Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

‘Shop ones?’ sniffed Tilda, as I took the cake out of the oven and turned it out on the cooling rack.

‘No, ones I made myself.’

Becca returned and by unspoken agreement we had our tea at the kitchen table, leaving Coco as sole occupant of the sitting room, though I did offer her a cup of tea and a scone when I took Noël’s through to the parlour, which she rejected with evident loathing.

Tilda asked me what we were having for dinner and approved my choice of sausage and mash.

‘Good wholesome winter food!’

‘I’ve made sardine pâté for a starter. I thought we could have that in the sitting room on a tray.’

‘And what about dessert?’

‘It’s either a raspberry Eton Mess, or alternatively there are some overripe bananas that the Chirks left, so I could do cold banana custards or bananas in rum, with cream. What do you think?’

‘Oh, custards. With just a teeny sprinkle of nutmeg on each one.’

‘If you say so,’ I agreed. Along with squirty cream, nutmeg and paprika seemed to feature largely in the foodstuffs Tilda had brought from the lodge to add to the catering supplies. ‘In fact, I’d better do those now, so they will be chilled by dinner time.’

While I was making the custard, Tilda helpfully sliced up the bananas and put them in the ramekins, talking about her past glories on TV, especially her wonderful series on canapés, on the subject of which she had enlightened the nation.

‘You have no need to worry about canapés while I am here,’ she said generously.

‘Well, that’s a huge weight off my mind,’ I assured her.

‘I’d better call Jess in,’ Becca said. ‘I’d forgotten she was still sledging and it’s pitch black out there, though of course the light bounces off the snow. But she must be cold by now.’

While she went to fetch her in, I asked Tilda whether Jess was having a Christmas stocking or not.

‘She had one last year,’ Tilda said, ‘but Roz — my daughter — didn’t mention it to me, though she did leave Jess’s presents. She might have forgotten about the stocking, because she is the scattiest creature. Or perhaps Jess is too old?’

‘Mrs Comfort said they are never too old, so I got a few things from her to make one up, in case.’

‘Oh well — you carry on with that, then,’ she ordered autocratically, as Jess came in with red cheeks and covered in snow, and was sent straight back out into the passage to remove her coat and wellies.

Luckily Coco retired to her bedroom once it was ready for her, so everyone could go back into the sitting room for a pre-dinner drink and warm-through by the fire, which got them from underfoot while I cleared and laid the kitchen table for dinner.

Now there were so many of us, I suppose it would have made sense to have used the dining room, but I felt too tired to be traipsing to and fro with hot dishes: no, the kitchen would have to do. And with a bit of luck and perhaps an overnight thaw, maybe I could get rid of Guy and Coco in the morning. Getting Coco safely home again was his responsibility, after all, and I didn’t want him here either, charm though he might.

He was so not my type, but if Ned Martland was anything like Guy, then I could see why poor Gran fell for him, and not surprised that he now seemed to be playing fast and loose with her.

I popped upstairs to apply a little makeup, brush my hair and change my jeans for smarter black crepe trousers and a dark red tunic top with a beaded neckline: last night both Becca and Tilda had come down for dinner in long skirts, though since Noël and Jess hadn’t changed at all, that might have been more for comfort than anything.

Of course, I don’t bother what I wear when cooking for house-parties, because I don’t eat with the clients then, but in the kitchen. However, now we were all to eat in the kitchen.

The family were gathered together in the sitting room when I went through with the pâté and French toast starter on a tray. Tilda and Becca were in their long skirts again and Noël was now wearing a Tattersall check shirt under a rubbed dark blue velvet smoking jacket, while Guy, in oatmeal cashmere, looked like an advert for upmarket men’s clothing. Jess had an endless supply of black jeans and tops, so it was impossible to tell whether she had changed or not. She was sitting at the table by the window, doing something fiddly with scraps of paper.

‘Let me take that for you, it looks terribly heavy,’ Noël said, starting to get to his feet as if I was some fragile creature, rather than a six-foot Amazon.

‘No — do let me,’ offered Guy with a ravishing smile, preempting him. He put it down on the coffee table and asked me, ‘Would you like a drink? Sherry, gin and tonic? Name your poison.’

‘No thanks, I’m not much of a drinker, especially when I’m cooking. Is Miss Lanyon coming down for dinner?’

‘Coco — and you must call me Guy, because I feel we’re on intimate terms already, now all my dirty washing has been dragged out in front of you.’

‘I’m sure we all know much more about your private affairs after today than we ever wanted to,’ Tilda said severely. ‘So, is your young woman going to grace us with her presence this evening?’

‘She’s not my young woman, Tilda, and I’ve no idea.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past her,’ Becca said, ‘though I’m sure we are all quite sick of the sight of her. I was actually grateful to you when you went off with her last Christmas, Guy — think how awful it would have been if she’d married Jude and settled here!’

‘Actually, I think it was the thought of spending most of the year here that put her off Jude before she even set eyes on me,’ Guy said dispassionately. ‘She’s not a country girl and she has her eyes firmly set on her career.’

‘If you can call prancing up and down a catwalk half-naked a career,’ Tilda commented acidly.

‘She’s trying to break into acting too,’ he said and just at that moment the door swung open and Coco stood revealed, a vision of angularly icy beauty. She is so pretty she is unreal and I’m not at all surprised that Guy and Jude fell for her.

