‘He might try and call you back on your mobile?’

‘He doesn’t know the number. . and that’s not working now either, because I dropped it down the toilet at the hospital.’

‘Oh, yuk! I don’t even want to know how you managed that,’ I said. ‘Or what you did with it afterwards.’

‘It’s in a plastic bag one of the nurses gave me.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll have to get back soon — Grandpa’s very tired and he must be hungry, because I’m ravenous and I don’t want him to get ill, too.’

She sounded as if the cares of the world were on her small shoulders, poor child.

‘Of course, and I’ll come with you,’ I said, and we set out as soon as I’d put more hot soup in the flask and quickly made cheese and tomato sandwiches.

A worried Noël was obviously deeply relieved to see me. ‘It’s very kind of you to come, m’dear. I really didn’t want to be any more of a nuisance.’

‘You’re not a nuisance at all. How is Tilda now?’

‘Furious with me for getting Jess to call the ambulance but she’s still in bed,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Very unlike her, so it must have shaken her up. She says she has a headache too, but insists she will get up later and cook lunch.’

‘It’s nearly teatime, Noël! But I’ve brought hot soup, sandwiches and mince pies that you can all have now. And then do you think you ought to call the doctor about Tilda’s headache?’

‘She won’t hear of it — only takes homeopathic remedies, you know. Never lets illness get the better of her!’ he added proudly.

But there was no homeopathic cure for the encroaching infirmities of old age, which must overtake us all in the end. . There seemed to be only one way of preventing Tilda from trying to carry on as usual and hurting herself even more in the process. .

‘You know, I really think it would be best if you all moved up to Old Place this afternoon and stayed, at least until Tilda is better,’ I said with resignation.

‘Oh yes!’ said Jess eagerly.

‘I had thought of asking, but I really didn’t want to burden you with extra work,’ Noël said anxiously.

‘Not at all: Jess has helped me clean and make the beds already, so it’ll be no trouble at all,’ I lied.

A huge expression of relief crossed his face. ‘If you are sure. . and perhaps you will like the company?’ he suggested, brightening. ‘Jess and I will help you as much as we can, too.’

‘Will Tilda be happy to move up to Old Place?’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure she will.’

‘Then shall I come down in the car in a couple of hours and collect you, when you’ve packed a few things?’

‘No, that’s all right, George will call in later with the newspaper, if it has got through to Little Mumming, and I’m sure he won’t mind bringing us up in his Land Rover.’

‘He seems very obliging and he certainly keeps the drive free of snow!’

‘He’s a very nice chap, is George. He and his son Liam do a good job of keeping the lane clear, and then the folks at Weasel Pot Farm below the village keep the lane on that side ploughed too, though sometimes they have to give up on the last steep bit down to the main road if the snow is too heavy.’ He glanced through the window. ‘If this keeps up, we might well be snowed in for a couple of days.’

‘Then up at the house will be the best place for you — there’s lots of food, it’s warm and if the electricity fails, there’s the generator.’

‘Very true!’ Noël was cheering up by the minute, as was Jess. ‘Well, this will be fun, won’t it? A proper family Christmas at the old home after all!’

‘Yes, won’t that be great?’ I said slightly hollowly.

‘Oh, but I was forgetting — you don’t celebrate it, m’dear?’

‘Not at all, I’m sure it’s going to make a lovely change,’ I said valiantly, and left them to their sandwiches, soup and packing.

As soon as I got home, I started to prepare for my visitors and then George drove them up when it was practically dark in a long-wheelbase Land Rover, together with all their baggage, a carton of perishable foodstuffs, and a huge plastic Santa sack full of wrapped presents.

George Froggat was a tall, well-built, middle-aged man with a mop of pale flaxen hair, a healthily pink face, sky-blue eyes, and an engaging grin. It was just as well that he was built on sturdy lines, because he had to lift Noël down and then he simply scooped Tilda up, carried her in and deposited her on the sofa by the fire in the sitting room.

He came back and shook hands and said he was very pleased to meet me, then helped carry everything else in. He wouldn’t stay for a hot drink, but just as he was going, he said, ‘Nearly forgot, here’s something from me and my family.’ Then he hauled out a Christmas tree bound with sacking from the back of the Land Rover and propped it in the porch.

‘Gosh, that’s almost as tall as I am!’ I exclaimed.

‘Aye, you’re a grand, strapping lass,’ he said approvingly, looking me up and down, then got back into the driving seat. ‘I’ll call in to see how things are going in the morning, or my boy Liam will, when we clear the drive.’

Tilda and Noël were still in the sitting room in front of the fire while Jess, looking martyred, was ferrying luggage upstairs in relays. I could hear the whine of the stairlift, so she wasn’t carrying all of it herself.

‘Would you like tea?’ I asked. ‘Or — maybe something stronger?’

‘Good idea! There’s whisky, gin and brandy in that little cabinet in the dining room, and glasses,’ Noël said.

‘I’m afraid I’ve finished off the brandy,’ I confessed, ‘and the cellar’s locked.’

‘Not surprised you needed it in this weather,’ Noël said. ‘And I’ve got the keys, all right. Jude leaves them with me when he’s away and there’s plenty more down there.’

‘Actually, the brandy was for the Christmas cake, I didn’t drink it.’

‘That should have been made months ago, I told you,’ Tilda piped up disapprovingly in her cut-crystal accent, from the depths of a sofa. Shaken up and bruised or not, she was wearing stiletto-heeled shoes and full makeup, despite being dressed only in a warm coat over her nightdress. I expect they made her feel more herself.

‘It smelled delicious when Holly took it out of the oven,’ Jess said. ‘And we hadn’t got one at all!’

