Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

‘I expect Ellen’s forgotten that you weren’t brought up to celebrate Christmas in the same way as everyone else, too.’

Laura and I go way back to infant school, so she understands my slightly strange upbringing, but Ellen only came on the scene later, at the comprehensive (and though she denies it now, she tagged on to the group of girls who bullied me because of my height).

‘No, the Strange Baptists think the trappings of the season are all pagan manifestations of man’s fall from spiritual grace — though Gran could play a mean Christmas hymn on the harmonium.’

Laura looked at the space opposite, where the instrument had always stood against the magnolia blown-vinyl wallpaper. ‘I don’t know how you managed to fit that harmonium into your tiny cottage, I bet it weighed a ton even though it wasn’t very big.’

‘It did, but I was determined to have it because it was Gran’s pride and joy — the only time she seemed happy was when she was playing it. It just fitted into the space under the stairs.’

I hadn’t kept a lot, otherwise: the pink satin eiderdown that had covered my narrow bed as a child and two austere cross- stitch samplers sewn by my great-grandmother. One said, ‘Strange are the ways of the Lord’ and the other, ‘That He may do His work, His strange work’. That was about it.

What was left was a motley collection of cheap utility furniture, battered enamel and aluminium saucepans and the like, which were being collected by a house clearance firm.

The house had been immaculate, apart from a little dust, and Gran had never been a hoarder, so there hadn’t been that much to sort out. Her clothes had already been packed and collected by a local charity and all that was left now to put in my car was a cardboard box of neatly filed household papers.

‘I think I’m just about finished here,’ I said, taking a biscuit from the packet Laura had brought, though Garibaldi are not actually my favourite — a bit too crushed-fly looking. ‘So, are you going to call this baby Garibaldi, then?’

Now, this was not such a daft question as you might suppose, since during her last pregnancy Laura had been addicted to Mars bars and she had called her baby boy Mars. He should thank his lucky stars it hadn’t been Twix or Flake.

She giggled. ‘No way! But if it’s a girl we might call it Holly after you, even though it will be a very early spring, rather than a Christmas, baby.’

I hated my name (my late mother’s choice), but I was quite touched. ‘I suppose it would be better than Garibaldi,’ I conceded, ‘especially for a girl.’

I took a sip of the pale, fragrant tea, which was the Earl Grey that Laura had brought with her, rather than the Yorkshire tea that Gran had always made strong enough to stand a spoon in. ‘The van will be here any minute, so we’ve just got the box of papers to stick in my car and we’re done. The meter reader came while you were in the kitchen, so I expect the electricity will be turned off any minute now, too.’

As if on cue, the dim bulb in its mottled glass shade went out and left us in the gathering shadows of a December afternoon.

‘ “Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,”’ I sang sepulchrally.

‘You know a hymn for every occasion.’

‘So would you, if you’d been brought up by a Strange Baptist.’

‘Still, it’s just as well you’d finished sorting out,’ Laura said. ‘She wasn’t a great hoarder, your gran, was she?’

‘No, apart from the few mementoes in that tin trunk I took home — and I’ve been reading a bit more in that sort of diary I told you I’d found. Some of it is fascinating, but you have to wade through lots of Victorian-sounding moralising in between.’

‘You could skip those bits?’ she suggested.

‘I thought about it, then decided I wanted to read it all, because I never felt I really knew her and it might give me some insight into what made her tick.’

‘She was certainly very reserved and austere,’ Laura agreed, looking round the sparsely furnished room, ‘and frugal: but that was probably her upbringing.’

‘Yes, if ever I wanted to buy her a present, she always said she had everything she needed. She could never resist Yardley’s lavender soap, though, but that was about as tempted by the lures of the flesh as she ever got.’

‘She was very proud of you, having your own house and career.’

‘I suppose she was, though she would have preferred me to train to be a teacher, like you and Alan — she didn’t consider cooking much above skivvying. And when I left the restaurant and signed up to Homebodies instead, she thought cooking for large house-parties in the summer and looking after people’s properties and pets in the winter was just like going into service.’

‘It’s worked very well though, hasn’t it? You get paid so much for the summer jobs that you can take the poorly paid home-sitting ones in the winter.’

‘They’re more for a change of scene and a rest, so staying rent free in someone else’s house suits me fine: I get to see a different bit of the country and they get their house and pets taken care of, so they can enjoy their hols without any worries.’

‘But now your next home-sitting job has fallen through, you could spend Christmas Day with us, couldn’t you?’ she suggested. ‘We’re going over to Mum and Dad’s for dinner and Mum is always saying she hardly sees you any more.’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t!’ I said with more haste than tact.

‘It would be better than staying home alone — and I’ve just invited my cousin Sam to stay. His divorce has been finalised and he’s at a loose end. You got on so well when you met in the summer and went on that date.’

‘Laura, that wasn’t a date, we just both wanted to see the same film. And he’s at least a foot shorter than me.’

‘That’s a gross exaggeration — a couple of inches, at most! Anyway, he said he liked a woman who knew her own mind and the way you wore your hair made him think of Nefertiti.’

