to giggle too and soon we were both entirely incoherent.

‘So,’ I said finally, trying to wipe the tears from my face with a long tress and finding that nylon wasn’t very absorbent, ‘you
don’t
think I should play the Eve part for laughs, then?’

‘Oh, Lizzy, can you
imagine
Nick’s face if he walked on and saw you like that?’ she said, sitting down on the bed, limp with laughter.

‘I could — but I’d rather freeze to death first!’

‘Well, you can’t possibly, anyway. But perhaps if you bought a new Spandex bodystocking it might be warmer than that old one?’

‘It hardly seems worth the expense when this is the last year I’ll play Eve.’

‘Never mind, you looked stunning, even in the old outfit, last year,’ she said loyally, ‘though quite indecent from a distance!’

‘Speaking of indecent, I don’t know what Nick intends wearing, if anything. Do you?’

‘I asked him, in case he hadn’t given it any thought,’ Annie said innocently. ‘He said he’d ordered footless tights from a ballet-clothing place and would wear his cricket box under them to protect his modesty.’

That conjured up quite a vision … which I hastily dispelled, though not without some difficulty. ‘He’ll freeze,’ I said with conviction. ‘We
both
will!’

‘I expect he’ll be all right, because it’s only a few minutes, the Garden scene, isn’t it? Then you can rush into one of the loose boxes and put your warm clothes back on.’

‘Still, that does it — if he’s going to be half-naked, then I’m not going out there padded up like Michelin woman! A new Spandex outfit it is. I’ve still got some car insurance money.’

I thought I might even go completely mad and get myself a pretty frock, too, for Christmas dinner, which we always had up at Pharamond Hall. I couldn’t remember when I’d last bought myself something new to wear that wasn’t vital, like jeans.

I changed back into ordinary clothes and then we got down to sorting out Tom’s stuff, which I’d collected up and pushed into his wardrobe or drawers out of sight.

‘Jasper’s taken a couple of things — cufflinks, mostly — but the rest can go to the charity shop, or in the recycling bin.’

‘I’ll take it all down to the Animal Shelter shop,’ she offered. ‘I brought the car up rather than walk, in case.’

Tom didn’t have a huge wardrobe of clothes, so it didn’t take long. I was so glad I wasn’t doing it alone, though, because memories, mostly painful, tended to tumble out of every open door and drawer.

‘How are you and Gareth getting on, Annie? You’re seen almost everywhere together, like Siamese twins,’ I teased, once we’d loaded her car and retired to the kitchen for a well-earned cup of coffee and a restorative plate of chocolate slab cake. ‘And the cookery lessons too! Is he teaching you anything in return?’

‘No,’ she said, her face clouding over. ‘Lizzy, I enjoy being with him, but I think he’s just being friendly. I’m that type of girl, aren’t I? Men don’t think of me romantically at all, so I expect I’m exactly like a sister to him!’

‘You daft bat!’ I said, regarding her incredulously. ‘He’s absolutely dotty about you! When he looks at you he has that soppy sheep expression in his eyes, and every time he speaks to you he goes red as a beetroot.
And
he told me he thought you were very pretty!’

‘He didn’t!’ Annie went pink with pleasure.

‘He did.’

She looked at me doubtfully. ‘Then why …? I mean, you must be wrong, Lizzy!’

‘Oh, I’m sure he’s just shy. Encourage him a bit.’

‘I couldn’t possibly! What if he only wants to be friends? Think how embarrassing it would be if I’d made a fool of myself and we had to go on meeting as if nothing had happened …’

‘But you do fancy him, don’t you, Annie? I mean, this
is
love’s young dream and all that?’

‘More love’s not-so-young dream,’ she said ruefully.

‘Rubbish, we’re still thirty-somethings, and that’s a very good age for love.’

‘It might be, but I daren’t risk destroying my friendship with Gareth to find out.’

‘You won’t. You wait and see.’

‘You aren’t going to do anything, are you?’ Her soft, blue-grey eyes looked at me anxiously.

‘No, of course not,’ I reassured her quite untruthfully. ‘I’ll await events to prove me right and then I expect to be matron of honour at the wedding, in a mid-calf-length puce taffeta dress with those puffed shoulders that make you look five feet wide.’

‘Not puce,’ she said seriously. ‘The church carpet and hassocks are scarlet, so it would clash.’ Then she sighed, her eyes refocusing, as though abandoning a beautiful dream. ‘Anyway, enough of
my
boring affairs, Lizzy — what about you? The whole village is talking about the way Ritch Rainford flirts with you!’