She held her catwalk pose long enough for us all to take in the one-shouldered, slinky, nude-silk trousered garment that she was almost wearing. I sincerely hoped the slashed top part was held on with boob tape, because otherwise she would be in serious danger of dangling her little dumplings in the dinner.

‘Here you all are,’ she said gaily, then directed a dazzling smile at Guy. ‘Darling, get me a drink, won’t you? You know what I like.’

Clearly she’d regrouped and was now changing tactics to one aimed at luring back her errant lover.

‘You’re going to catch your death in that outfit,’ Becca observed. ‘Have you got it on the right way round?’

‘Of course! It’s supposed to look like this,’ she said indignantly.

‘Then I’d better lend you a cardigan — Tilda’s won’t be big enough.’

‘Oh, I’m quite warm enough, thank you!’ Standing close to Guy as she accepted her drink, she laid a hand on his arm and said seductively, ‘If not, Guy can warm me up, can’t you, darling?’

‘Oh yuk! Horlicks is getting soppy,’ Jess said disgustedly.

‘Do all help yourselves to the starter and I’ll call you through into the kitchen when dinner’s ready,’ I said, making a neat exit.

‘Aren’t we eating in the dining room?’ I heard Coco ask piercingly as I went out again. ‘Why do we have to eat in the kitchen, with the help?’

That comment hardly endeared her to me and nor did her announcement, once we were seated at the table, that she didn’t eat carbs.

‘Or any kind of processed food,’ she added, looking at the dish of sausages with something akin to horror.

‘These are extremely good sausages I found in the freezer,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid if you want something else, you’ll have to cook it yourself.’

Coco looked at me with dropped jaw. ‘Me? Why can’t you do it? That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?’

‘No, it isn’t!’ Becca told her.

‘That’s right, Holly isn’t our resident housekeeper and cook, you know, she only came here to look after the house and animals while Jude was away,’ Noël said gently. ‘She isn’t employed to cook or look after his family as well, and is only doing it from the kindness of her heart. And we are all very grateful.’ He gave me one of his charming, lopsided smiles.

‘Not at all, I’m sure we’re going to have a lovely Christmas,’ I lied. ‘Much more fun than being on my own.’

‘And this food is wonderful,’ Guy said, tucking into his mustard mash with gusto. ‘You can cook as well as look stunning, so you’re everything I ever wanted in a woman: will you marry me?’

Jess giggled but Coco shot daggers at both of us, even though he was just playing the fool.

‘On your past track record, no.’

‘That told him,’ Becca said.

‘I must say, you have cooked this very nicely,’ Tilda said. ‘And the pâté was lovely too — simple but good.’

‘Hearty plain food is the best,’ agreed Becca. ‘I’ll eat Coco’s sausages and mash if she doesn’t want them.’

‘Not if I get there first,’ Guy told her with a grin.

‘Or perhaps Jess should have them: she needs to keep her strength up if she’s helping me with the horses,’ Becca suggested. ‘Luckily, she appears to have outgrown her allergy to them.’

Jess gave her a dirty look, but she seemed to be putting away her dinner without any difficulty, even though I’d spotted a crumpled scatter of silvery chocolate tree decoration wrappers on the table where she’d been doing her origami earlier.

‘I have to eat something,’ Coco said sulkily and helped herself to one sausage, a bare teaspoon of mash, and a microscopically small fragment of carrot.

The room went dark again, just for an instant.

‘Why do the lights keep doing that? The electricity isn’t going to go off, is it?’ Coco asked nervously. ‘I’d hate that, because I’m sure this house is haunted.’

‘Don’t worry, if it does the generator will take over,’ I said soothingly. ‘And if it doesn’t, the gardener showed me how to switch it on manually.’

‘Henry did?’ said Noël, opening his eyes wide. ‘He has never let me anywhere near it.’

‘Or me,’ said Guy. ‘Not that I want to, I’m not at all mechanically minded, unlike Jude.’

‘You’re the kiss of death to all machinery,’ Tilda told her husband. ‘Look what you did to the Magimix.’

‘I did fly aeroplanes during the war, m’dear, so you can’t say I am hopeless with all machinery.’

‘That was entirely different,’ she snapped and I could see she was tired out and hoped she would go to bed right after dinner. I think the fall must have shaken her up much more than she was letting on, though at least her eye was now only faintly rimmed with a yellow and blue bruise.

Predictably, Coco spurned the banana custards I’d made for dessert and said she would go and smoke a cigarette in the sitting room until we came through with coffee.

‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid this is a no-smoking household: it said so clearly in the owner’s information folder,’ I said apologetically.

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she snapped, ‘and anyway, Jude isn’t here to see!’

‘That’s immaterial: I’m responsible for the house until he returns and must follow his instructions.’

‘Yes, and we agree with Jude, so you’ll have to do it in the porch like last Christmas,’ Tilda told her.

‘But I’ll freeze!’

‘You certainly will in that garment,’ agreed Becca. ‘I’d go and put something more sensible on, first.’

‘I haven’t got anything sensible,’ she said sulkily. ‘Well, the coat and hat you arrived in, then.’

‘Yes, and that’s another thing — my white coat cost me a fortune and after being in that tractor it’s never going to come clean again!’

She flounced out and I think we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

‘I expect she will just go and smoke in her room instead, she’s that kind of person,’ Becca said. ‘Really, Guy, we could have done without her here, she is such a drag. I don’t know what you and Jude ever saw in her.’