‘Did he?’ I said doubtfully. My hair is black, thick and straight and I keep it in a sort of long, smooth bob that curves forwards at the sides like wings. ‘I expect he was just being kind. Not many men want to go out with someone taller than themselves.’

‘They might if you ever gave them the chance, Holly!’

‘There’s no point: I met my Mr Right and I don’t believe in second-best.’ Alan had found me beautiful, too, though I had found it hard to believe him at first after all that school bullying about my height and my very untrendy clothes. .

‘It doesn’t have to be second-best — I know you and Alan loved each other, but no-one would blame you, least of all me, if you fell in love with someone else now. Alan would be the last man to want you to mourn him forever.’

‘I’m not still mourning, I’ve moved on. It’s just. .’ I paused, trying to sum up how I felt. ‘It’s just that what we had was so perfect that I know I’m not going to find that again.’

‘But was it so perfect? Is any marriage ever that?’ she asked. ‘And have you ever thought that you weren’t actually married for long enough for the gilt to wear off the gingerbread?’

I looked at her, startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you were very happy, but even the best relationships change over time: their little ways start to irritate you and you have to learn a bit of give and take. Alan wasn’t perfect and neither are you: none of us are. Look at me and Dan, for instance. He can’t understand why I need forty-six pairs of shoes and I hate coming second in his life to rugby — but we still love each other.’

‘Apart from our work, the only thing Alan and I didn’t do together was the running — we shared everything else.’

‘But one or both of you might have felt that was a bit claustrophobic eventually. Alan was a dreamer too — and he dreamed of writing. You couldn’t do that together.’

‘Well, I didn’t stop him,’ I said defensively. ‘In fact, I encouraged him, though the teaching took up a lot of his time and energy. And I was going to write a house-party cookbook, so we did share that interest too, in a way.’

‘Oh yes — I’d forgotten about the cookbook. You haven’t mentioned it for ages.’

‘It’s nearly finished, just one more section to go.’

That was the one dealing with catering for a Christmas house-party, which I had been putting off.

‘I do realise the dynamics of the relationship would have changed when we had children, Laura, but we had it all planned. I wish now we hadn’t waited so long, though.’

‘There you are, then,’ she said triumphantly, ‘if you find someone else, it’s not too late to start a family — look at me!’

‘Funnily enough I was thinking about that in Devon, and I decided that although I don’t want another man, I do want a baby before it’s too late. So I thought I’d try artificial insemination. What do you think?’

She stared at me from startled, long-lashed blue eyes. ‘Really? Well, I suppose you could,’ she conceded reluctantly after a minute. ‘But wouldn’t you prefer to try the natural way first?’

‘No,’ I said simply. ‘I want the baby to be just mine.’

‘How would you manage financially? Have you thought it through?’

‘I own the cottage,’ I pointed out, because I’d paid off the mortgage on our terraced house with the insurance money after Alan died, then moved out to an even smaller cottage in the countryside between Ormskirk and Merchester. ‘And I thought I could finish off the cookery book and maybe start doing party catering from home.’

‘I’m not sure you’ve seen all the pitfalls of going it alone with a small child, but I know what you’re like when you’ve made your mind up,’ she said resignedly. Then she brightened and added, ‘But I could help you and it would be lovely to be able to see more of you.’

‘Yes, that would be great and I’ll be counting on you for advice if I get pregnant.’

‘I must say, you’ve really surprised me, though.’

‘I surprised myself, but something Gran said right at the end made me realise I ought to go out there and get what I want, before it’s too late.’

‘You mean when she said some man’s name you’d never heard of?’

I nodded. ‘It was the way she said it — and she could see him, too. I’d never seen her smile like that, so she must have loved and lost him, whoever he was — and perhaps her journal will tell me that eventually. Her face went all soft, and I could see how beautiful she must have been when she was young.’

‘Just like you, with the same black hair and light grey eyes.’

‘Laura, you can’t say I’m beautiful! I mean, apart from being the size of a maypole, I’ve got a big, beaky nose.’

‘You’re striking, and your nose isn’t beaky, it’s only got the tiniest hint of a curve in it,’ she said loyally. ‘Sam’s right, you do look like that bust of Nefertiti you see in photographs. . though your hair is a bit more Cleopatra.’

I was flattered but unconvinced. Gran’s skin had been peaches and cream and mine was heading towards a warm olive so that I look Mediterranean apart from my light eyes. Gran’s mother’s family came from Liverpool originally, so I daresay I have some foreign sailor in my ancestry to thank for my colouring — and maybe my height, which has been the bane of my existence.

‘I quite liked Sam, because at least he didn’t talk to my boobs, like a lot of men do,’ I conceded and then immediately regretted it, because she said eagerly, ‘So you will come to us, if only for Christmas dinner? I promise not to push you together, but it would give you a chance to get to know him a bit and—’

My phone emitted a strangled snatch of Mozart and I grabbed it. Saved by the muzak.

I hoped the call wasn’t the man from Chris’s Clearance saying he’d decided against collecting Gran’s fairly worthless sticks of furniture and bric-a-brac, but no, it was Ellen from the Homebodies agency.