‘I kept thinking Jude wouldn’t be away for Christmas, after all,’ Tilda said, ‘so I put off buying one. But there’s the Dundee cake in a tin that Old Nan always gives us at Christmas, I’ve brought that. Where did you put it, Jess darling?’

‘In the kitchen, with the other food and stuff.’

‘Really, this quick Christmas cake recipe comes out surprisingly well and I thought Jess might help me ice it later,’ I said.

‘Wonderful,’ Noël said, rubbing his hands together. ‘And we can go up into the attic and look out the decorations tomorrow.’ Then his face fell. ‘But I have forgotten, there is no tree. We put up a little artificial one for Jess, but we didn’t think to bring it.’

‘It’s all right, George left one as a gift in the porch,’ I said. ‘I thought it would be better left out there for the moment.’

‘Oh, jolly good! Is it a big one? That always goes in the corner over there by the stairs.’

‘It’s huge,’ I said with resignation. It looked as if I was in for a traditional Christmas whether I wanted one or not, so I might as well just give in right now and go with the flow!

* * *

After tea and mince pies — or whisky and mince pies in Noël’s case — Tilda went upstairs to lie down, using the stairlift under protest, though she was obviously still shaky. When I took her a hot water bottle presently, I found her half-asleep already under the flowered satin eiderdown, though that was probably the exhaustion of directing Jess with the unpacking of the suitcases.

Noël stretched out on the sofa for a nap while Jess and I went into the kitchen and had a fun, if messy, time marzipanning and icing the cake and sticking a lot of old decorations on it that we found in a Bluebird Toffee tin in one of the cupboards. There was a complete set of little plaster Eskimos, sledging, skiing or throwing snowballs, and an igloo.

‘Didn’t you even have a Christmas cake when you were little?’ asked Jess, positioning a polar bear menacingly near one of the Eskimos.

‘No. My gran often made lovely fruit cakes, but she didn’t set out to make a Christmas cake as such.’

‘I think it’s really sad that you never had a tree, or presents or crackers or anything, until you were grown up.’

‘I thought so too, when I was at school,’ I said ruefully. ‘I so envied all my friends! I expect that’s why I went overboard with the whole seasonal gifts, food and decorations thing when I got married. But that isn’t really what Christmas should be about, is it?’

‘But it’s fun!’ she protested. ‘I love everything about Christmas — but not as much as Grandpa. He’s an expert, you know, he’s written a book about it.’

‘Oh yes, I think he mentioned that.’

‘It’s called Auld Christmas, like the pub name, and it’s about ancient traditions being absorbed into new ones and stuff like that, and how the Twelfth Night Revels celebrate the rebirth of the new year and goes back way before Christianity.’

‘Does it? It sounds like you’re an expert too,’ I said, impressed.

‘Oh, Grandpa’s forever going on about it, and my parents have always brought me to Old Place for Christmas, so it’s just sort of seeped in.’ She looked a bit forlorn suddenly. ‘I wish they could be here this time, too, but I do understand. They could hardly fly back from Antarctica just for the Christmas holidays, could they?’

‘No, but they must be missing you an awful lot.’

‘Oh, they’ll be so into what they’re doing they won’t even remember I exist until they get back!’ She sounded tolerant rather than aggrieved by this. ‘But they did record a DVD wishing me Happy Christmas before they went, a bit like the Queen’s message, though Granny says I can’t have it until Christmas Day.’

‘That’s something to look forward to.’

‘Yes, and I don’t mind them not being here so much now we’re staying with you. Christmas is going to be much more fun! You don’t really mind if we have a proper one, do you?’

‘I suppose not, and it’s starting to sound as if I’ll have enough of Christmas this year to make up for all the ones I’ve missed.’

‘And presents, too. I make all mine and I’ve got a wonky one I practised on you can have,’ she said generously.

I couldn’t imagine what she’d made, but I thanked her anyway. ‘I wasn’t expecting anything — I wasn’t even expecting Christmas, come to that! Mind you, I do have one present already, from my best friend.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘She’s my husband’s younger sister and my opposite in every way: tiny, fair and blue-eyed like he was. . but she doesn’t look like him otherwise.’

‘Was your husband short, then? Uncle Jude is a giant.’

‘He was exactly the same height as me — six foot.’

‘That’s tall enough to be a model, except they’re all skinny.’

‘Well, you know what they say: never trust a skinny cook.’

‘Do they?’ She frowned. ‘Oh, I see: it means you don’t love food.’

‘And won’t eat your own cooking!’

When we’d finished and I’d fixed a paper frill (also from the toffee tin) around the cake, I covered it with a large glass dome I’d spotted in one of the old glazed-fronted cupboards that lined one wall of the huge kitchen, then put it in the larder.

‘Now, perhaps we’d better make some more tea and you could take it through while I start dinner. Could you pop up and see if your Granny’s awake and would like some?’

I’d taken some beef mince out of the freezer as soon as I’d got back earlier and now quickly made a large cottage pie and put it in the oven, then cored baking apples to stuff with dried fruit, brown sugar and cinnamon. There was long-life cream, ice cream and a half-used aerosol can of squirty cream that had come from the lodge with the other perishable food. . and when I counted, there were a total of four and a half aerosol tins of sweetened cream, so it must play a large part in their diet!

Tilda had a tray in bed and the rest of us ate around the big pine table in the kitchen. By the time I’d cleared this away and then gone out for one last check on Lady and to give Merlin a run, I was exhausted.

But I still felt on edge, as if waiting for something — and I realised it was Jude’s daily call! In a peculiar way, I sort of missed the adrenaline rush of crossing swords with him, even if he had managed to provoke me into losing my temper on more than one occasion.