Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

Coco came alive and avidly seized on this. ‘Twelfth Night? I know that, we had to do it at school. There are lots of boring bits that are supposed to be funny, but quite a lot of mixed-up love scenes, too.’

‘I’ve played Sebastian in the past, at Stratford,’ admitted Michael.

‘Then perhaps we should revive the tradition and you could take the part again?’ suggested Noël.

‘Assuming you’re still here by New Year’s Eve,’ Guy said.

‘We could do it earlier if the roads thaw and it looks like we can get away, can’t we?’ Coco said, and then enthused, ‘And why can’t we act out the parts, not just read them?’

‘I suppose we could, if you want to,’ Noël said. ‘We have several printed copies of the scenes we used to use in the library.’

‘You can be Sebastian, Michael, and I will be the fair Olivia,’ Coco said, striking a pose. ‘Guy, you can be Orsino and I suppose Holly had better be Viola, seeing she’s Sebastian’s twin and she can look like a man.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But that doesn’t work really, does it? Sebastian and Viola are supposed to be very like each other.’

‘The audience will just have to use their imaginations, then,’ she snapped, and I could see she was angling to do her love scenes with Michael. However, from what I recalled of the play, that left me to fall for Orsino.

‘I hate acting,’ Guy said. ‘I don’t even perform in the Revels, so it’ll have to be Jude. Noël will link the scenes as usual and prompt, and I’ll be your admiring audience with Tilda, Jess and Becca.’

‘I’m not much of an actor either,’ Jude said.

‘Or me,’ I put in hastily.

‘Well then, you and Holly can just read the parts, okay?’ Coco said impatiently.

She was the only person really keen on doing any acting, presumably to show off her skills to Michael and, perhaps, to get a little closer to him. However, no-one put up much of a protest and Noël said he would find the printed parts the next day.

I expect we were all too relieved that Coco had found something to occupy herself with to object and she became quite animated while talking with Michael about rehearsing.

But still, I thought we would be long gone by New Year’s Eve, and she would abandon the play like a shot if she could get away!

Tilda decided to go to bed and ordered Jess upstairs too, though she didn’t want to go.

‘I’m too excited, I’ll never sleep.’

‘Then Father Christmas won’t come,’ Tilda told her.

‘Oh, Granny! The presents are all here, and I know it was Mummy who did the stocking last year, because it was so awful. I’m not even hanging one up this time.’ But she trailed off after her.

‘It’s very late, but it’s been a pleasant evening,’ Becca said and Noël agreed, ‘Yes, best get off to bed myself too, I think.’

Even Coco seemed ready to go up — all that emotion and alcohol must have been exhausting, though I noticed she lingered long enough to look at her presents under the tree, which was sort of slightly endearing: twenty-four going on five.

Saying good night, the party broke up and vanished one by one, except for Jude, who went to let Merlin out for a last run and check on the horses. I banked the fire up and collected a couple of abandoned sherry glasses and was in the kitchen washing them up when he came back in. Snow flecked his dark hair, so it must have been coming down thick and fast.

Merlin greeted me as if he hadn’t seen me for a month instead of a few minutes and Jude regarded him with disfavour. ‘That creature must have gone senile in my absence, I think he’s forgotten who he belongs to!’

‘That reminds me, I must wrap his present up when he’s not looking.’

‘You got my dog a present?’

‘Just a large rawhide bone from Oriel Comfort’s shop. She really does stock everything, doesn’t she?’

‘So much so that I expect her shop to suddenly explode under the strain one day,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve some spare Christmas wrapping paper? Only I got a few things in the airport on the way home, when I had time to kill between flights.’

‘Yes, Mrs Comfort only had huge rolls of the stuff so there’s plenty left, even though Michael’s had a bit, too,’ I said, getting the paper out of the cupboard.

He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, ‘I bet he has!’ then headed out, stopping on the threshold to ask, ‘You are going to bed now?’

‘Yes, I just have one or two last things to do down here first.’

He looked at his watch. ‘I almost forgot — it’s nearly midnight and, snow or not, Richard will be at the church. Come on!’

Grabbing my hand, he towed me through the silent house to the front door, which he unlocked and threw open. A flurry of snow touched my face and faintly on the breeze I heard the distant, magical sound of church bells in the valley below.

‘Merry Christmas!’ Jude said as they stopped. Above our heads the bunch of mistletoe revolved in the breeze and he stood very still, looking down into my face. Then, as if driven by some compulsion he would have preferred to have resisted, he bent his head and quickly brushed his lips against mine.

I shivered, but the surprise made me acquiescent, and I was still standing in the open doorway, snow whirling round my head and my face tilted up to his, when he just as suddenly turned on his heel and went off without another word.

Men!

* * *

I transferred the sausage and bacon rolls, stuffing and bread sauce from the freezer to the fridge before I went upstairs to my room.

I’d hidden all the items that were to go into Jess’s Christmas stocking in my wardrobe, so when I’d changed into the unexciting long white cotton nightdress and robe that Gran had made for me to the archaic pattern she favoured herself, I laid everything out on the bed next to a large sock. A very large sock.

I put a clementine in the toe, since it was a satisfying shape, but had decided against the nuts. Then everything else I’d bought went in, pushed well down, with the yellow-eyed wolf sticking its head out of the top.