‘Oh, come on, you must have realised I’m just a smokescreen for the women he
is
having affairs with, Kylie among others. But I do like him, and I enjoy flirting with him. At least he makes me feel I’m still attractive.’

‘Perhaps, but it’s making Nick jealous, haven’t you noticed?’

I stared at her. ‘Well, yes, but not jealous of me
personally
— he simply doesn’t like Ritch paying attentions to his cousin’s widow. Come to that, he just doesn’t seem to like Ritch. But I’m sure his attitude’s mainly a territorial thing.’

‘I think you’re wrong, and he’s fond of you,’ she said earnestly.

‘Annie! It’s bad enough Juno and Mimi — and now even Jasper — trying to matchmake, without you joining in!’

‘Do they? I hadn’t realised. But there, you see — even the family think it would be a good thing if you got together!’

‘Annie, it’s not going to happen — and it would certainly be a marriage made in hell, not heaven.’

‘I don’t think Nick would agree with you,’ she persisted stubbornly.

I considered it seriously for a minute, remembering the way he’d kissed me once or twice in a most uncousinly manner, and how he’d referred back to our short-lived romance as if he couldn’t understand why it hadn’t worked out … But apart from that, there wasn’t anything to suggest he was harbouring an undying passion for me.

‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘we bicker more than we agree, and drive each other mad: too many cooks again. He might still
fancy
me — I don’t know — but he isn’t in
love
with me.’

‘So you’re just friends — like Gareth and me?’

‘Well, not quite. More sparring partners. The family — and probably the whole village, going by the hints Dora Tombs has been letting fall — just wants a neat and tidy ending: you in the parsonage, me in the Hall, all’s well that ends well. Only life isn’t like that.’

‘I suppose not.’

She sighed sadly, but I was determined that at least her romance would turn out right. All Gareth needed was a bit of encouragement.

That evening Ophelia came round, driven by Caz in his ancient Land Rover (even more ancient than mine and painted with camouflage, just like him sometimes), and to my astonishment asked me if she could buy the quail!

‘You haven’t anywhere to keep them,’ I pointed out, ‘and anyway, what would you do with them? You won’t eat them or the eggs, so you’ll be overrun with male quail in no time.’

‘No she won’t, then,’ Caz drawled, leaning against the bonnet, his khaki hat tipped over his nose.

Really, he’s getting almost loquacious! It must be love. Anyone would think it was spring, the way Cupid’s fiery darts are flying in all directions.

‘There’s the old piggery behind my cottage — I can keep them in that for now,’ Ophelia said, rabbited at her lower lip a bit and added, ‘I’ve decided to become vegetarian while I’m pregnant,
and
eat fish and eggs.’

‘Good idea!’

She gave Caz a half-defiant look: ‘But not flesh of
any
kind!’

What does she think fish are made of?

‘Right, I’ll start including more eggs in your basket of fruit and vegetables. I wasn’t sure if you were eating them or not.’

‘No, no, no, you shouldn’t! It’s too kind and … and I don’t see why you
should
be kind,’ she muttered, her bulging eyes taking on that sainted martyr look. ‘I don’t deserve it.’

‘You may not, but we have to think of the baby. It needs good wholesome food to grow properly.’

‘But you carry it all the way up to my cottage and it must be really heavy!’ She wrung her hands in an anguished sort of way. Let’s hope she is never holding a quail — or, indeed, the baby — when she’s in one of these states. ‘Don’t — please don’t do it any more. Caz says he’ll fetch it.’

‘OK — that will be good. I’ll leave the basket near the eggs in the outbuilding on Monday mornings, how about that?’

I couldn’t really see Caz in the Little Red Riding Hood role with a basket, but that was his problem. Maybe he’d bring a backpack.

She nodded like a car mascot and then added, after another of her lip-chewing ruminations, ‘Thank you for the bottled tomatoes.’

‘I didn’t give you any bottled tomatoes!’

She blinked slowly. ‘Yes, you did. They were on the doorstep last night, with that yellow checked material tied over the lid, like all your jars of stuff.’

‘Gingham? I bought a whole roll of it years ago, and never got to the end of it. But I didn’t leave any jars of anything on your doorstep.’

‘But … it must be you. I don’t know anyone else who bottles tomatoes.’

I had a sudden horrible thought. ‘I know someone who
tried
to,’ I said grimly. ‘Polly Darke! And they gave me botulism or something equally ghastly.’

‘But she’s not … she isn’t … she wouldn’t …’ Ophelia trailed off, and then wrung her skinny hands together again distractedly, her eyelids frantically fluttering.

‘Look, I guessed she was the one who made you do the ARG stuff to me, out of sheer spiteful jealousy. There was no one else it could have been.’