After that, I sat reading Gran’s journal until I thought Jude would have gone to bed — and poor Gran, my guesses had been quite right and her big romance was all going pear-shaped.

Because I’d arrived at that stage of tiredness where you feel spaced-out but entirely awake, I read on for longer than I intended. But at least when I did finally pick up the stocking and tiptoe quietly (apart from some odd rustlings from the stocking) across the gallery and along the west wing passage towards the nursery, the house was silent and everyone was fast asleep. .

Or so I thought, right up to the moment when Jude’s door swung silently open like something from a fairground House of Horrors and he grabbed me and pulled me into his room, closing the door behind us. I gave a strangled yelp and pushed him off, my hands meeting the bare skin of a well-muscled chest. . an extremely well-muscled chest.

‘Shhh!’ he said, switching the light on, which was possibly even scarier, since he was towering over me wearing only loosely-tied pyjama bottoms. His dark hair was standing on end and I wouldn’t be surprised if mine was, too. I dropped my hands as though they’d been burnt and took a step back as he released my arm.

‘What on earth were you doing, sneaking round the house at this time? Where were you going?’ he demanded suspiciously in a menacing rumble.

‘I wasn’t sneaking,’ I hissed furiously back, ‘and you nearly gave me a heart attack, grabbing me like that, you total imbecile! It’s just as well I’m not easily frightened.’

His dark eyes wandered down my thin white cotton robe to my bare feet and back again. ‘Miss Havisham, I presume?’ he said sarcastically. Then he spotted the bulging stocking I was holding. ‘Or wait — it must be Mother Christmas! And isn’t that one of my socks?’

‘Yes, if you left it stuffed into a pair of wellies in the garden hall. I washed it yesterday and sewed this bit of ribbon on to hang it from the end of her bed by — it’s for Jess.’

‘I didn’t think you were doing it for me. But isn’t Jess too old for that kind of thing?’

‘Not according to Mrs Comfort, she says they’re never too old. I wouldn’t know, I never had one as a child. But Jess did say that last year’s was a huge disappointment and she thought her mother only remembered at the last minute.’

‘She’s a bit scatty, is my cousin Roz. Shoved in a small chocolate selection box and a clementine.’ He frowned down at me. ‘And what did you mean, you never had a stocking?’

‘I was brought up by my grandparents — my gran mostly, because my grandfather was much older than she was. But they were Strange Baptists — he was a minister in the church.’

I waited for him to ask me what was strange about them again, but instead he said, ‘Oh yes — I think you mentioned that as the reason you don’t usually celebrate Christmas. A bit like the Plymouth Brethren?’

‘I suppose so, in some ways: they certainly only celebrated the religious aspects of Christmas.’

I hadn’t put my slippers on, because I thought I would be quieter without them and now I realised my feet were blocks of ice and it was more than time to go.

‘Fascinating as it is to discuss my childhood and religion with you in the middle of the night, Jude, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get on.’

I tried to push past him, but he was still blocking the way, an inscrutable expression on his face. ‘You know, I still find you very hard to read, Holly Brown!’

‘Well, don’t rack your brains over it,’ I said sweetly, ‘I’m an open book. Now, I’d like to get this done because I’ve had to set my alarm really early so I can put that enormous turkey in the oven, and if I don’t go to bed soon it won’t be worth it. What a monster!’

I think he was unsure if I was applying the epithet to him or the turkey, but he finally shifted to one side and I made my escape. But unfortunately, just as I emerged into the passage, I came face to face with Noël, who must have been returning from the bathroom.

However, he merely smiled in an avuncular and unsurprised way and murmured, ‘Ah, getting to know each other better, I see? Good, good!’ with no apparent innuendo intended, and carried on.

I got a touch of the Cocos and had to clamp my hand across my mouth to keep a hysterical giggle in, while behind me, Jude said, sounding amused, ‘We can only hope he was sleepwalking and will have forgotten he saw us in such compromising circumstances by morning.’

I turned to look back coldly at him and in return he gave me an enigmatic smile that I would have quite liked to have smacked off his face. Then he retreated, closing his door silently behind him.

I mouthed a very rude word then tiptoed off up the nursery stairs, turned the handle and crept in. Jess was dimly illuminated by a moon-shaped nightlight, curled up in bed with one arm around her teddy bear, looking angelic and very much younger. I hung the stocking on the end of her bed and sneaked out again.

I only hoped it wasn’t a huge disappointment to her, though surely after last year’s it had to be an improvement?

This time I walked on the far side of the passage as I passed Jude’s room — but my precaution was needless.

I went downstairs very early in jeans and jumper, ready for cooking, not using the backstairs but the dogleg ones from the gallery. Descending slowly into the dark sitting room, I inhaled the strangely exciting mingled scents of woodsmoke and pine needles, which instantly brought to mind past Christmas mornings with Alan, all the more poignant for being happy memories.

I stoked the fire and plumped up the cushions, stuck a few pieces of jigsaw into the last remaining places round the edge (a compulsion too hard to resist), then switched on the tree’s fairy lights. They twinkled in the dark corner under the stairs, reflecting off the gift-wrapped pile beneath. It seemed to have grown since I last looked, with an added layer of parcels inexpertly wrapped in the paper I’d bought.